Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Arch Hoxsey was in the air when Johnstone lost control. He descended quickly and landed and he and Walter Brookins hurried to the site of the crash, but there was nothing either of them could do. The flyers knew the thin mountain air was a hazard. The day before he crashed, Johnstone had stated categorically that he “would attempt no tricks because he considered it too dangerous,” but then Hoxsey flew “far over the foothills, which seemed to fire Johnstone to outdo his teammate.”

  Wilbur Wright, in New York, first broke the news to Johnstone’s widow and then faced the press. When asked for his reaction, Wilbur said, “I cannot say anything about the accident except to express the grief I feel. The spectacle of the thing as it appears to the onlooker … is of no value to me. What I want is a description of how the thing happened from an aviator who saw it.… I understand that his left plane [wing] collapsed. When Brookins and Hoxsey report perhaps I can make some analysis of what happened.”

  Claude Grahame-White did not need to wait for the facts. Interviewed in Philadelphia, Grahame-White said, “Johnstone was one of the most unassuming as well as one of the cleverest aviators I ever met. He was so skillful that I feel sure when the details of the accident are known, it will be found that the machine and not the aviator was at fault.” While Grahame-White was hardly averse to jabbing a needle in the Wrights’ direction, that the Flyers were unsuitable to exhibition flying had become a constant whisper among aviators other than the Wrights’ own. Johnstone was the third American to die in a crash and all three had perished in Wright machines.*3

  Wilbur questioned both Hoxsey and Brookins at length, trying to determine the cause of the crash. In correspondence between the brothers, their theorizing was exhaustive. But although Brookins had noted to Wilbur, “We could not figure out why Johnstone turned to the right when his left wing took a smaller angle,” at no time did either Wilbur or Orville seriously countenance the possibility of a design flaw or that Wright machines might not be reliable in a steep dive.14 In the end, Wilbur concluded, “On the whole it seems plausible that the trouble began with Johnstone falling off of the seat.”*4 15

  Johnstone was thirty. In addition to his wife, a German who would return home to Berlin, Johnstone left two small children. Orville sought his widow out on his next trip across the Atlantic to assure her that he and his brother would continue to participate in her support.

  On November 23, 1910, just six days after Johnstone, Octave Chanute died as well. In his letter to Orville of November 30, Wilbur simply said, “I am back in New York after a trip west to attend Johnstone’s and Chanute’s funerals.”16 He noted that Chanute had lived but a few weeks after returning from Europe but made no mention of either personal regret or their previous falling-out. Chanute was never mentioned in their correspondence again.

  Chanute was exalted in aviation journals. Aeronautics wrote, “The counsel and encouragement which he gave to Wilbur and Orville Wright have been gratefully and gracefully acknowledged by them.… It came to them at the time when it was most needed, when they were at the foot of the steepest part of the unblazed trail. It gave them the courage and confidence which were essential to enable them to keep on alone and to emerge at last at the summit triumphant.” The article concluded, “Those who knew him will always … think of the oft-repeated saying, ‘He was more willing to give credit to others than to claim any for himself.’ ”

  In the same issue, Wilbur contributed a laudatory but curiously arm’s-length tribute, even referring to himself in the third person.

  By the death of Mr. O. Chanute the world has lost one whose labors had to an unusual degree influenced the course of human progress. If he had not lived, the entire history of progress in flying would have been other than it has been, for he encouraged not only the Wright brothers to persevere in their experiments, but it was due to his missionary trip to France in 1903 that the Voisins, Bleriot, Farman, Delagrange, and Archdeacon were led to undertake a revival of aviation studies in that country, after the failure of the efforts of Ader and the French government in 1897 had left everyone in idle despair.

  His writings were so lucid as to provide an intelligent understanding of the nature of the problems of flight to a vast number of persons who would probably never have given the matter study otherwise, and not only by published articles, but by personal correspondence and visitation, he inspired and encouraged to the limits of his ability all who were devoted to the work. His private correspondence with experimenters in all parts of the world was of great volume. No one was too humble to receive a share of his time. In patience and goodness of heart he has rarely been surpassed. Few men were more universally respected and loved. 17

  On December 9, at Pau, the scene of Wilbur Wright’s triumph just two years before, a Frenchman, Georges Legagneux, flying a Blériot, broke Johnstone’s altitude record set at Belmont and in doing so became the first man to exceed 10,000 feet. Chip Drexel had claimed 9,897 feet, but the barograph reading had been disputed by the Aero Club. The dispute became moot in face of Legagneux’s 10,499-foot ascent. Legagneux’s mark was the first time since Paulhan that the altitude record had slipped from American hands and Hoxsey wanted it back. Two days later, he was given the perfect venue to do so.

  Los Angeles decided to stage a follow-up to the wildly successful January meet. The sequel would begin on Christmas Eve, December 24, and run through the New Year. Smaller meets, as the Moisants had found to their chagrin, were generally money losers, and in order to mount a major show one needed the participation and the approval of the Wrights. And the only way to get that was to pay them, and the amount was generally sufficient to threaten the profitability even of a meet that drew tens of thousands.

  On December 11, Wilbur agreed to terms. As events unfolded, it seemed that Los Angeles, just up the coast from Curtiss’s widely publicized North Island base, would be another immense triumph for the Wright Exhibition Team. On December 26, in front of seventy-five thousand spectators, Arch Hoxsey did reclaim the altitude record, soaring to 11,474 feet, shattering the mark set by Legagneux and almost tripling what Paulhan had done at Dominguez Field only one year earlier. He flew in a 40-mph wind, far stronger than most aviators would chance, and sufficient to wreck Latham’s Antoinette monoplane, hurling it against a fence. After he landed, the other flyers carried him on their shoulders in front of the grandstand.

  When asked, “Was it windy up there?” Hoxsey replied, “It blew so hard that my machine hardly moved and barely held its own. It was so cold that more than once I thought my carburetor was about to freeze. I made the record because I was determined to keep on going up until I passed Legagneux’s record or until the carburetor froze.”18 Three days later, Hoxsey again topped 10,000 feet, flying over Mount Wilson and the recently completed Carnegie Solar Observatory. After the flight, an army lieutenant assigned to observe the proceedings asserted that a thousand biplanes could transport an army of 10,000 men over mountains as high as the Alps.

  Hoxsey was fearful that the 11,474-foot mark would not be declared official, and so ascended to 10,575 feet on December 30 to be certain that he had wiped Legagneux from the record books. The following day, to celebrate the coming of the New Year, Hoxsey intended to render any argument moot; a new altitude record, perhaps as high as 12,000 feet, would be the culmination of a bravura performance. In addition to altitude, Hoxsey had won for total duration, more than seventeen hours, and endurance, more than three hours. All three represented new records.

  As Hoxsey prepared for his ascent, he learned that John Moisant was dead.

  Moisant had been in New Orleans, preparing to take a run at the 1910 Michelin Cup, waiting, as had Wilbur two years earlier, for the end of the year to ensure that his mark would hold. He was flying the same Blériot, now repaired, in which he finished second in the Gordon Bennett, but to accommodate the longer distance he had installed an additional 35-gallon fuel tank just forward of the motor. Although he’d been assured by mechanics that the arrangement was safe, a d
isproportionate percentage of weight would now be at the Blériot’s nose. More cautious than the public gave him credit for, Moisant wanted to test out the arrangement with the second tank only partially full before he took to the air for as much as eight hours in the official attempt. He decided to fly the craft from the staging area to the airfield where the four-mile course had been laid out.

  The morning was cold, with a gusty wind whipping off Lake Pontchartrain. Even for the test flight, Moisant wore so many layers of clothing insulated with newspaper that a friend likened it to a “suit of armor.” Moisant couldn’t bend his knees enough to get into the airplane so his crew had to lift him.

  He ascended only to a few hundred feet, flew to the field, circled it twice, descended to two hundred feet, and then turned to land with the wind behind him. Suddenly, the tail of the aircraft was forced upward by a gust of wind pushing the overweight nose down into a dive. Moisant was thrown from the airplane “as if he had been shot from a gun.” The Blériot struck the ground vertically; Moisant was tossed thirty feet. He broke his neck in the fall.

  Moisant survived long enough to be placed on a flatbed railroad car, but died before he could be brought to a hospital.

  When Hoxsey learned of Moisant’s crash, he immediately sent a telegram of condolence to Alfred but, as after Johnstone’s death, did not alter his plans to fly. Like Moisant, he took his machine up in strong, swirling winds, although not nearly of the magnitude he had encountered on his record-breaking flights.

  He ascended to 7,000 feet, disappeared into the clouds, and “with a thousand field glasses” following him, suddenly and surprisingly re-emerged in descent.

  The biplane came whirring out of the clouds. The crowds cheered again. In the rapid downward spiraling they saw only what they had seen Hoxsey do before these several days, cheating them into gasps of terror only to alight in smiling safety on the ground, when within less than six hundred feet of the ground the twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind shot forth treacherous blasts. His machine was caught helplessly in the counter currents. It tumbled over then suddenly slammed to earth.19

  Hoxsey was killed instantly. His body “was found broken and twisted out of all semblance when the wreckage had been cleared.… The steel sprocket which drove the propellers lay across his face, the motor resting upon the right side of his body. Every one of the ribs on that side was shattered. An iron upright, broken by the force of the crash, held the aviators’ body impaled upon its jagged point.”20

  Walter Brookins broke down when he saw the wreckage and the other flyers sat stunned. Although all flights were canceled for the day, most spectators remained in the grandstand, many of them sobbing.

  Roy Knabenshue said a short time later, “Of all the aviators on the field, he was the one we least expected to see suffer an accident. He was one of the most careful men who has ever flown; he was extremely cautious about the condition of his machine and was always testing it to make sure that it would respond. I cannot explain the accident, but it appears to have been due to the gusty 10 mile an hour wind that swept over the field. Apparently Hoxsey had come down from a calm and rushed into a wind strata about 800 feet above the earth at a terrific pace. The wind caught his machine and before he was able to combat it, the biplane turned over.”

  Phil Parmalee added, “The indications from the way the aeroplane moved are that Hoxsey made a mighty effort to right himself. If he had had 60 feet more between himself and the earth he might have succeeded. The machine struck almost on its bottom. This indicates that it was being righted even while the aviator was being whirled in a series of somersaults.”21

  Robert Lee, a mechanic, said, “Hoxsey could not bank into the wind as he had expected and that the air threw up one end of the plane and then tipped the whole machine over.”

  Among those mourning Hoxsey’s death was his former passenger Theodore Roosevelt. “I am more grieved than I can say over the tragedy that came to Hoxsey. He was courageous and a splendid type of fellow. I wanted to make the trip in the air with Hoxsey because he was an American aviator and had an American machine. I admired Hoxsey for the skill he had displayed in handling his aeroplane. I felt that it was entirely safe to trust him when I ventured into the air with him.… It is important that aviation be carried on.… Hoxsey gave his life as a noble sacrifice.”

  Newspapers announced the following day that Hoxsey’s mother, a widow, would receive his $10,000 in winnings at the meet. Wilbur and Orville also paid for the funeral and, as with Johnstone’s widow, assured Mrs. Hoxsey that they would continue with their support.

  Within hours, America’s two most prominent airmen had died. Pictures and stories about aviation’s darkest day dominated the front pages. Some surmised that the two crushed bodies would mark the end of daredevil flying.

  Instead, it was merely the beginning.

  * * *

  *1 Ironically, the American agent for Gnôme, Aeromotion Company, operated out of the Wright building in St. Louis.

  *2 Hamilton was tubercular and likely knew he didn’t have all that much time. But he confounded the odds and died in bed, succumbing to pneumonia in 1914.

  *3 Johnstone was the twenty-sixth overall fatality. Six died in Wright Flyers, four in Blériots, and six in Farmans. The other ten were in a variety of aircraft, including Voisins and Antoinettes. None of the fatalities had occurred in Curtiss machines.

  *4 Flyers in those early days did not employ seat belts or harnesses. Johnstone was not the first to die after falling from an aircraft nor would he be the last. It is astonishing that not one of the great innovators who dominated early flight thought to include such a basic and obvious piece of safety equipment.

  War Birds

  Allan Ryan, president of the Aero Club, gave his annual address at the club dinner on January 6, 1911. Harking back to Harry Toulmin’s flag-waving defense of the Wright patents, Ryan had a call to patriotism of his own:

  It is my own belief that the future supremacy of this country in the aeronautic field is going to depend very largely upon the harmonious cooperation of the institutions and individuals interested in the great science and it seems to me that the time has arrived to get to work.… It is also very important in the future that we give every possible aid and encouragement to worthy inventors and to every branch of scientific development in this country and to that end we should call into association and cooperation with us all those who are seriously working or interested in the field of American aeronautics.1

  Neither Wilbur nor Orville commented on Ryan’s speech, but there would be no move to “association and cooperation” from their end that was not specifically on their terms. Ryan, of course, had been the object of Wilbur’s unsuccessful suit to gain an additional $15,000 from the Belmont meet, but the Wrights were also convinced that they would be fools to play in a game where both sides were betting with their money.*1

  But Wilbur and Orville were also now playing a much weaker hand. The deaths of Hoxsey and Johnstone had more than cost America the services of two of its best aviators; it had also robbed the Wright team of its star draws. No aviator had yet come forward to fill the void, but America thirsted for heroes and the field had opened up. The next major meet was in San Francisco from January 8 to 25, the very event for which the Wrights had stonewalled the promoters into paying them an exorbitant entrance fee, but this time the headlines would be made not by a member of the Wright Exhibition Team but instead a member of Curtiss’s.

  After Eugene Ely’s successful flight from the Birmingham, Captain Chambers had become an enthusiastic Curtiss supporter. Helping convince the captain he had made the correct choice, the Wrights had demanded payment for replacement parts Chambers thought should be supplied without charge, and even worse, Orville had sent them to the War Department COD. The invoice had prompted an angry letter from Chambers on December 11. “Dear Sirs. I was surprised this A.M. to learn that the shipment of parts so urgently needed are held at Annapolis by the Express Co to collect the ship
charges. I assumed that you would send them under the same conditions as obtained in sending the whole machine. Payment for the parts comes out of our small appropriation for development.” Orville wrote back claiming a misunderstanding, an explanation Chambers claimed to accept, but relations between him and the Wrights remained cool from then on.

  Later in December, Chambers approached Ely and Curtiss and asked the feasibility of not only taking off from the deck of a warship but landing there as well. Ely was immediately game to try and Curtiss saw the San Francisco meet as the perfect place for Ely to do so. The heavy cruiser Pennsylvania was in San Francisco Bay and was ordered to steam to Mare Island Navy Yard to be fitted for the attempt.

  Landing on the cruiser presented a unique set of problems. Not only would the surface on which Ely was to alight be moving, but some means would be needed to stop the machine once it had touched down on a surface only forty yards long. The airplane’s momentum would thus have to be arrested quickly but not so suddenly that Ely was pitched out, as John Moisant had been in New Orleans. Curtiss devised a system so clever that some variation of the arrangement has been in use ever since.

  “The platform was built over the quarterdeck,” he wrote,

  about one hundred and twenty-five feet long by thirty feet wide, with a slope toward the stern of some twelve feet. Across this runway we stretched ropes every few feet with a sandbag on each end. These ropes were raised high enough so they could catch in grabhooks which we placed under the main centerpiece of the aeroplane, so that catching in the ropes the heavy sand bags attached would drag until they brought the machine to a stop. To protect the aviator and to catch him in case he should be pitched out of his seat in landing, heavy awnings were stretched on either side of the runway and at the upper end of it.2