Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  Brewer arrived after the initial test at the end of May and what he saw confirmed Orville’s suspicions. Curtiss had replaced Manly’s motor with one of his own; the wings of the aerodrome seemed to differ in every key measurement; the wing structure was reinforced more effectively; the steering mechanism was changed; and Curtiss had installed his own wheel-turning system. The redesigned Langley flew, not surprisingly, quite a bit more effectively than the original model.

  Brewer informed Orville, who fumed while the Smithsonian trumpeted the “triumph.” None too pleased with Orville by then, the trade journals were eager to echo the Smithsonian’s praise. Aeronautics ran an article under the headline “Original Langley Machine Flies,” followed by a detailed description of the new aerodrome, a schematic, and then a glowing tribute to Langley, which included the spurious claims that other pioneers, such as Blériot, had based their designs on his. The implication, obviously, was that the Wright brothers had produced an airplane with some but not all of the features that would enable powered flight. Just to make certain no one missed the point, in its description of the craft Aeronautics noted, “No changes have been made in the balance or general design of the machine. It has, however, been equipped with three shallow pontoons to keep it afloat on the water.” The New York Times, which had been so mocking of Langley’s debacle, ran a full-page article on page one of its Sunday magazine on May 31 under the headline “Flies with Langley’s Aeroplane and Vindicates Him.” Even worse for Orville was the Times’s assertion that Langley “established the principles developed so successfully after the inventor’s death.”

  When Orville heard Griffith Brewer’s tale of seeming skulduggery two weeks later, he persuaded Brewer to submit his own article to the Times. Brewer did so and on June 21 “Langley Flier Tests: Pertinent Questions as to Their Efficacy and Results” ran on page eight of the newspaper. Brewer insisted that Langley’s machine was not built strongly enough, was inefficient in lift, had propellers that would not adequately power the craft, had no means of lateral stability, and, if it ever did succeed in becoming airborne, which was extremely doubtful, would have been upset by the smallest gust of wind. Only by essentially remaking the machine was Curtiss successful in getting it to fly.

  Brewer’s article achieved the desired result and produced a storm of condemnation for Curtiss’s methods, although a number of respected publications, such as Scientific American, stood by both the methodology and the results. Curtiss added that the modifications to which Brewer referred were only made after the initial successful test and then in full view of both the reporters and aviation experts who had gathered at Hammondsport. The experiment with the Langley was to have two phases and each had been approved by Charles Walcott. The first, to determine whether the aerodrome was capable of flight, had been completed before Brewer arrived. The modifications were made for the second phase: to investigate the feasibility of tandem-winged aircraft. To that end, the Langley machine had been altered for maximum efficiency. What Griffith Brewer saw as deceit was simply an incomplete understanding of the facts.

  Orville refused to back down; so did Curtiss and Walcott. That dispute, like all disputes between Curtiss and the Wrights, has never been resolved. All that is undeniable is that in flying the Langley, Curtiss was motivated by more than scientific curiosity, and in defending the Wrights, Brewer had never shown himself to be an objective judge.*5 The most tangible upshot was Orville’s response to Walcott’s perceived treachery: He initiated a feud with the Smithsonian that lasted thirty years.

  While remaking Langley’s aerodrome, Curtiss did not pause in his development of the transatlantic flying boat, now christened the America. He obtained two pilots: a British lieutenant named John Cyril Porte and a navy flyer named John Towers, who had worked with him from his first days in San Diego. By summer, the America was ready. Takeoff would be from Newfoundland and landfall in Ireland. Navy destroyers would be stationed every one hundred miles along the route. Curtiss estimated the flight could be made sometime in August, or September at the latest.

  The overall effect of the America and the Langley was to keep Curtiss and his innovative aircraft in the headlines while the only noteworthy event for the Wright Company was the withdrawal of the C after yet another army flyer met his death, in February 1914. Orville continued to blame pilot error but the army’s board of investigation concluded what everyone but Orville had known all along: The design of the C was flawed, which no automatic stabilizer would change, and the machine was a death trap.

  That Curtiss was increasingly seen as not only an innovator but the true father of American aviation did not increase the Wright Company’s popularity. Prospects were so poor, even with the court ruling, that Grover Loening quit after just one year to seek his fortunes elsewhere.

  Moreover, Orville was showing signs of wearing down; Curtiss was not. He pressed on with his counterattack. For his final gambit, he was aided by a man who had mounted quite an effective counterattack of his own.

  In 1911, Henry Ford had finally prevailed over George Selden and John R. Hazel. With only one year to run on the Selden patent, a federal appeals court ruled that Selden’s patent was invalid as it relied on the Brayton engine, state of the art when Selden first filed in 1876 but hopelessly primitive by the time the patent was granted in 1895. It had never been used to construct a motorcar.

  Ford was now both very rich and very committed to seeing that the patent laws were not used to stifle innovation. It is uncertain when he and Curtiss first met, but there is a photograph of them together taken in Hammondsport in 1913. At some point he clearly offered to help Curtiss find a means to end-run Judge Hazel’s decision. After the appeals court ruling, Curtiss took Ford up on it.

  Curtiss hired Ford’s lawyer, W. Benton Crisp, a former judge who had formulated the strategy that had bested Selden in appeals court. Crisp advised Curtiss not to waste his time appealing to the Supreme Court; the justices rarely accepted patent cases and the appellate ruling left little room to continue the case successfully. Rather, he should exploit the very aspects of the Wright patent that had been successfully used against him. Judge Hazel’s opinion had discounted Curtiss’s claim that all three parts of his stabilizing apparatus—two ailerons and rudder—were not used in conjunction. But in doing so, Hazel had tacitly admitted that all three must be used in conjunction to uphold the Wright patent. Curtiss should design his aircraft so that no question could exist that all three were not employed at the same time.

  Curtiss saw immediately how to solve the problem. He installed a locking mechanism that required that the ailerons be used independently; they could not be engaged simultaneously. In fact, this was a distinction without a difference; a pilot alternating between left and right ailerons would produce the same effect as employing them together. But that argument would have to be made in court. Orville was thus left with three choices: He could focus only on damages from previous sales and allow Curtiss to build new machines without a license; he could file suit all over again to prove Curtiss was still infringing; or he could enter into two new, expensive rounds of litigation simultaneously. None of these alternatives was especially palatable.

  Orville, by this time the sole stockholder in the Wright Company except for a small percentage owned by Robert Collier, chose the second. Curtiss could not be allowed to manufacture unlicensed airplanes—or any airplanes. In November 1914, the Wright Company filed suit against the Curtiss Aeroplane Company, alleging that “despite earlier decrees and judgments in favor of the Wright Company, the Curtiss Aeroplane Company is continuing to manufacture, use, and sell flying machines which infringe the Wright patent.”

  The patent wars, it seemed, were not yet over.

  * * *

  *1 Robert Collier, Orville’s only friend among the stockholders, was in Europe and did not reply to Orville’s solicitation for some weeks. By the time he returned, he and Orville agreed that he should keep his shares.

  *2 In 1910, Walter Wellman, a j
ournalist and adventurer, had attempted to cross the Atlantic in an airship after failing to soar to the North Pole, but his engine had failed after thirty-eight hours and he crashed into the water near Bermuda, where he was rescued. From that point on, the feat was considered impossible until the development of the hydroplane.

  *3 Orville was not present at the Aero Club event. He chose to attend a Rotary Club dinner in Dayton instead.

  *4 A gyroscope uses a wheel within a frame that spins about an axis like a top. The angular momentum of the wheel causes it to remain oriented in one direction regardless of changes in the orientation of the frame. A gyrocompass uses this spinning-wheel effect rather than magnetism to determine true rather than magnetic north.

  *5 Brewer also explained away the death of Charles Rolls, the cofounder of Rolls-Royce, in a French-built Wright Flyer in Britain in 1910 by asserting that the machine crashed because the tail frame, which broke off, had not been built to Wright standards. In fact, Rolls had been attempting a “daring maneuver,” a dive and twist, which strained the Wright design and would later cause difficulties for Wright exhibition flyers.

  The Grip of the Spotlight

  In May 1913, Lincoln Beachey announced that he would never fly again. He had been hinting at his retirement for two months but waited to make the formal announcement in an address to the Olympic Club in his hometown of San Francisco.

  “You could not make me enter an aeroplane at the point of a revolver,” he is reported to have said. “I am done. They call me the Master Birdman, but there was just one thing which drew crowds to my exhibitions—a morbid desire to see something happen. They all predicted that I would be killed and none wanted to miss the sight.”1 Beachey then read off the names of twenty-four flyers who had been killed and said, “Those boys were like brothers to me.” His rendition of Mabel Ely’s indictment was less damning than in the letter reported elsewhere: “Eugene would be with me now if he had never seen you fly.”

  Beachey was a sufficiently complex figure that his real motivation is difficult to gauge. Most of those he mentioned as close friends were men he either rarely spoke to or hardly knew. While doubtless an ad hoc fraternity of exhibition flyers had grown up around the daring and danger, Beachey had always been noteworthy for holding himself aloof. But something had prompted him to give up flying, and as later events would make plain, it had not been fear.

  In any event, within weeks Beachey’s retirement speech had lengthened into a newspaper feature article written under his byline but quite possibly penned by the publicist whom Beachey kept on constant call.

  Many of the lines from the speech in San Francisco were repeated. “They call me the Master Birdman, but people come to see me die.” He insisted once more he had no fear for himself, only for others.

  In Chicago, the mother of Horace Kearney begged me not to teach him any more of my tricks. Three months later he was dead. Charlie Walsh’s wife pleaded with me to have the young flyer cut out my spirals. But he said I was jealous, and that if I did them he must also to get the big money. Two weeks later, while he was in the midst of a dead reverse spiral a little wire snapped and he was dead when they picked him up. So it was with John Frisbie, Rutherford Page, Phil Parmalee, Billy Badger, Eugene Ely, Cal Rodgers, and Cromwell Dixon, all fine boys. Death has left me alone because I was a good servant to him.

  Once again, separating fact from exaggeration is impossible. What was more, many of those whom Beachey listed as dying trying to emulate him were victims of either accidents or other causes, like Cal Rodgers’s bird strike. But Beachey was undeniably the most reckless and the most popular of the exhibition flyers and his departure cast a pall over the entire enterprise. Curtiss and some of the independents continued to make out, but many flyers found themselves booked into smaller venues for decreased money.

  Beachey sought other avenues to exploit his fame. There has been speculation that he went into real estate, but no record exists of any transaction with his name on it. By the summer of 1913, he had found his way into vaudeville. He began as a headliner, playing at such venues as Proctor’s Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York, where he would “entertain with views of his many perilous flights and a talk on the profession of flying.” But hearing someone talk about risking death is not the same as watching him do it, and Beachey had soon drifted off the top of the bill.

  Being in the limelight for so long, Beachey must have chafed at being reduced to a mediocrity. To make matters worse, his cherished American altitude record was surpassed in July, when a previously unknown aviator named Frank Burnside ascended to 12,950 feet. To know for certain is impossible, but it would not be difficult to imagine Beachey searching for an excuse to get back in the air.

  A Frenchman named Adolphe Pégoud gave it to him.

  Pégoud was among the second generation of French flyers who were taking advantage of the intense interest by both government and manufacturers in expanding the limits of aviation to prepare for the war that seemed more certain with every passing month. In August 1913, Pégoud became the first man to parachute from an airplane in flight, jumping safely from nine hundred feet, a feat whose military application was all too apparent.*1 The following month, he performed the most elusive feat in aviation, one that many considered impossible.

  The one trick Beachey had been unable to do, that no one was able to do, was a loop. In addition to the challenges for the pilot, a loop was thought to put untenable strain on the support structure.*2 And at the time, airplane motors were fed fuel by gravity and so might stall when upside down. Rotary motors, such as the Gnôme, would in theory solve the stalling problem but still no one could successfully negotiate an aerial somersault without side-slipping or loss of control.

  On September 1, 1913, Adolphe Pégoud did. Taking a Blériot XI to three thousand feet, Pégoud tried four times before finally completing a successful loop. The following day, before a military board of experts, he duplicated the feat.2

  News of Pégoud’s achievement splashed across the front pages of American newspapers. “Flies Upside Down for Quarter of a Mile,” the New York Times headline read. Just below: “Experts Say Pégoud’s Feat Is Epoch-Making Experiment in Aeronautics.” The most significant practical effect of Pégoud’s loop was in demonstrating that aircraft had become a good deal more stable and were more solidly constructed than commonly believed. Thus the ability to maneuver, particularly against other aircraft, was heightened. To the public, however, the loop was simply another barrier that had been smashed by those intrepid charioteers of the skies.

  Soon after word of Pégoud’s achievement reached America, Beachey—still at Proctor’s but now described as a “novelty”—was asked what he thought. Beachey replied that he had no doubt he could have performed the trick had he remained in aviation. It took three weeks of giving similar answers before Beachey had had enough. He was off to Hammondsport and there announced his return to flying. He added that Glenn Curtiss had agreed to build him an aircraft strong and powerful enough to match Pégoud’s achievement, a 100-horsepower motor on a biplane with only a twenty-five-foot wingspan.

  Beachey had a good rationale when asked to justify his return. “In a year, aviation has changed from a dangerous pursuit to a serious business. The development of the flying boat means much to the world; wonderful speed combined with comfort and safety. I believe there is work for me to do that is worth any man’s doing.” He did admit that “perhaps it is the competitive spirit that is helping to urge me back into the game.”3

  Curtiss set to work and on October 7, Beachey tried out the new design. The test flight was not announced but word got around that Beachey might loop and a large crowd gathered at the open field where he was due to fly near Bath, New York, five miles south of Hammondsport. Four of the early arrivals were two naval officers and their dates, sisters Ruth and Dorothy Hildreth, daughters of a New York City hotel owner and president of the American Wine Growers Association. To get a better view, the naval officers helped the Hild
reth girls onto the roof of a barn, where they perched on the top.

  Beachey took off and flew over the barn, dipping his wings to acknowledge the officers’ salutes. It was reported later to have been Beachey’s first flight since quitting in May but he had often flown Curtiss’s hydroplanes from Keuka Lake while in Hammondsport.

  The new airplane was powerful and compact but far too heavy to hold a loop. As Beachey flew for a second pass over the barn, the airplane suddenly dipped and one wing clipped the roof. The officers ducked away but despite their efforts to pull the women with them, both were swept off. Ruth Hildreth was killed instantly when her head struck the sharp corner of an automobile parked below; Dorothy Hildreth suffered fractures of an arm and a leg and her chest was crushed. She survived but carried the wounds for the rest of her life. Beachey flew into the nearby woods and crashed but miraculously walked away from the wreck with only minor bruises. He was distraught and checked himself in to a hospital more to deal with emotional distress than with physical injuries. It was first reported that Beachey claimed his foot slipped on a lever but subsequent accounts had him encountering a sudden downdraft, which the weight of the aircraft did not allow him to overcome. While he was flying, a thief broke in to Mrs. Mott’s rooming house and robbed him of six thousand dollars.

  Beachey was fully exonerated by a coroner’s jury but he was badly shaken and once again contemplated retirement. But letters both from other aviators and ordinary Americans poured in from across the nation urging him not to again give up flying. He likely would not have in any case. Because of Beachey’s reputation, no one suggested Curtiss had designed a flawed aircraft. He set to fixing the defects in the machine and five weeks later, on November 18, Beachey performed America’s first loop at North Island and within two months he had not only set a record with seven, but had added a corkscrew twist—the controlled tailspin—that no other flyer could master. By the time the appeals court had ruled for the Wright Company in January 1914, Beachey had again been acknowledged as the world’s greatest flyer and this time nothing was going to deter him from continuing to occupy that mountaintop.