The Bishop's Boys (58 page)

Wilbur captured the imagination of the world with his first public flights in France in late summer 1908.

Wilbur flew eight more times at Les Hunaudières between Monday and Thursday of the following week. He turned in his best performance—seven circles of the track in 8 minutes, 13
2
/
5
seconds—on Thursday, August 13.

Men and women who had held their collective breath as Farman struggled through his wide, flat turns saw Wilbur fly a tight figure-8 with a slight motion of the hand and a flick of the wrist. It was quite beyond their experience, and proof at last that the Wrights had accomplished all they claimed.

Word of Hunaudières swept through France that week. The crowds grew larger each day as more people were drawn to see this miracle for themselves. The London
Daily Mirror
hailed “
THE MOST WONDERFUL FLYING-MACHINE THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE
.”
¹⁶
The Times
agreed that the demonstrations at Les Hunaudières “proved over and over again that Wilbur and Orville Wright have long mastered the art of artificial flight. They are a public justification of the performances which the American aviators announced in 1904 and 1905, and they give them, conclusively, the first place in the history of flying machines….”
¹⁷

French newspapers like
Le Figaro
were even more enthusiastic. “I’ve seen him; I’ve seen them! Yes! I have today seen Wilbur Wright and his great white bird, the beautiful mechanical bird … there is no doubt! Wilbur and Orville Wright have well and truly flown.”
¹⁸

Georges Besançon spoke for the French aviators in
L’Aérophile
—“the facility with which the machine flies, and the dexterity with which the aviator gave proof from the first, in his maneuvering, have completely dissipated all doubts. Not one of the former detractors of the Wrights dare question, today, the previous experiments of the men who were truly the first to fly….”
¹⁹

Apologies flowed in from experimenters and enthusiasts across France. Archdeacon, who had tried harder than most not to believe, was one of the first: “For a long time, for too long a time, the Wright brothers have been accused in Europe of bluff—even perhaps in the land of their birth. They are today hallowed in France, and I feel an intense pleasure in counting myself among the first to make amends for that flagrant injustice.”
²⁰

“Who can doubt that the Wrights have done all that they claim,” asked the newcomer René Gasnier. “My enthusiasm is unbounded.” Paul Zens commented that “Mr. Wright has us all in his hands. What he does not know is not worth knowing.” Surcouf referred to Wilbur as a “titanic genius,” while Léon Delagrange noted simply: “
Nous sommes battu
.”
²¹

Once the intial shock had washed over them, the French aviators retracted a little. Farman, in a
Le Matin
interview published on August 26,
objected that “our machines are as good as his.” Blériot, initially enthusiastic, later reassured his colleagues that the Wrights had only a “momentary superiority.” Charles and Gabriel Voisin refused to credit the Wrights with even that much. “Where was aviation born?” they asked in a joint letter to
Le Matin
, “
IN FRANCE
.” “Without wishing to diminish at all the merit of the aviators of Dayton, we permit ourselves to make the observation that French aviation was not born uniquely by their experiments; and that if we have derived some information—moreover very little—from their tests, they have also profited from French genius in large measure.”
²²

Voisin had entered the field, built machines, and taught himself to fly, all the while convinced that the Wrights were perpetrating a hoax. A proud man with an enormous ego, he could not admit that his work, the very appearance of his machine, had been shaped by what he knew of the Wright technology. To the end of his life—he died at the age of ninety-three in 1973—he would refuse to accept that Wilbur and Orville had laid the foundation of French aeronautics.

But such criticism was scarcely noticed outside limited aeronautical circles. After years of relative obscurity, the Wrights were swept along on a wave of popular acclaim that drowned out any dissent.

Life would never be the same for the brothers after the week at Les Hunaudières. Orville had not flown publicly yet, but already they had achieved a level of international celebrity so incredible that there has not been anything quite like it since. Wilbur and Orville seemed to have accomplished nothing less than a miracle.

Even in an age that has come to regard journeys to the moon and robot exploration of the planets as commonplace, flight continues to inspire the same sense of awe and power that it did when the airplane was new. Aviation, that most hard-edged of technologies, has somehow retained a component of the magic that was so apparent to the first witnesses who saw Will fly at Les Hunaudières.

The psychological impact was stunning. If man could fly, was any goal beyond his reach? That was the one great lesson of Hunaudières—and of the flights that would follow in the summer and fall of 1908.

Having captured the attention of the world during a single week in August, Wilbur paused and shifted his operations to a larger, more suitable field known as Camp d’Auvours, eleven kilometers east of Le Mans. An artillery testing ground, it had been his first choice. Les Hunaudières, surrounded by trees, a grandstand, and other obstacles,
was resorted to only when French military authorities rejected his request. Now, in the glare of publicity, the Army relented.

He made his first flight there on August 21. The atmosphere was incredible, and the crowds so large that Hart Berg and the local military commander were forced to introduce a ticket system. Wilbur was in the air day after day, breaking the few records that had been set by the French and proving his mastery to one and all.

The members of the new French syndicate were now anxious that he continue to fly in France, generating publicity to spur the sale of the Wright Flyer to governments and wealthy private individuals. Orville would have to undertake the Army trials on his own. Wilbur warned his brother to prepare for some difficulty in mastering the upright controls—“I have not yet learned to operate the handles without blunders,” he admitted on August 15, “but I can easily make turns of three hundred feet in diameter.” He advised Orv to “be awfully careful in beginning practice and go slowly.”
²³

O
rville arrived at Fort Myer on August 20, 1908. The two Charlies, Furnas and Taylor, were already there, supervising the transfer of the crated flying machine from the railroad station in Arlington to the large balloon hangar on the post where it would be assembled. Orville initially registered at the St. James Hotel in Washington, but was quickly moved by Albert Zahm into more prestigious quarters at the Cosmos Club.

Zahm, an old friend of Chanute’s, had played a key role in organizing the great aeronautical conference at the World’s Columbian Exposition fifteen years before. Now he taught physics at Catholic University, where he was conducting studies of airship-hull resistance with a large wind tunnel. A man who regarded himself as a mover and shaker in official scientific circles, Zahm assumed that Orville would enjoy the limelight.

Orville found life at the Cosmos Club “more pleasant … than I expected.” He met “stacks of prominent people,” eager to shake his hand and offer assistance. The newspapers, ever alert to a whiff of romance, called attention to the society belles who flocked around him. He handled the situation with a light touch, admitting to Katharine that he was “meeting some very handsome young ladies,” yet he would “have an awful time to think of their names if I meet them again.”
¹

But Orville was never comfortable as the center of attention. Wilbur knew how difficult life could be for a celebrity, and worried that
all the attention might distract his brother. “I fear he will have trouble with over-attention from reporters, visitors … &c,” he told Milton. “It is an awful nuisance to be disturbed when there is experimenting and practicing to be done. I am treated with wonderful kindness … but too much time is wasted and nervous energy expended.”
²

Indeed, Orville complained to Katharine on August 27: “The trouble here is that you can’t find a minute to be alone. I haven’t done a lick of work since I have been here. I have to give my time to answering the ten thousand fool questions people ask about the machine. There are a number of people standing about the whole day long.” The strain was beginning to tell, as it had on Wilbur the month before. The closing line of that letter was of particular concern to a worried sister and father. “I have trouble in getting enough sleep.”
³

The process of unpacking and assembling the machine proceeded much more smoothly than it had for Wilbur. “The goods came through in perfect shape,” Orv told him with obvious satisfaction. “They were packed exactly as were the goods sent to Europe. Our trouble there is with the customhouse tearing everything loose and not fastening them again.”
⁴

While the mechanics uncrated the airplane and laid out the parts, Orville plotted the course for the required cross-country demonstration flights. Taking off from the parade ground, he would fly five miles to Alexandria, make a turn, and retrace his course to Fort Myer. There would be “quite a number of good landing places, though there is one large forest … over a mile wide in which there are no breaks whatever.” He would also have to cross three deep ravines, but most of the route was over open land where he could set down in an emergency.
⁵

The next task was to meet with the five officers who composed “the committee which will pass upon the trials.” He already knew two of the men, Lieutenant Lahm and Major George Squier, the executive officer to the Chief of the Signal Corps. Squier had prepared the advertisement for bids and would now serve as president of the board. Captain Charles S. Wallace was an unknown quantity.

The same could not be said for Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, whose presence as a member of the AEA made both of the Wrights very nervous. Predictably, the lowest-ranking member of the board, Lieutenant Benjamin Delahauf Foulois, became a particular favorite of Orville’s. His avid interest in aeronautics, as evidenced by a Signal School thesis entitled “The Tactical and Strategical Value of Dirigible
Balloons and Aerodynamical Flying Machines,” and his light weight (130 pounds, soaking wet) marked him as a prime candidate for pilot training.
⁶

The Wright trials would cap a full summer for the members of the board, who had already served as the official acceptance panel for the Baldwin airship SC-1. Baldwin and Curtiss arrived on the post with their machine on July 20 and were flying by August 4.

Baldwin’s contract required his airship to average 20 miles per hour over a measured course, with a system of bonuses and penalties for exceeding or failing to achieve that speed. Baldwin stood at the rear of the machine manipulating the rudder; Curtiss rode up front, manning the elevator control and monitoring the engine. The speed trial came on August 14, when the two men set out for Cherrydale, a little over four miles away. They covered the course at an average speed of 19.61 miles per hour. That .039 difference resulted in a 15 percent penalty deducted from the bid price of $6,750.
⁷

Baldwin and Curtiss were also required to train three Army officers—Lahm, Selfridge, and Foulois—to fly the airship. Foulois was the first. The young lieutenant thought the flight “thrilling beyond words.” It lasted only about ten minutes, and Foulois was kept too busy reacting to Baldwin’s commands to worry about being aloft

Between flights, Foulois had ample opportunity to observe Orville Wright. It seemed to Foulois that he and his mechanics lived in a world of their own. “They paid no attention to anyone else,” he recalled, “and shrugged off all questions from onlookers. They talked only to each other, as though they were on a desert island miles from civilization.”
⁹

Concentration was needed—the engine refused to run up to speed. The Wright contract with the Army had established a basic purchase price of $25,000 providing the machine was able to maintain an average speed of 40 miles per hour during the tests. There would be a bonus of $2,500 for each additional mile per hour, and a similar penalty
for each mile per hour less. The engine had to perform without a miss. Some higher octane gasoline, a set of new oil cups, and a bit of tinkering with the magneto solved the problems.