The Wright Brothers

by David McCullough

  At the close of one long day at Le Mans, Peyrey had caught Wilbur gazing off into the distance as if in a daydream. It reminded him, Peyrey wrote, “of those monks in Asia Minor lost in monasteries perched on inaccessible mountain peaks. . . . What was he thinking of this evening while the sun was dying in the apricot sky?”

  On Thursday, August 13, Wilbur flew again, this time circling the field several times. It was his longest flight yet at Le Mans and before the biggest crowd, which cheered every round he made. So loud was the cheering that he flew to nearly 100 feet in the air, in part to lessen the distracting effect of the noise.

  He was trying to master the use of the control levers and after one turn he found himself flying too low. To compensate he made a “blunder,” as he would later explain to Orville. He pushed the left lever forward instead of back and the left wing hit the ground. It was, he acknowledged, “a pretty bad smash-up.” He himself, however, had been uninjured.

  The admiration of the crowd diminished not at all. Those who knew the most about the art of flying were more impressed than ever. One French aircraft designer told a reporter for the New York Herald, “Mr. Wright is as superb in his accidents as he is in his flights.”

  Wilbur could scarcely believe the change that had come over nearly everyone—the press, the public, the French aviators and aircraft builders. “All question as to who originated the flying machine has disappeared,” he wrote Katharine. The popular “furor” could be irksome at times, to be sure. “I cannot even take a bath without having a hundred or two people peeking at me. Fortunately everyone seems to be filled with a spirit of friendliness.”

  A new song, “Il Vole” (“He Flies”), had become a popular hit. Also, much to Wilbur’s liking, a stray dog had been added to his camp life by Hart Berg and christened “Flyer.”

  Much of the feeling back in Dayton was expressed in a wholehearted home-town tribute published in the Dayton Herald. All were extremely proud of the brothers, declared the paper, and not because that was the fashion of the moment, but because of “their grit, because of their persistence, because of their loyalty to conviction, because of their indefatigable industry, because of their hopefulness and above all, because of their sterling American quality of compelling success.”

  A letter from Katharine assured Wilbur that the whole family was thrilled by the news from Le Mans, but that thrilled and proud as they were, their minds were greatly on edge over young Milton, Lorin’s fifteen-year-old son, who had been stricken by typhoid fever and was in a struggle for his life. “How many, many times have we wished for Jullum, since Milton has been sick,” she wrote. “Of course we were ‘de-lighted’ over your flight . . . but we can’t half enjoy anything now. . . . If we weren’t so poor—we’d cable congratulations!”

  A week later she could happily report that Milton was out of danger and the Dayton papers were still going wild over the news from Le Mans. They were even proposing a big “welcome home.”

  With the demonstrations at a standstill momentarily until repairs were made, Wilbur had more time to appreciate those around him and enjoy the attention they were giving him. A local manufacturer of canned goods was providing “all kinds of the finest sardines, anchovies, asparagus, etc., etc., you ever saw,” he reported to his father.

  The people of Le Mans are exceedingly friendly and proud of the fame it [the experiments] is giving their town. I am in receipt of bouquets, baskets of fruit, etc., almost without number. The men down at Bollée’s shop have taken up a collection to buy me a testimonial of their appreciation. They say that I, too, am a workman.

  When the French army offered Wilbur a larger field for his demonstrations, he accepted and so the Flyer, its damages fully repaired, was moved seven miles east to Camp d’Auvours. “The new grounds are much larger and much safer than the old,” he reported home. “I can go four miles in a straight line without crossing anything worse than bushes.” He resumed flying at d’Auvours on August 21 and the crowds arriving by special trains grew larger by the day, the “excitement almost beyond comprehension.”

  Though Camp d’Auvours was “lost in the middle of the woods,” as said and less convenient to town than the racecourse of Hunaudières, the crowds came in numbers greater than ever. “They flock from miles,” their “curiosity too strong,” reported Le Figaro, only to find that Wilbur, for some reason or other, was not flying that day. “Never mind,” was the response. “We’ll come back.” It was almost as though the less he flew the greater the curiosity of the crowd.

  The public is of an untiring and admirable patience. It waits for hours on end to see nothing . . . but the famous launching pylon. . . . When it is late and they know that Wright won’t fly . . . these good people gather at the foot of the pylon, measure it with their eyes, touch it, because they know what they will have to do tomorrow: come back.

  Brother Orville was much on Wilbur’s mind, for by then Orville had gone to Washington to begin preparing for the flights he was to make at Fort Myer, Virginia. Earlier, in midsummer, as Wilbur had been about to proceed with his demonstrations for the French, he had received a letter from his father urging him to “avoid all unnecessary personal risk.” Now Wilbur sent off much the same kind of warning to Orville, as older brother but also as one who had now experienced a number of turns onstage before enormous crowds and an ever-eager, ever-demanding press.

  I tell them plainly that I intend for the present to experiment only under the most favorable conditions. . . . I advise you most earnestly to stick to calms, till after you are sure of yourself. Don’t go out even for all the officers of the government unless you would go equally if they were absent. Do not let yourself be forced into doing anything before you are ready. Be very cautious and proceed slowly in attempting flights in the middle of the day when wind gusts are frequent. . . . Do not let people talk to you all day and all night. It will wear you out, before you are ready for real business. Courtesy has limits. If necessary appoint some hour in the daytime and refuse absolutely to receive visitors even for a minute at other times. Do not receive anyone after 8 o’clock at night.

  Then, after some technical discussion about the rudder, he wrote again. “I can only say be extraordinarily cautious.”

  On the evening of August 25 in Le Mans, a celebration banquet in Wilbur’s honor took place at the Hôtel du Dauphin. This time he was happy to join in the festivities.

  Part III

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Crash

  [He] rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road. Nothing I have ever seen is comparable.

  GUTZON BORGLUM

  I.

  With her young nephew Milton much improved in health and her classes at the high school soon to resume, Katharine was feeling more herself. Orville was in Washington preparing for the demonstrations at Fort Myer, staying at the elegant Cosmos Club and meeting “stacks of prominent people.” And hardly a day passed without something in the papers about the continuing clamor over Wilbur in France.

  Both brothers wrote when they had time, but Katharine longed for more than just aviation talk. “Suppose you tell me about a few things when you write!” she admonished Wilbur in one letter. “What do I care about the position of the trees on the practice ground? Hey! Hey! Sterchens wants to hear all about the beautiful young ladies and the flowers and champagne!”

  Wilbur would go only so far as to tell her Mrs. Berg was a “very smart” and “charming woman, like yourself.”

  Orville said he could hardly get any work done, so much time was taken up “answering the ten thousand fool questions people ask me about the machine.” A Washington Post reporter noted with amazement how “Mr. Wright stood and talked and talked and talked to his questioners.” Still, with it all, Orville was frank to tell Katharine, “I am meeting some very handsome young ladies!” The trouble was if he were to meet them again, he would have a hard time remembering their names.

  “I don’t know when Pop has been in
such good health,” she was happy to report to Wilbur. “Now, if you and Orville don’t do some wild things to get me crazy, I think I’ll weather the thing through.”

  Fort Myer occupied a stretch of high ground on the Virginia side of the Potomac River, just west of Arlington National Cemetery. With its neatly arranged, handsome red-brick buildings, it looked not unlike an attractive college campus, and offered a panoramic view of Washington five miles in the distance. At the center was the parade ground, measuring approximately 1,000 feet by 700 feet, and there Orville was to perform his test flights.

  It was a space smaller even than what Wilbur had to work with at Les Hunaudières, but with it came an ample shed for a hangar and a dozen army men ready to assist. To get there from the city he traveled back and forth by streetcar.

  After several days of trouble with the motor, and with help from Charlie Taylor and Charlie Furnas, both of whom had come from Dayton, he had all in order as scheduled. It would be the first full-scale public performance of a Wright plane in the United States, and the machine Orville was to take into the air had never been flown until now.

  Not until late in the afternoon of September 3 was it wheeled into place. That Orville was extremely on edge was plainly evident. “For the first time since his arrival in this city,” wrote a reporter for the New York Times, “Mr. Wright betrayed obvious signs of nervousness. The lines on his face seemed deeper than ever, and there was a furtiveness and an uneasiness of manner which was noticeable to everyone. He seemed to be making a tremendous effort to control himself.”

  He could hardly hold still. One minute he would be up on a sawhorse examining the upper wing, the next, down on his hands and knees helping adjust the starting mechanism. “That man’s nerves are pretty near the jumping off place,” another correspondent was heard to say.

  The crowd on hand was small. Washington had yet to catch on to what was happening at Fort Myer. At last, at about six o’clock, Orville climbed into his seat, the motor was started, and the big propellers were “cutting the air at a frightful rate,” when he called out, “Let her go!”

  The weights of the catapult dropped, the plane shot down the rail, but then for 50 feet or more it skimmed barely above the grass before lifting into the air. Everyone was shouting.

  At the lower end of the drill field, Orville banked, turned, and started back, the white canvas of the double wings standing out sharply against the dark border of trees at the edge of Arlington Cemetery.

  The crowd broke into a “frenzy of enthusiasm” as the plane circled overhead at about 35 feet and headed away down the field again. Suddenly it veered off toward the wooden hangar, descended at an abrupt angle and hit the ground.

  The crowd rushed forward to find Orville calmly brushing the dust from his clothes. “It shows I need a great deal of practice,” he said.

  By his estimate he had flown somewhat less than a mile at a speed of about 40 miles per hour. According to their contract with the army, the brothers were to receive $25,000 if the Flyer achieved 40 miles per hour in its speed test.

  The day after, Friday, September 4, Orville and the Flyer remained in the air more than four minutes, circling the parade ground five and a half times under perfect control, covering three miles with no mishap. Major George Squier, president of the board in charge of the tests, thought the flight “splendid.” The Flyer “seemed to respond perfectly to your every touch, and that landing was a marvel,” he told Orville. Other officers were calling it the most wonderful exhibition they had ever seen.

  In the days that followed, Orville provided one sensational performance after another, breaking one world record after another. As never before the two “bicycle mechanics” and their flying machines were causing simultaneous sensations on both sides of the Atlantic. They had become a transcontinental two-ring circus. Only now it was the younger, lesser known of the two whose turn had come to steal the show.

  Early the morning of Wednesday, September 9, with relatively few spectators present, Orville circled the Fort Myer parade ground 57 times, remaining in the air not quite an hour. When word reached Washington that he might fly again that afternoon, offices were closed and a thousand or more government officials—members of the cabinet, department heads, embassy personnel, members of Congress—came pouring across the Potomac by automobile and trolley to see for themselves.

  “At 5:15, as the sun was disappearing below the Virginia horizon,” wrote the Dayton Journal correspondent on the scene, “the latest invention of man to change the laws of nature, rose grandly into space and sailed over the drill grounds.

  Higher and higher it rose, turned at a slight angle as the aviator brought it round the far side of the field, and raced along at increasing speed. . . . Round after round the machine traveled on cutting short turns, shooting along the stretch and presented somewhat the appearance of an automobile racing about an imaginary course in the air.

  He had flown around the circle 55 times and was in the air altogether an hour and three minutes, another new world record. At home in Dayton the Herald called it “the most marvelous feat in aviation yet recorded.”

  The next day, September 10, against a stiff wind, Orville stayed in the air longer still by several minutes.

  Worried that Orville might be losing count of the number of times he had circled the field, Charlie Taylor climbed on top of the Flyer’s shed with a pot of white paint and a brush and began marking off the times on the tar paper roof in figures big enough for Orville to see. As the numbers 50 and 55 appeared, the excitement of the crowd became “acute.” Charlie began signaling with his arms. Not until after dusk, upon completing 571/2 circles, did Orville start back down to earth.

  Swooping in for a landing, the plane headed straight in the direction of the crowd, but then, sending up a cloud of dust as its skids hit the ground, came to a stop not more than 20 feet short of the crowd.

  One of those watching that day was the noted sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who was later to carve the faces on Mount Rushmore. When he first saw Orville’s plane sitting on the ground, he had not been particularly impressed. It looked to him like something any boy might build, not at all how he had imagined a flying machine. But then Orville had taken off. “He could fly as he wished, move as he willed.

  [He] rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road. Nothing I have ever seen is comparable. . . . There is no action of the wings, so you do not think of birds. It has life, power.

  And yet it was so simple, Borglum wrote, that one wondered why in the world human beings had not built one long before.

  Automobile horns were honking, people cheering, as Orville stepped from his seat. At the same time he was handed a letter from Wilbur. Orville smiled. It was the first letter he had received from his brother in two weeks, he said, and it seemed to please him quite as much as the triumphant flight he had just made.

  He had been in the air nearly an hour and six minutes, a new world record.

  To the crowd that quickly surrounded him he seemed “the coolest man around and entirely free from nervousness.” Nor did he show any sign of fatigue. Indeed, seeing Lieutenant Frank Lahm, one of the committee that would pass on the trials, standing nearby, Orville asked if he would like to go up while there was still some light left. So the two took off for a brief ride just as a full September moon was rising.

  The day after Orville set yet another record with a flight of an hour and 10 minutes, during which he thrilled the crowd with two figure eights. He tried one maneuver after another, as if he were an acrobat performing, at times turning corners so sharply that the plane seemed nearly on edge.

  He dipped down low to earth [wrote a reporter for the New York Herald]. He skimmed it at twice a man’s height. He rose steadily and gracefully until 150 feet of space lay between him and the ground. . . . He all but brushed the trees in Arlington Cemetery. He tried every combination of the levers and planes in his run of 58 turns around the field. There was never a misfire of
the engine and never a symptom of distress.

  On Saturday the 12th, five thousand people encircled the parade grounds. As they had never been able to do until now the American people were seeing with their own eyes one of their country’s greatest inventions in action. Among those who rushed to congratulate Orville was Octave Chanute, who, a bit out of breath, exclaimed, “Good for you, my boy!,” then asked him how it felt to be making history. “Pretty good,” Orville said, “but I’m more interested in making speed.” The remark made more headlines back in Dayton.

  It had not gone unnoticed that the secretary of war was another of those who had come to see the demonstrations, and future weapons of war were very much on the minds of the officers at Fort Myer and figured prominently in their conversations. Buoyant with his successes, Orville would write to Wilbur, “Everyone here is very enthusiastic and they all think the machine is going to be of great importance in warfare.”

  A new book by the popular British novelist H. G. Wells featured a terrifying illustration of New York City in flames after an aerial bombing. “No place is safe—no place is at peace,” wrote Wells. “The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see the air fleets passing overhead—dripping death, dripping death!”

  Until now the brothers had spent little time dwelling on such possibilities, not at least to judge by how very little they wrote or had to say on the subject.

  The excitement at home in Dayton was like nothing in memory, and at 7 Hawthorn Street especially, as Katharine recorded in a long Sunday letter to Wilbur.

  Orv telegraphed after he made his long flight Wednesday morning. . . . Our telephone rang steadily all evening. Everybody wanted to say something nice. I finally got to bed and had just dozed off when I was startled by the ringing of our doorbell. . . . I bounced out and was half way down the stairs when I realized what I was doing. I saw a man standing at our front door so I went up to the keyhole and said, “What is it?” “I am from the Journal and I would like to speak to Mr. Wright. I have a telegram which I think would interest him.” It scared me just a little because he acted as if he didn’t want to tell me. I demanded, “What is your telegram?” He said that the Journal had a telegram saying that Orville Wright had made a record breaking flight. When he got that far I discovered that he was the young idiot who had been out here once before to write up Pop and hadn’t returned a picture that Netta loaned him. So I said, “You can’t see father. He’s too old to be called up at such an hour as this. We knew about that before noon today.” Now the joke is that he had some news—the second long flight—and I wouldn’t wait until he could tell it. I departed for bed and heard him talking through the crack in the door—until I was on the stairs. The next morning I found the picture which he had borrowed, sticking in the front door screen. . . . Maybe I wasn’t wrathy at being waked up at that hour of the night! I didn’t sleep again until after one.