Birdmen

by Lawrence Goldstone

  After the decision Beachey remained a Curtiss loyalist only briefly. Soon after his request to the Smithsonian to rehabilitate the Langley aerodrome, Beachey began to distance himself. In February, when Lieutenant Henry Post was killed because a wing on his Wright C crumpled, Beachey was lacerating in his criticism but directed his wrath at the government for using “old equipment” that would “probably be patched up with a few new wires and some cloth,” not at the Wright Company for selling the army a machine that could not be flown safely.

  In March, Beachey broke with Curtiss entirely. He announced that from then on he would fly machines that he built himself, and then he sailed for Europe to purchase two motors and study the newest designs in aircraft. One design that would intrigue him was the speedy new Morane–Saulnier monoplane, which Roland Garros was flying to great acclaim in exhibitions.

  Before he left, he became the first exhibition flyer to apply for a Wright license. “I was astonished at the liberality of Orville Wright,” he said as he embarked on the Carmania. “I was offered the very reasonable terms of $25 per day royalty for exhibition flights where admission fees are charged and $1,000 for each machine I build. The control of the situation by the Wrights means the end of the old hoodoo days of high death rates and an abundant crop of accident stories.”4 In fact, given the performance of the Wright C, it would likely mean just the opposite.

  During the same interview, Beachey expressed skepticism about Curtiss’s transatlantic flight. “I am really sorry to see schemes flaunted before the public that are on their face absurd and impossible.” Orville could not have said it better. Curtiss, who once again exhibited stunning social tone-deafness, replied in a letter to Beachey that he must have been misquoted, because “I cannot think of any reason why you should ‘knock’ our transatlantic scheme.”5

  When Beachey returned from Europe at the end of April, he was more popular than ever. For the remainder of the year, he toured the nation, visiting cities and towns, regularly playing to crowds of fifty thousand or more. He flew his own Gnôme-powered biplane with BEACHEY painted across the top of the wings, readily visible to spectators when he flew upside down or in a loop. But he also introduced tricks such as the “tail slide,” where he cut his engine and actually descended one thousand feet backward before starting it up and heading forward again. At New York’s Brighton Beach, during a race with Barney Oldfield, Beachey “turned somersaults, dropped thousands of feet, flew upside down, and floundered about in the clear air until the spectators were dizzy.”6 He flew inside loops, outside loops, added spirals, corkscrews, and rolls. Unlike before his retirement, he had no challengers; no one thought to emulate Beachey’s preternatural control of an invention only ten years old. For the remainder of 1914, it is quite possible that Lincoln Beachey did the finest flying the world has ever seen.

  But as great as Beachey’s show was, it wasn’t the only one. By June it appeared that Curtiss’s America was not an absurd notion at all but was actually prepared to undertake the transatlantic flight.

  The craft itself was a stunning feat of engineering, with a span of 72 feet on the top wing and 46 on the bottom, a total of 500 square feet of wing surface. Front to back, the America was 32 feet, fashioned of white cedar, and weighed 2½ tons, 690 pounds of which were two 100-horsepower engines fed by tanks that could hold 1,500 gallons of fuel. A third motor was added in July for added lift. The hull contained four watertight compartments and the skin was varnished Japanese silk painted brilliant red to be visible at sea. A foot pedal operated the ailerons, which were fitted with the locking device to ensure that they operated upward only, another way to circumvent the Wright patent.

  The America was christened at Hammondsport on June 22 with a bottle of champagne that for a time refused to break, and a successful test was run the next day. Tests continued through July, and although many bugs were found and many refinements were made, the basic design seemed sound. Lieutenant Porte pronounced the America the “finest flying craft I ever sat in” and both Curtiss and Rodman Wanamaker expressed confidence in a successful outcome.

  John Cyril Porte, George Hallett, Glenn Curtiss, and Katherine Masson at the launch of America.

  Beachey remained critical. In June, while in the hospital after a crash in Hartford, Connecticut, caused by a stall in the Gnôme, “propped up on pillows,” he expressed his doubts. “I came over on the Lusitania with Porte and he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about the flight.… It looks like a risky business to me. Lieutenant Porte should be training for the dash. He should be taking short trips every day. It will be a great strain on him and his assistant to run the engine for twenty-four hours.” Beachey added that by flying the Langley aerodrome, Curtiss had not improved his chances of overturning the Wright patent victory.7

  In July, with the America in the final stages of preparedness, a group of aviation experts, including Beachey, Charles Manly, Grover Loening, Elmer Sperry, Thomas Baldwin, and Robert Peary, were asked if they thought the flying boat would make it. Beachey reiterated that transatlantic air travel remained “unfeasible,” but Elmer Sperry thought the flight might well be a success, as did, of all people, Grover Loening. Alan Hawley, president of the Aero Club, was certain that if the America didn’t succeed, the next Curtiss machine would. Peary agreed. Baldwin rated the chances at even money, and Manly thought only “bad luck” would cause a failure. Conspicuous by his absence among the luminaries was Orville Wright.8

  But in August 1914, when the flight had been scheduled, Europe was no longer concerned with breaking distance records. John Cyril Porte had been mobilized, as had many of the flyers who had stunned the world in exhibitions. Many would not survive. The question of whether Glenn Curtiss had built an aircraft capable of spanning the Atlantic, along with the plans of millions of others, would have to be postponed.

  * * *

  *1 Airplanes were so plentiful in France by that time that no one cared at all that Pégoud let the driverless craft crash and be smashed to bits.

  *2 Aviators no longer fell out of aircraft. Seat belts and shoulder restraints had become standard for any sort of serious flying.

  The Death of Innocence

  Initially, the war in Europe had remarkably little impact on American aviation. Although it was apparent from the early days of the fighting that airplanes would play a key role in reconnaissance and even in combat, there was only a faint stir in Congress to increase appropriations. The general sentiment was that fortress America need not worry about a conflict that could never reach American shores.

  Between those shores, as giant armies settled into trenches across the Atlantic to begin the greatest war of attrition in history, Orville Wright continued his quixotic pursuit of final victory in court, Glenn Curtiss continued to experiment and innovate, and Lincoln Beachey continued his grand tour of America. In San Francisco, plans for a world’s fair beginning in February 1915 continued even though much of the world would not be able to attend.

  The city had begun preparations for the event, fortuitously dubbed the “Panama–Pacific International Exposition,” in 1911, only five years removed from the great earthquake, when President Taft had proclaimed San Francisco the host for a celebration of the completion of the Panama Canal and the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean. The exposition was considered vital to the city’s rebirth and the organizers spared no expense in creating the most opulent, irresistible event of its kind in history.

  The Panama–Pacific would occupy 635 acres and be filled with enough modern marvels to leave even the most sophisticated adult goggle-eyed. At the east end of the grounds was “the Zone,” sixty-five acres filled with rides, games, food from around the world, concessions, performers, and exhibits, including replicas of Yellowstone Park and the Grand Canyon—to scale, of course—and a five-acre working model of the Panama Canal. The actual Liberty Bell was on display, on loan from Philadelphia, and the news of the day was churned out automatically on an immense Underwoo
d typewriter. States, counties, and industrial firms exhibited their wares and their wonders. There was a “Street of Fun,” hula dancers, midgets, a railway, a submarine ride, and a compartment on a swing arm that sent those inside swinging to and fro over the grounds.

  At the Palace of Transportation, the Ford Motor Company would set up an assembly line that turned out an automobile every ten minutes for three hours every afternoon except Sunday. More than four thousand cars would be produced during the fair’s ten months. A wood and steel building called the Palace of Machinery was more than three hundred yards long, one hundred yards wide, and forty yards high. The entire complement of United States army and navy personnel could have stood at attention under its roof. Mabel Normand and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, two major stars of the silent screen, would be filmed touring the fair by the Keystone Film Company.

  The effect on visitors would be electric, literally as well as figuratively. The General Electric Illuminating Engineering Laboratory was engaged to put on perhaps the greatest display of lighting ever seen. William D’Arcy Ryan, the director, who had previously lit Niagara Falls to a brilliance of 1,115,000,000 candles, would outdo himself in San Francisco. One historian later wrote, “When he presented his plans before the architects, designers, and color artists who were involved in preparation for the Exposition, his proposals seemed so fantastic that there was scarcely a detail which was not opposed.” The centerpiece of Ryan’s plan was a forty-three-story “Tower of Jewels,” which would be decorated with more than one hundred thousand pieces of polished stained-glass “novogems,” imported from Vienna, strung on wires, each backed by a tiny mirror. Twenty colored spotlights, hidden from spectators’ view, would illuminate the tower each night. Edwin Markham, a local poet, would announce after seeing the General Electric display, “I have tonight seen the greatest revelation of beauty that was ever seen on the earth.”

  No event of this kind, the organizers knew, would be complete without an air show. In the spirit of the event, the organizers wanted something bigger and more astounding than any air meet ever held and struck on the idea of a round-the-world race to be held under the fair’s auspices. An international commission would be appointed, with representatives from Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and British Columbia. First in line to express interest in participating was native son Lincoln Beachey, who was never asked how he could fly around the world without crossing the unfeasible Atlantic. To give potential customers a sense of what might be to come, in January 1914 Beachey flew through the entrance of the unfinished Palace of Machinery, circled, and then flew out again, the first and only indoor flight in history. “All I yearn for now is to fly underground,” he said afterward.1

  The coming of war put an end to the round-the-world race; the next idea was for a race across the country, but that could not be arranged, either. Finally, the organizers settled on a spectacular air show, which Beachey eagerly agreed to headline. In addition to watching Beachey’s aerobatics, for fifty cents a fair visitor would be able to ride in a tractor biplane, sitting behind the propeller while the pilot soared, dipped, and banked over the Pacific Ocean.

  In the meantime, Beachey continued his spectacular run. In late September, “solely to impress Washington with the possibilities of flight,” Beachey gave a stunning exhibition over the capital that was witnessed by President Woodrow Wilson and many members of Congress.

  Curtiss’s America, now again called simply the H-1, was not totally abandoned with the coming of war. At Porte’s behest, the British navy purchased both models of the H-1 and eventually employed them with great success in submarine detection. The design became standard and is credited with sparking the development of the British flying-boat industry.

  The emigration of the America to Britain did not decrease Orville’s interest. On January 5, 1915, he wrote to Griffith Brewer and asked him to check on rumors that the flying boat’s ailerons were actually being operated in violation of the court’s edict. “I have been told (but cannot remember who told me) that the America, while at Hammondsport, had all of the cables and pulleys necessary to operate the ailerons simultaneously and in opposite directions as they were used in earlier Curtiss machines, but the cables to the underside of the flaps were disconnected.” Orville asked Brewer to try to see the craft for himself and inspect it to check the cable work. Brewer replied “that it would be impossible to obtain the information as to the construction and arrangement of the two machines sold to the British Navy, because owing to the state of war and to the machines being owned by the War Department, the mere enquiry as to the construction of the machines owned by the government might be regarded as a criminal act.”

  Orville pressed on, giving depositions and writing the occasional article, but more and more he slipped into the background as the industry moved forward in the face of the European war. The Wright Company’s advertisements in trade journals shrunk to a quarter page, were buried in the interior, and sported bland, understated copy. The text of one simply explained that “the new Wright aeroplanes … now embody the improvements that have been suggested by the experiments quietly conducted during the past ten years.”2 Curtiss’s ads, in contrast, were full-page, in large font, and were often on the cover or just inside.

  The war took an immediate toll on aviators who just months before had flown together as friends. Roland Garros was reported killed when he flew “headfirst into a German airship.” The report would prove false, but Garros would die in 1918, shot down just one month before the war ended. Adolphe Pégoud would die in combat as well, killed by a former student who afterward flew over the French lines and dropped a wreath.

  The Wright Company had no machine capable of impacting the war in the skies but in September 1914, Curtiss introduced his “Model J” tractor biplane, the forerunner of JN-4, the “Jenny,” one of the most successful airplanes in history.*

  One year earlier, on the same European trip that he had first met John Porte, Curtiss had visited Tom Sopwith’s factory. The two shared a mutual antipathy of the Wrights and both had been flyers who had turned to design and manufacture. Sopwith was building tractors, which would soon be the only design the army would accept. Curtiss and Sopwith exchanged ideas and Curtiss, with Sopwith’s blessing, hired B. Douglas Thomas to join his company as a designer. Unlike either of the Wrights, Curtiss understood that he could not be his company’s sole designer in perpetuity.

  Thomas designed both the J and its more powerful cousin, the N. Curtiss took the best features of each and designed the “JN,” the fourth incarnation of which was the Jenny, which was rolled out in 1916. From the first, the Jenny series was used almost exclusively as a trainer and was the airplane in which 95 percent of American pilots in the war years learned to fly.

  But in early 1915, Americans remained blissfully ignorant that its native sons would ever need to fly in anger in Europe’s war, and as the moment approached for the opening of the Panama–Pacific Exposition, millions planned to visit the fair’s wonders. On February 20, President Wilson threw a switch in Washington, D.C., and the fair was officially under way. Beachey flew over the midway, causing the entire throng of opening-day visitors to crane their necks to watch. Four days later, Beachey performed his thousandth loop, as well as “two entirely new and death defying stunts,” while his mother watched 435 feet up at the top of the Tower of Jewels. She “cried out only once,” when Beachey wrote “1000” a mile up in the sky.

  Amy Beachey atop the Tower of Jewels, watching her son fly.

  With all the stunning exhibits, Beachey remained the unquestioned star of the fair. It became almost impossible for him to outdo himself. On March 14, he decided to try. Fifty thousand people crammed into the grandstand or jostled for position along the railing. As many as two hundred thousand more crowded along the bay front outside the fairgrounds. They had come to see Beachey for the first time attempt the Dip of Death in a monoplane.

  Beachey had used the Morane–Saulnier design, powered with a
n 80-horsepower Gnôme motor that would allow the airplane to reach 100 miles per hour. To make the machine light and strong, he used aluminum in the body and wings, and instead of struts, Beachey’s airfoils would be braced by a series of support wires from the top and bottom of the fuselage to the wing surface.

  Beachey made three flights that March 14. The first ended prematurely when he had to land and retune the engine. In the second, according to a correspondent for Aeronautics, “He shot straight up into the air, climbing to about 5,000 feet before leveling off. He made a trip over San Francisco, then turned around and crossed the bay to Sausalito, after which he made three or four excellent loops, and glided down to the Grounds at a slow angle and landed safely. The monoplane was a beautiful sight in the air, having graceful lines, and very fast.” Thirty minutes later, “Beachey went up approximately 4,000 feet, made several loops, and then circled up until he had gained approximately 5,000 or 6,000 feet altitude, made another loop and then started for the ground perpendicularly.”3

  The dive was perfect. But while aluminum’s weight-to-strength ratio is greater than steel in withstanding pressure, it is also highly ductile, which means it folds easily. “When Beachey started to level out, approximately 500 feet from the ground, one wing simply folded straight back and exploded like a prefire of the motor. It was not long before the other did the same thing.” Helpless, Beachey plunged into San Francisco Bay.