The Chinese invented the airscrew (propeller) over 2,400 years ago but used it solely as a toy that could fly up to fifty feet into the air.
Airlines advertised the wonderful views from airplanes (remember that few people had seen the world from any great height before) and used slogans like “Good night, New York…Good morning, California!” However, airplanes were still not pressurized, which meant they could not fly above the clouds or above stormy and turbulent weather. It wasn’t until 1938, when Boeing introduced the pressurized 307 Stratoliner that passenger flight evolved from being tolerable to being pleasant. Soon after, however, World War II turned the world’s aviation industries once again toward the advanced needs of the military. By the end of the war the Boeing 307 was obsolete, as the world had caught its first glimpse of a new propulsion system: The jet engine.
The Jet Age (1940–)
When Frank Whittle invented the jet engine in England during the late 1920s, few people thought it would ever amount to anything. However, Whittle’s ideas were finally validated in the summer of 1944, when the first fighter jets flew into service. The jets were faster than anything else in the sky, and they quickly shot down dozens of aircraft. Unfortunately, the jets were the Messerschmitt Me262, and they were flown by the German Luftwaffe against the Allied forces. Fortunately, the Nazis’ jets came too late to change the course of the war.
Year Fastest Airplane Longest Nonstop Flight Number of Licensed Pilots in the United States
* * *
1919 164 mph (264 km/hr) 1,936 miles (3,115 km) 3,544
1939 365 mph (587 km/hr) 7,162 miles (11,526 km) 31,264
1999 4,520 mph (7,274 km/hr, Mach 6.7) 25,000+ miles (40,000+ km) 750,000+
When World War II ended, hundreds of thousands of soldiers returned to their homes either as experienced pilots or as confident passengers. Multiengine propeller aircraft such as the Lockheed Constellation (later nicknamed “the Connie”), which were originally designed for military cargo, were quickly fashioned for passenger travel. The Connie became very popular and was the first passenger airliner that could fly nonstop across the United States (the journey took about eleven hours with fifty-four passengers).
It didn’t take long, however, for airline manufacturers to realize that the future was in jets. The British-built de Havilland Comet, with its four jet engines built directly into the center of the wings (not bolted onto the wings like the engines in most of today’s jet airliners), entered service in 1952, and soon every airline was clamoring for a cutting-edge Comet. But in 1954, two extraordinary crashes made it clear that something was terribly wrong with the jet’s design. It was only after investigators submerged the fuselage of a Comet in a giant water tank and repeatedly pressurized it and depressurized it that the mystery was solved: metal fatigue. In retrospect, the problem was obvious, but no one had flown an aircraft so often at high altitudes before. The Comet was redesigned and went on to have a safe and successful future.
By the end of the 1950s, the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8, both four-engine aircraft with swept-back wings, were convincing passengers that jets could be safe, fast, and even economical. The 707 could fly across the United States in under six hours, and from New York to Paris in under nine hours, less than half the time of the fastest propeller airplanes.
FIRST AERIAL REFUELING
On November 12, 1921, Wesley May stepped from the wing of one airplane to the wing of another with a five-gallon can of gasoline on his back.
FIRST NONSTOP FLIGHT ACROSS THE UNITED STATES
John Macready and Oakley Kelly in 1923 flew from New York to San Francisco in twenty-six hours and fifty minutes
Now, flying was no longer reserved for the elite, as companies such as Pan American made it more affordable than ever for families to travel throughout the world. Of course, flying was still a novelty to many people. Not only would folks dress up for the occasion, but—because airport security was nothing like it is today—families often gathered with friends around the aircraft on the tarmac before takeoff.
Boeing had bet the company by developing the 707 (it actually cost more to develop that jet than Boeing’s entire net worth at the time), and its success paid off enormously. By the end of the 1960s, the company was ready to bet again, and this time it created the 747. No one knew if people would want to fly on an airplane that big, but Boeing couldn’t develop it unless airlines promised to buy the aircraft when it was done. So Pan Am’s founder (Juan “Terry” Trippe, whose influence over the aviation industry probably made him the most important person in aviation from the mid-1930s until the end of the twentieth century) made Boeing promise in return that the 747 would be economical to fly as a cargo jet, even without passengers.
If the 747 had failed, Boeing would have gone out of business. Neither Boeing nor Pan Am needed to be concerned; the 747 went on to become incredibly successful, and today it is perhaps the most recognized airplane in the world.
After the incredible leaps forward in aviation during the first seventy years of flight, surprisingly little changed in basic airplane design in the last quarter of the twentieth century. There were, of course, major improvements to onboard safety equipment, such as better navigation equipment and wind shear detectors. Nevertheless, airplanes flew at about the same speed, though over somewhat longer distances and with two engines instead of four. However, the industry evolved in other ways having more to do with the passenger experience.
When the multimillionaire Howard Hughes tried to buy a Boeing 307 in 1938 in order to break the round-the-world speed record, he was told that TWA and Pan American Airways had contracts reserving the aircraft. Unfazed, Hughes decided to buy TWA outright. The outbreak of World War II, however, prevented him from ever making the flight.
The Boeing 314, better known as the “Clipper,” was the ultimate in luxury, but it wasn’t cheap. You could fly on Pan American Airways’ Clipper from San Francisco to Manila (in the Philippines) for about $800 each way (about $21,000 round-trip in today’s dollars).
For instance, there were significant changes in airport and airplane security after terrorist attacks in the early 1970s, and again after the hijackings of 2001. The creation of an economy class and subtle improvements in fuel efficiency made flying less expensive than ever before, and millions more people could now afford to fly. On the downside, much of the special quality of flying was lost as airlines needed to herd more passengers in order to break even financially.
Two hundred years ago, George Cayley made a breakthrough that would enable humans to unveil the mystery of flight. One hundred years ago, the Wright brothers and other aviation pioneers risked their lives determining how to break the bonds of gravity. Today, the airline industry is at a crossroads. How can the present limitations of speed and distance be overcome? How will the often opposing forces of safety and economics play out? How will aviation evolve in the years to come? If the past century has been any indication, this next century will be a fascinating one.
If you bring your children in first class, they [should be] required to be strapped to your chest until they’re 14.
—Comedian Joan Rivers
The Wright Brothers
Perhaps the most appropriate word to describe Orville and Wilbur Wright is not genius, as some people think, but chutzpah, a word developed by Eastern European Jews to signify outrageous persistence and brazen nerve. After all, these two sons of a devoutly religious minister in the U.S. Midwest were not highly educated scientists or aristocrats of great means. They were relatively nondescript Ohio boys who had the gall to follow their dreams.
Wilbur, born in 1867, and Orville, born four years later, had two older brothers and one younger sister. From an early age both were curious about all things mechanical. After high school (neither attended college), Orville became interested in printing and fashioned a basic printing press with which he started a neighborhood newspaper (no small feat). Wilbur had many interests, but no particular vocational plans, and so Orville ta
lked him into being editor of the paper. By 1892 the two had gotten caught up in the new sport of bicycling, and they decided to open a bicycle shop together. Only two years later, they read about Otto Lilienthal’s gliding experiments, and the seed of what would become their life’s passion was planted.
However, Orville contracted typhoid fever in 1896 (the same year that Lilienthal died in a crash), and it was not until 1899 that the two could begin seriously researching how to build a glider. They read everything available on the subject, even sending away for material from the Smithsonian Institution, and they began to study how birds fly. Slowly the brothers built their glider while still running their bicycle business. They wrote to the U.S. Weather Bureau for suggestions of where the wind blew strongly and steadily. The answer: Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
In September 1900, they made the 750-mile journey from Dayton, Ohio, and found, to their dismay, that the previously published research on which they had based their calculations for their glider design had been flawed. Their glider didn’t perform as they had expected, and over the next year they endured many disappointing experiments. By 1901, on the verge of giving up the whole endeavor, Wilbur announced, “Not within a thousand years will man ever fly.”
The Wright brothers in 1910.
Learning the secret of flight from a bird was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician. After you know what to look for you see things that you did not notice when you did not know exactly what to look for.
—Orville Wright
But discovering that previous research is wrong is still an important discovery. With this in mind, the brothers embarked upon two years of slow, painstaking experiments, including using a wind tunnel to rework all of Lilienthal’s lift tables. What makes these two bicycle mechanics so impressive in retrospect is that they backed up their chutzpah with methodical and often grueling work.
It paid off. In 1902 they made over 1,000 flights on their newly designed glider, patiently learning how to control their craft before deciding to start experimenting with powered flight. The Wrights were probably the first to realize that propellers could be like small rotating wings—that their shape could “lift” the airplane forward as they pushed air back. They also knew the importance of a lightweight engine, and they had one specially built. On December 14, 1903, once again back near Kitty Hawk, Wilbur won a coin toss to see who would fly first. Unfortunately, he had a minor crash immediately upon takeoff, and it wasn’t until December 17 that their airplane, named The Flyer, was fixed and ready to take off again.
Orville Wright was once asked if his life’s most exciting moment was that day in 1903 when he first flew. He replied, “No, I got more thrill out of flying before I had ever been in the air at all—while lying in bed thinking how exciting it would be to fly.”
This time it was Orville’s turn, and he took off into a wind blowing at 20 mph. The first controlled, powered flight in history lasted only twelve seconds and covered only 120 feet—shorter than the economy-class section of a Boeing 747 today—but it was proof enough that humankind could fly, something that few people believed was possible at the time.
Soon they were flying farther and longer, but the brothers were afraid others would steal their ideas and so avoided demonstrating their aircraft publicly. Even after receiving a patent, they refused to show their airplane until 1908, when Wilbur flew before a large crowd in France and Orville flew several times at a military base near Washington, D.C. It was on one of these flights that Orville crashed while carrying a passenger, twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Orville survived with several broken ribs, but Selfridge died, becoming the first powered airplane fatality.
The Wright brothers, who never married and who lived together with their father and sister, made a fortune by selling aircraft and licensing airplane exhibitions, but also spent much of their time trying to ensure their position as the original inventors of the airplane and suing other manufacturers for patent infringement. They never lost a case, but after Wilbur died from typhoid fever in 1912, Orville lost much of his interest in the aviation business. He eventually sold the Wright Flyer Company and all their patents for $1 million. Orville died at the age of seventy-seven in 1948, having pursued his dream for half a century, and ensured the brothers a place in history.
Opposite: THE FLYER
The Wright brothers may not have been the first to fly a powered aircraft. Two years earlier, in 1901, Gustave White-head built an airplane shaped somewhat like a bat in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Several eyewitnesses reported that Whitehead flew several times, for as far as 1.5 miles. A number of photographs exist of Whitehead and his airplane, but none show him in the air.
Lindbergh:
The Lone Eagle
What son of a U.S. congressman dropped out of college to become a pilot and later won the Pulitzer Prize, the Congressional Medal of Honor, and the first Distinguished Flying Cross? Hint: He worked as an airmail carrier, invented one of the earliest mechanical hearts, and managed to fly fifty fighter combat missions as a civilian during World War II. This extraordinary man was Charles A. Lindbergh (1902–74), and in 1927 he became the world’s first media superstar for performing one daring act: flying solo, nonstop, from New York to Paris in thirty-three and a half hours.
This was an extraordinary feat, to be sure, but it’s safe to say that Lindbergh’s unprecedented celebrity—he was even better known than many of today’s sports or pop music stars—resulted as much from his exceptional personal characteristics playing themselves out on the world stage as from his record-breaking flight.
The World Awaits a Hero
In 1927, the United States was bounding from a rural economy to a technological powerhouse, so who could better represent the hopes and dreams of the country than a farm boy with a passion for flying? Perhaps more important, the media had finally developed methods of sending photographs over wire, sound was being married to motion pictures, and the world was becoming networked by cable and radio so that news could quickly spread. The only thing they needed was news.
It was over in a blink of an eye, that moment when aviation stirred the modern imagination. Aviation was transformed from reckless to routine in Lindbergh’s lifetime. Today the riskiest part of air travel is the drive to the airport, and the airlines use a barrage of stimuli to protect passengers from ennui.
—George Will, THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, AND OTHER SOBERING THOUGHTS
Eight years earlier, a wealthy French-born hotel owner, Raymond Orteig, had offered a $25,000 prize for the first nonstop flight between New York and Paris. Several well-known pilots attempted the trip; most of them died or were injured in the process. By 1927, advances in engine and airframe reliability had made long distance-flying viable, and suddenly a flock of celebrated aviators vied to snatch the prize. Flyers such as Lieutenant Commander Richard Byrd (who had flown over the North Pole) and French flying ace René Fonck readied their large, multiple-engine aircraft and crews. Newspapers touted the race, pumping “Atlantic fever” into the minds of Americans and Europeans.
Into this melee stepped a quiet, handsome, confident aviator, who proposed to fly alone in a small, single-engine airplane. Backed by a consortium of St. Louis businessmen, he represented the common American, the underdog, whose guts and moxie could conquer staggering odds. He would forego a parachute and a life raft so he could carry more fuel. He’d take five sandwiches with him, explaining, “If I get to Paris I won’t need any more, and if I don’t get to Paris, I won’t need any more, either.” Americans adored him.
The Race Is On
Although Lindbergh wasn’t well-known, he had the advantage of being a superb pilot, with considerable experience in night and foul-weather flying. He had developed his uncanny gift for accurately navigating by compass, chart, and the seat of his pants during more than 7,000 flights in five years. He also had a knack for pushing himself and his aircraft to the limits. In fact, Lindbergh held the records f
or two, three, and then four emergency bailouts. Nonetheless, aviation experts gave him little chance of success, and Lloyd’s of London declined to give odds on his undertaking, stating “the risk is too great.”
Lindbergh’s SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS.
Lindbergh was the first person to fly nonstop from New York to Paris, but dozens of people had flown across the Atlantic before him. Eight years earlier, in 1919, John Alcock and Arthur Brown flew nonstop from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Clifden, Ireland, in a two-engine airplane.
Travelers are always discoverers, especially those who travel by air. There are no signposts in the air to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, NORTH TO THE ORIENT
On the night of May 19, 1927, foul weather kept the competitors grounded in New York. But after a sleepless night, Lindbergh received word of a possible break in the weather and decided to coax his airplane into the air. Named after his benefactors, the Spirit of St. Louis was essentially a flying gas tank. Lindbergh had helped design the aircraft, insisting that even the nose of the airplane (behind the engine) be filled with fuel. This meant Lindbergh wouldn’t be able to see out the front windshield, so he had two periscopes fitted in the side windows.
The Spirit of St. Louis appeared to be made of metal, but in fact it was covered in fabric, lacquered smooth, and painted silver.
Prevailing eastward winds made it much more difficult to fly from Europe back to North America. In 1927 and 1928, seven experienced pilots died in eight failed attempts. In late 1928, Baron Guenther von Huenefeld, Hermann Koehl, and James Fitzmaurice took off in Ireland and crash-landed in Labrador, Canada. It wasn’t until September 1930 that Frenchmen Maurice Bellonte and Dieudonni Costes duplicated Lindbergh’s flight in reverse.
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