Wright Brothers, Wrong Story

by William Hazelgrove

  Langley had died in 1906, and Charles D. Walcott had taken over as secretary of the Smithsonian. Langley had given them all a black eye when his plane nosed into the Potomac, and Curtiss knew the Smithsonian wanted to redeem its fallen hero of aviation. Walcott had gotten the army to invest $50,000, and he had heard only blame and recrimination since they fished Langley's plane out of the water. No funding was coming the way of the Smithsonian anytime soon. But if he could show that Langley's plane could have flown, then that would circumvent the Wright patent. If he could just get his hands on Langley's flyer. He knew Walcott either still had it or knew where it was. But he couldn't be obvious. He needed a third party to approach the Smithsonian.

  Curtis picked up the phone and gave the operator a number. He picked up a pencil and flipped it into the garbage can across his office. This was why he was a good pilot—he had very good reflexes.

  The wooden crates in the shed behind the bike shop in Dayton looked like nothing. They were not marked, and they had been there for eleven years. The shed held bicycle parts, bicycles, wheels, tires, and tools. The large wooden crates were an imposition, really. They were bulky and took up a lot of the space. The floor of the shed offered no real protection against the elements. Occasionally, rain leaked down onto the crates from the roof. The men who had put the crates in the shed had long forgotten them. Wilbur had died in 1912, and Orville was busy. The crates with sand in the bottom from Kitty Hawk in 1903 remained silently moldering.

  Floodwaters had rampaged through Dayton six times before, but on March 23, 1914, the worst flood was yet to come. The rain began and didn't stop. Dayton was a floodplain between the Miami, Mad, and Stillwater Rivers. And there was Wolf Creek, which added its own water to the torrent of floodwater racing through Dayton. The streets of Dayton became their own rivers, and then the Laramie Reservoir earthen dam collapsed and the levee at Stratford Avenue was breeched. A wall of water was headed for the Wright home and bike shop.

  Orville and Katherine had left their home on Hawthorne Avenue that morning and found it impossible to return. Their father was trapped.1 They spent the night at a friend's house but were unable to contact their father. Phones were down, and fires had broken out all over the city from broken gas mains. A lurid glow was in the sky as the water rose steadily higher.2 Hawthorne Street and other low-lying areas of Dayton were under eight feet of water. Orville was worried about his father, but he had other worries as well. As Tom Crouch pointed out in The Bishop's Boys, “The priceless photographic negatives of the flying machine experiments of 1900–1905 were in the old shed at the rear of the house. Letters, diaries, and other records of inventions of the airplane were stored in the second floor at the bicycle shop on Third Street where the water was said to be over twelve feet.”3 And then there were the crates in the shed behind the bike shop. These gave him the most concern of all, for in those crates was the 1903 Wright Flyer—the plane that had made human flight possible.

  Bishop Wright was rescued, along with his neighbor Mrs. Wagner, by a man with a canoe. Orville and Katherine returned to devastation the next morning. The lives of 371 people had been lost, and property damage was estimated at $100 million.4 A reporter later described the damage of the direct hit that Dayton had taken:

  The streets are seas of yellow ooze. Garden fences and hedges are twisted or torn away. Reeking heaps of indescribable refuse lie moldering where there were smooth lawns and bright flower beds. The houses that stand are all smeared with dirt that shows the height of the flood. But inside the houses, that is the dreadful thing. The rooms that the water filled are like damp caves. Mud lies thick on the floors, the walls are streaked with slime, and the paper hangs down in dismal festoons…. But the worst is the reek of death about the place.5

  Orville went directly to the bicycle shop, which had been underwater. The glass-plate negatives had survived; a few of them had been damaged, but all were salvageable. The most important one, the photo taken by John Daniels showing the 1903 Flyer lifting off from the sand at Kitty Hawk on December 17, had been underwater but survived with slight damage. But what of the Flyer itself? Orville left the bicycle shop and saw the low shed. A thick mud encased the building and he had to scoop it away to get the door open.

  The mud had entered the structure and covered the crates. Orville got down on his knees and scooped the muck off and pulled out the first crate. He opened it and stared down at the fabric-covered wings. Amazingly, the mud had acted as an insulator and kept the water out of the crates. The fabric was damp and the wood was wet, but it was undamaged. The only plane the Wright brothers had saved had been in danger of being swept away forever, but the 1903 Flyer had survived to fly one more time, in the Wright brothers’ biggest battle yet to come.

  Orville and his secretary, Mabel Beck, tirelessly dried out the old Flyer in his laboratory and stretched the canvas over the frame. To Mabel, the canvas smelled of time and sand.6 In 1925, the Flyer would be unpacked again for a very different reason. Mabel at that time would write, “the original cloth was in bad shape, very frail and worn…. Mr. Wright decided to recover the machine with new cloth…. Mr. Wright and I laid out and cut all the cloth, and I did the sewing.”7 She worked alongside Orville, for hours and hours. The smell of the ocean had come into the room, and sand collected on the floor. At the end of the day, Mabel brushed away the grit of history. She had never seen the ocean and wondered about the place Orville talked about many times—Kitty Hawk. The name sounded like a magic bird to her.8

  Eight days after the Wrights were declared victorious in the US Circuit Court, Charles D. Walcott sat behind his desk in the Smithsonian and stared at the telegram on his desk with the attached note from the Smithsonian administrator, Richard Rathbun. The telegram was from the famous American stunt pilot Lincoln J. Beachey, who was closely allied with Glenn Curtiss, though Walcott had no way of knowing this. Beachey had flown at the Curtiss school, had been a performer on the Curtiss exhibition team, and was a Curtiss stockholder.

  He had wired the Smithsonian “requesting to borrow the surviving parts of the 1903 aerodrome so that he could rebuild and fly the craft.”1 It was a strange request for the Langley flyer of 1903 that had gone down like a rock into the Potomac River. The flyer had been fished out of the river and hung from the side of the houseboat. From there it had been put into permanent storage; everyone wanted to forget the disaster that had cost both the Smithsonian and Langley their reputations.

  Walcott had vouched for Langley and cajoled the government into giving him the fifty thousand dollars. When the flyer went down twice, that was it. He took over as secretary of the Smithsonian in 1906, and immediately he tried to resurrect Langley's tarnished, if not destroyed, reputation. He had the Langley Memorial Tablet put into the wall of the Smithsonian castle. He then established the Samuel P. Langley Medal for Aerodromics, and later he created the Langley Laboratory for aeronautical research. He even proclaimed the day in 1896 when the first steam-powered aerodrome models had flown as Langley Day, an official holiday for the Smithsonian.2

  None of it worked. There were no funds coming for research anytime soon. Langley was a black eye. Just eight days prior, the Wrights had been declared pioneer patent holders for airplane-control systems, thereby making Orville and Wilbur Wright the patriarchs of modern aviation. It was over, really, until…this.

  Walcott picked up the telegram and then looked at Rathbun's recommendation: “I do not think you want to grant Mr. Beachey's request.”3 There was another note, from Alexander Graham Bell, cautioning against trying to do anything with the flyer since it was too valuable an artifact. “An artifact of what?” Walcott almost muttered. Failure. Disgrace. Reputations ruined. It was an artifact alright, down in the dungeon of the Smithsonian, never to be seen again.

  Walcott leaned back in his chair and smoothed his beard. That valuable artifact was a cross he and the Smithsonian had to bear ever since the great dunk in the Potomac. It was really a fascinating idea. Fly the Langley aerodrome
and prove to the world that Langley had the technology to fly first, and that he should have taken the honors given to Wilbur and Orville Wright. Samuel Pierpont Langley's name could then be side by side with the Wright brothers, and the Smithsonian would be redeemed as the august center of science it once was.

  Walcott looked at the telegram again. Still, Beachey was sort of a loose cannon. Bell had suggested that an exact replica of the Langley flyer should be constructed for display. That would be something, but really it had to fly, or what was the point? He would turn Beachey down but leave the door slightly open.

  The door was kicked wide open when Secretary Walcott bumped into Glenn Curtiss at a Langley Day celebration. Curtiss had brought down one of his float planes and had mentioned “that he would like to put the Langley airplane itself in the air.”4 Walcott had been pressured before by the Smithsonian regents and Bell not to release the flyer to Beachey, but this time he acted alone and consented to give the plane to Glenn Curtiss.

  The secretary of the Smithsonian instructed A. F. Zahm, a Curtiss witness in the patent trial who now happened to run the Langley Laboratory, to turn over “the fuselage, engine, propellers, various bits of tubing and a few wing ribs of the old flyer to Curtiss.”5 Walcott then gave Curtiss $2,000 for improvements and testing. Zahm, who had been humiliated by Orville Wright during the trials, put out a covering statement: “The main object of these renewed trials was first to show whether the original Langley machine was capable of sustained free flight with a pilot, and secondly, to determine more fully the advantages of the tandem wing type aeroplane.”6

  The real reason was to show that Langley's plane could have flown in 1903. Everyone involved had a vested interest. “Curtiss, the Smithsonian, and Zahm all stood to benefit if the craft proved airworthy. Curtiss could return to court and argue the pioneer status granted the Wrights patent was unwarranted and he could start selling planes again. Walcott would demonstrate to the world his old friend Langley had not failed after all and restore the Smithsonian's reputation as an institution worth further funding for projects. And Zahm would gain revenge on Orville for supposed slights offered to him at the patent suit in 1910.”7

  If Curtiss could get Langley's old machine to fly, then everything would work out just fine. The problem was that Walcott was not all that sure it would fly the way it had been originally designed. At the time of the two crashes, the rumor was that Langley really didn't understand lift and that some engineers said the wings could not have provided nearly enough lift for a man and a heavy engine. Walcott had heard that all Langley had done, really, was make a bigger aerodrome model and hope for the best. He was certain Curtiss would get the plane to fly one way or another. After that, he didn't really want to know anything else.

  Curtiss and Zahm proclaimed that they would simply restore the Langley plane back to its original design. Nothing was further from the truth. As Tom Crouch observes in The Bishop's Boys, “The wings constructed in the Curtiss plant differed from the originals in chord, camber, and aspect ratio. The trussing system that linked the wings to the fuselage also bore little resemblance to the 1903 original. The kingposts had been relocated and the wires were trussed to different spars at different points. This was particularly important, for most knowledgeable authorities believed that the failure of the wing structure, not a catapult defect, had been responsible for the disaster of 1903.”8

  Then Curtiss fitted the plane with his own control system. He did away with the catapult system, put the plane on floats, and tied off the original rudder. The tail was altered to serve as both rudder and elevator, something Langley had never thought of. Now all they had to do was fly the plane and prove to the world that the Wright brothers were not the first to build an airplane capable of powered flight. The Wright brothers were the second men to build a plane capable of sustained flight after Samuel Pierpont Langley, secretary of the Smithsonian.

  Glenn Curtiss looked over the parts of the 1903 Langley flyer that had arrived that morning in wood crates stenciled SMITHSONIAN. It made Curtiss feel very important to be associated with the making of history. He had his workmen spread out the parts on the factory floor of the Herring-Curtiss factory. Zahm and Walcott had told Curtiss to restore the aerodrome to its 1903 condition. Curtiss could see right away that this wouldn't do if the plane was to fly. No, he would approach this plane the way he approached all planes—with one simple question: How could he make it better?

  He pulled the musty parts and stared at the body of the plane. Time and the crash had done its work. Curtiss felt it should have stayed in the Potomac, but here it was. He instructed his men as he replaced the wings with new Curtiss wings that had the correct chord, camber, and aspect ratios that reflected the data Wilbur had found with his wind tunnel. He then linked the wings to the fuselage with wires trussed to different points. This was critical. Many had claimed that Langley's machine spiraled into the Potomac because not only did the wings not have enough lift, but they folded up when the catapult flung the flyer into the air. Curtiss gutted the old control system and put in a yoke-and-wheel control system based on his own planes that led directly back to the 1903 Wright Flyer, with the three-axes-of-control center. A large cruciform tail was added and altered to serve as rudder and elevator. Then Curtiss put the Langley flyer on floats, forever leaving the catapult system in the ash heap of aviation history.1

  He and his men stepped back from the aerodrome and surveyed their work. It was maybe 30 percent 1903 technology and 70 percent 1914. It was time to see if it would fly. On May 28, 1914, Curtiss sat in the aerodrome on Lake Keuka, with the water slopping over the floats. It was early morning, which was better for avoiding the press. He pushed up the throttle all the way and felt the plane start skimming across the water. Curtiss eased back the elevator, and the Langley aerodrome left the earth for the first time under its own power and flew 150 feet. The plane splashed back down. Curtiss shook his head. It just didn't have the power. He tried a few more times, but each time the plane barely lifted off. He had the plane taken back to his plant, where he finished the job by replacing the 1903 engine with a modern Curtiss engine with twice the horsepower. He also made some changes to the structure of the plane to improve its aerodynamics. Only the fuselage was original when Curtiss finished. Curtiss went back to the lake for several more flights that were longer in duration. None of the flights were sustainable, but it was enough that the Langley flyer flew.

  It was at this time that Orville Wright's older brother Lorin Wright stepped off the train in Hammondsport. Orville had asked him to help protect their invention, and Lorin was willing to do his part to protect his brother's honor and reputation. He was doing this for Orville, but he was doing it for Wilbur too. If Wilbur had been there, he would have taken care of Glenn Curtiss once and for all. But Wilbur was gone and so it was left to Lorin to protect the family name.2

  It was a beautiful morning as he took a cab to the Curtiss hangars on Lake Keuka's shore. He felt like a secret agent. He was carrying a small camera and knew what had to be done. After an Englishman named Griffith Brewer met the brothers in 1908 and had flown with Wilbur at Le Mans, he had the distinction of being the first Englishman to fly. Brewer had spent three months with Orville in Dayton and had learned about the Smithsonian and Glenn Curtiss, they realized what had happened. Griffith had taken a tour of the Curtiss factory after Orville told him that the Smithsonian had snubbed the Wrights in 1910 by refusing the offer of their plane for exhibition and had given people the impression that they were heavily dependent on the research of Langley for their 1903 Wright Flyer.3

  Then Orville told him the story of Curtiss and the Langley aerodrome and asked him if he would request a tour of the Hammondsport facility to see what he could find out. Griffith took the tour and found out that the 1903 aerodrome had been heavily altered so that it could fly. He took photographs and forwarded them to Orville. That's when Orville asked his brother Lorin to find evidence of the alterations to the Langley plane and
the results of the trials.

  The taxi let Lorin off on a rain-soaked tarmac. He looked around, then walked straight toward an open hangar and immediately saw the aerodrome. He took some pictures. In his writing about the events there is a natural drama to his narrative. “I arrived at Hammondsport about one o'clock Friday afternoon June 4th. Went immediately to Curtiss training camp on the lake shore near the village,” Lorin wrote in a memorandum.4 “I found three Curtiss boat machines containing the controls and one which had the wings removed. I also saw the so-called Langley machine which they were preparing to give a trial. Mechanic told me it would be tried Friday evening if the wind died down.”5

  The next morning, June 5, he watched with binoculars from a field as the Langley aerodrome was tested on the lake: “The distance from the launching place I think was about 600 feet…. About ten o'clock Mr. Walter Johnson mounted the machine and started the motor. The machine gradually speed[ed up] and after running as near as I could judge 1000 ft the rear wings broke.”6 The wings had folded up during the trial as Curtiss pilot Walter Johnson attempted to take off. He had gone only 330 yards when the plane fell apart. Lorin went back to the hangar when Johnson came in with the soggy aerodrome. Orville's brother began to snap more pictures.

  Johnson, still wet from the lake, demanded his film. Johnson was a small, pugnacious man who looked like he might take a swing. Lorin later wrote, “I took four pictures of the machine when some of the workman noted the fact and notified Mr. Johnson. He demanded that I should give up the films. At first, I refused and started to leave the grounds. Mr. Johnson and several others left the machine and came running up to me demanding the films, saying that they could not allow any pictures of the wrecked machine to be made.”7