by Seth Shulman
Before this new partnership began, Curtiss and Kleckler built an airplane under a commission from the Aeronautical Society in New York. Called the Gold Bug, it was the first commercially sold airplane in the United States—a fact that sent the Wrights into paroxysms of fury. Adding to the Wrights’ indignation, Curtiss piloted the Gold Bug to victory in a second competition for the Scientific American Trophy. In this round, Curtiss flew nonstop for 24.7 miles over a circular course on Long Island, New York, close to double the 25-kilometer circle required to engrave his name for the second consecutive time on the nation’s most prestigious, independent aviation award. Equally important, Curtiss more than amply demonstrated the airplane’s capabilities to its proud new owners at the Aeronautical Society. They had little doubt that Curtiss had built—and they had purchased—by far the most successful flying machine in America.
On board the ocean liner Savoie, Curtiss sits on a deck chair, flanked by the two assistants he is bringing with him to Rheims. He has left his Hammondsport business in the trusted hands of Kleckler and Genung. For the trip, he has done his best to replicate the pair who have always offered him their unstinting support. To aid with the engine in Kleckler’s stead, he has brought Tod Shriver, a promising young mechanic; while for the personal loyalty and all-around support usually provided by Genung, he has asked Ward Fisher to come to France with him. A Hammondsport local, Fisher has been a good friend ever since Curtiss’s bicycle-racing days. The three peruse an advance program advertising the meet and marvel at the turn of events that has brought them to this ocean crossing.
Just two months earlier, Cortlandt Bishop, the wealthy, debonair president of the Aero Club, heard of Curtiss’s feat in the Gold Bug and cabled urging him to enter the Rheims meet. Curtiss hesitated. He had no airplane and had never tried to build one to race for speed. Bishop convinced him to try nonetheless. If for no other reason, Bishop said, Curtiss should enter the meet to represent the United States, especially because the Wrights, as usual, had declined to participate. Once again, the Wrights had protested to the Rheims organizers that the rules required contestants to take off on level ground on their airplane’s own power without benefit of tracks or derricks. This time, however, the French organizers called the Wrights’ bluff, offering to modify the rules on their behalf. But the brothers still refused to enter, even though Orville was scheduled to be in Europe at the time. Their petty objections assuaged, the Wrights were left only to gripe about the Rheims meet itself, telling the press that “circus performances like this do no good for the science of aviation.”
For his part, Curtiss was captivated by Bishop’s suggestion, but bringing a plane to Europe was a big undertaking. Bishop, who had inherited millions from his father’s real estate interests, finally convinced Curtiss by offering to personally reimburse all his expenses if the plane failed to win any of the meet’s $40,000 in prize money. Ever the businessman, Curtiss easily figured that he had nothing to lose. At the very least, he would see what Europe was like, and with luck, it could help attract a world of business to his new aeroplane manufacturing venture.
Although Curtiss knew from Bell and others that European aviators were making great strides, he received stunning news just shortly before his departure: On July 25, 1909, Louis Bleriot triumphantly piloted a small monoplane across the English Channel. Curtiss’s own 24.7-mile flight on Long Island earlier that month had been slightly longer than Bleriot’s 22-mile journey from Calais, France, to the Cliffs of Dover, England. But the distance was all but irrelevant. Fully capturing the European imagination, Bleriot’s feat had an impact incalculably greater.
Because of his last-minute decision to enter the Rheims meet, Curtiss opted to build a machine much like the Gold Bug. To increase its speed, he made the new machine a bit lighter and added a new water-cooled, 50-horsepower engine and a longer propeller. There was no time to build many spare parts, but Curtiss did manage to pack an extra propeller in case the original broke. His chief concern—and, he believed, the linchpin to any possibility of success against his competitors—was the motor, just as it had been with his motorcycle triumph years earlier. As a result, he fussed relentlessly to refine the engine design, working all night long with Kleckler and Shriver on the eve of his departure to get it to reliably develop the desired 50 horsepower on the test block. Given the time constraints, though, the new motor had only one day of bench testing. The team didn’t even have time to give the aircraft a trial flight.
Working up to the very last moment, Curtiss nearly missed the train to New York. Lena, Harry, and Martha had to rush ahead to Hammondsport station to convince the conductor to hold the train while Curtiss and his workers hurriedly packed the engine and dashed to the station, where the crate was quickly shoved into a boxcar alongside the packing boxes containing the aircraft’s frame.
Upon his arrival in France in late August, Curtiss finds the country agog over the airplane. The Rheims meet offers the biggest and best example: twenty-two fliers are slated to attend. They will bring airplanes representing no fewer than ten manufacturers, further testifying to the ferment that has taken place in aviation, especially over the past year. European inventors have made many important incremental steps toward a working airplane ever since the turn of the century, but the work has recently grown into a full-blown renaissance. Most of the aircraft are French—Voisins, Bleriots, Antoinettes, and Farmans—but three French pilots are scheduled to fly Wright aircraft. Even though the brothers will not attend, three of their airplanes, assembled under contract in France and modified to take off from wheels, have been entered. Curtiss and his Rheims Racer, as he has named his entry, will be the only fully American entry. Curtiss knows little about the French-designed planes, but he relishes the chance to go head-to-head in the air against the Wright brothers’ airplanes.
The continent is so keyed up over its first competitive flying spectacle that, as one U.S. reporter puts it, the excitement is hard to convey to an American readership. “It is as though,” he writes, New York were about to host a simultaneous combination of “the Vanderbilt Cup Race, the Futurity, a Yale-Harvard boat race, a championship series of ball games between the Giants and Chicago, and a municipal election.”
Seeking to create the aura and grandeur of a world’s fair, the French have spared no expense for the weeklong event. The Grand Marquis de Polignac has supervised the planning with the Aéro-Club de France, agreeing to oversee the various races. Eager to attach themselves to this latest, glamorous, and wildly popular sport of aviation, the region’s major champagne producers, including Bollinger, Moët et Chandon, and Veuve Cliquot, have contributed handsome sums toward the site’s preparation and offered much of the meet’s lavish prize money.
For the site, the committee has chosen the plain of Betheny, on the outskirts of Rheims, eighty miles east of Paris. Steeped in history, the ancient cathedral city is the heart of France’s champagne-producing region, as well as the site where French kings have been crowned for centuries. Now, in the heady thrall of the early twentieth century, the organizers hope Rheims might forever be associated with something equally glamorous but considerably more modern: the crowning of a sky king.
To accommodate the race, the organizers have built grandstands for 50,000 spectators modeled after those at the world’s elite horseracing venues. They have even constructed a railroad line and new stations to transport visitors to the site. And they have designed the ten-square-kilometer flying field to include hangars, barber shops, florists, and a 600-seat restaurant with 50 cooks and 150 waiters. Of course, they also included ample space for a terrace bar where patrons could sip the world’s finest champagne as they watch the show.
With aviation excitement gripping France after Bleriot’s flight across the English Channel, the Rheims event could not be better timed. The organizers had hoped for some 250,000 spectators over the course of the week, but by the time the Grande Semaine d’Aviation is through, they will attract more than twice that number. As the o
pening draws near, eager visitors have reserved even the tiniest bedrooms in humble houses near the site and driven the prices of accommodations to unheard-of heights, with suites at Rheims hotels going for as much as $5,000 for the week.
In Paris, Curtiss is greeted at the station by the ever-cosmopolitan Cortlandt Bishop and immediately feels out of his depth. Bishop is amazed to discover that Curtiss and his team brought the entire aeroplane, packed in crates, along with them on the train as personal luggage. As Curtiss explains, the freight carrier would not guarantee timely delivery of the aircraft to Rheims. Most shocking to Bishop, as it will be to almost all the European aviation enthusiasts, is how compact Curtiss’s machine is. Curtiss’s entire aeroplane fit into a passenger compartment across from the one they sat in. Among Curtiss’s innovations, he has manufactured the wings in sections so that they can be more easily shipped.
The entire team handily travels through Paris in two cabs to the Gare de l’Est for the final train ride to Rheims. Leaving Shriver and Fisher in charge of the luggage, Bishop takes Curtiss for a quick visit to James Gordon Bennett, sponsor of the grand prize for the fastest 20-kilometer flight.
Through Curtiss’s ties with Bell and his association with the Aero Club in New York, he had met many wealthy socialites, but Bishop and Bennett are in an altogether different league. Bishop, second president of the Aero Club of America, is a full-time patron of the arts and racing sports, with a passion for ballooning and impeccably tailored clothing. James Gordon Bennett, who inherited control of the New York Herald from his father, is an infamous, irascible figure. Publisher of newspapers in New York, London, and Paris, he built his publishing empire through shamelessly self-promoting stunts like the “scoop of the century” of sending war correspondent Henry Stanley to the wilds of Africa to find explorer Dr. David Livingstone.
Like Bishop, Bennett has enjoyed a lifestyle of outsized grandeur. He spent summers in Newport, Rhode Island, where he introduced his confreres to the game of polo and dared one friend into riding a polo pony to the upstairs floor of the most exclusive men’s club in town. He ran his operations primarily by cable from Paris because he has been all but run out of New York society. Among the incidents that led to his unofficial deportation, two were particularly infamous: careening naked at top speed around Manhattan in his horse-drawn carriage one drunken evening, and urinating in the fireplace at a party given by his fiancée’s family.
When Bishop and Curtiss arrive at Bennett’s well-appointed office, the publishing tycoon regards the aviator-mechanic from Hammondsport with a critical eye, noting his odd goatee and his wrinkled, store-bought suit. Lanky and gaunt, with a serious demeanor that verges on taciturn when he is nervous, Curtiss lacks the panache of most of the European fliers. Bennett greets Curtiss cordially, complimenting him on his fine sportsmanship in entering the meet. But he does little to hide his displeasure when he learns that Curtiss has brought his entire airplane in a train compartment on the way to Paris, and that his reserve equipment consists of one extra propeller. Unsure of what to make of the sole American contender for glory, Bennett just whistles and pulls at his waxed moustache.
Curtiss amiably ignores the skepticism of Bishop and Bennett. Yet the weight of his undertaking finally hits him full force when he reaches the race site, three miles north of Rheims, and finds his assigned hangar. It stands in a long row of new buildings housing the aircraft of the other contestants. Aviators, mechanics, and paying customers flock around unabashedly, eager to make his acquaintance.
Despite the steady companionship of his assistants and the avid interest of fellow aviators—many of whom, he is amazed to note, are conversant with all his exploits—Curtiss has never felt so conscious of his rural upbringing and lack of sophistication. As he walks down the line of hangars, he marvels at the opulence of the European fliers and their wealthy backers.
With their ground crews, equipment, and entire spare airplanes, Europe’s greatest fliers, Latham, Bleriot, Farman, Delagrange, Cockburn, Lefebvre, Paulhan, Tissandier, the Comte de Lambert, and many others, remind Curtiss of knights, with their many attendants and royal sponsors. Louis Paulhan’s attire adds to the impression of nobility; he favors wearing elaborate outfits sewn from brightly colored silks like those of a horse jockey. Hubert Latham has brought two fully assembled, batlike Antoinette airplanes, with wide-spreading wings and sleek, new, in-line engines. Latham fits the bill too. A dashing young man born into a wealthy family of ship owners, he has spent his adulthood hunting lions in Africa, exploring the Far East, and racing speedboats in France before discovering the airplane.
Gabriel Voisin is also on hand. Along with his brother Charles, Voisin has established the world’s first made-to-order airplane manufacturing business, building any designs sought by his often fanciful customers, as well as experimenting with his own boxy creations and those of his brother. He has come to Rheims with an entire field kitchen and the professional cooks to staff it.
Bleriot, fresh from his world-renowned, channel-crossing triumph, requires a series of sheds to hold the five airplanes he has brought to Rheims. Gleaming most threateningly among the fleet is a big monoplane he commissioned especially for the event. Bleriot, engineer and businessman, has been interested in the airplane since 1900, when he tried unsuccessfully to make an “ornithopter”—a flying machine with flapping wings. He made his fortune selling headlights for the thriving automobile industry and has spent the past two years so obsessed with flight that he has nearly bankrupted himself. Since his channel flight, however, Bleriot’s fortunes have changed as wealthy promoters have recognized the potential of enormous profits from his exploits. The squat, effusive Bleriot, with a big bushy moustache and birdlike beak, has brought a staff of six mechanics and a mind-boggling array of equipment and spare parts. His team even has a cleverly designed hydraulic machine to measure Bleriot’s engines’ horsepower so that, before starting out on a flight, they can make sure they are running at peak efficiency.
Glenn Curtiss has two mechanics, one small airplane, and a spare propeller.
Yet, if anything, the austerity and simplicity of his operation endear him to the press and other aviators. As one aviation aficionado puts it admiringly, “One of the most noticeable things about Mr. Curtiss is his American coolness. He and his mechanics do just what is necessary, and no more. His machine, like the way it is handled, is extraordinarily neat.”
The small airplane Curtiss has brought, the Rheims Racer, is a direct descendant of the June Bug but with considerable refinements. A biplane with a bamboo frame, its wings are khaki-colored and stayed by fine, steel-stranded cables. For the sake of simplicity and greater control, Curtiss and Kleckler have dispensed with the bowed-wing design of the June Bug. And, to make it as fast as possible, Curtiss has shaved its weight to roughly seven hundred pounds and increased the diameter of the propeller from six to seven feet, a change that required lifting the frame higher above the ground to provide adequate clearance. The steering wheel has also been refined. Like its predecessors, it sits immediately in front of the pilot, serving as a rear steering-rudder when the wheel is turned in either direction; when pulled directly back, the steering wheel alters the inclination of the front elevating planes, giving ascending or descending control of the plane, a design pioneered by the Aerial Experiment Association that would stand the test of time.
Bishop has arranged lodging for Curtiss and his two assistants in the house of a local Catholic priest. But as it turns out, Curtiss, Shriver, and Fisher spend most of their days and some of their nights in the hangar. Bishop has also invited an illustrious assortment of visitors, including a bewildering array of earls and countesses not to mention their American Gilded-Age equivalents: Vanderbilts, Goulds, and Astors. Working with Shriver and Fisher to assemble the Rheims Racer, Curtiss greets them awkwardly as they gather respectfully outside to watch. They invariably marvel to one another at how small the plane is—comments that do little to bolster Curtiss’s confidence about the
upcoming race.
And yet, Curtiss’s design is notable for its impressive ratio of power to its small size. As a result, it is the quickest machine of all those at Rheims to launch at takeoff. Much to the amazement of the other aviators, Curtiss sometimes manages to get his airplane aloft after rolling fewer than fifty yards.
As his one advantage, Curtiss had hoped to keep his 50-horsepower engine a secret, but Bleriot has learned of the powerful engine and ordered an eight-cylinder motor hurriedly built that is reputed to yield 80 horsepower. “When I learned of this,” Curtiss confided later, “I believed that Bleriot had the trophy as good as clinched.”
On Sunday, August 22, the Rheims meet gets off to an inauspicious start. The weather is awful for the first three days of the weeklong event: prolonged rain turns the field to mud. Even more alarming are the strong, gusty winds that preclude almost any possibility of flying. Most of the thousands of eager spectators are ill prepared for the inclement weather. Ladies in long chiffon dresses muddy their elegant satin shoes. Ankle-deep in some places, the mud swallows the tires of many arriving motorcars, forcing them in a humiliating, low-tech concession, to let teams of horses tow them out.
Yet even the bad weather cannot dampen the irrepressible excitement surrounding the prospect of competition among the world’s top fliers and fastest aircraft. Over the course of the week, the crowds keep getting larger, with the added glamour of attendance by royalty and titled nobility. In addition to the aristocratic cachet the organizers have sought, they also manage to attract a sea of “regular folk,” who buy cheaper admission tickets that allow them to watch the show from the open grounds. According to one observer on hand, the throng stretches literally for miles around the course, in some places as many as forty people deep.