Kitty Hawk, Part IV
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

As we pick up our story on the Wright brothers and the first human flight, just a little note on the differences in personality between Orville and Wilbur. Wilbur overcame his injury (part III) to become a self-confident writer and public speaker, while Orville absolutely refused to speak in public and never said anything at the many banquets honoring him. He was, however, a born inventor.

We move to May 1900 and on the 13th of that month, Wilbur wrote the great American civil engineer Octave Chanute. Chanute had been testing gliders and a biplane on the dunes of Lake Michigan and over the next decade Wilbur and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters on the principals of powered flight. Wilbur also asked Chanute for help in selecting a site for the Wright brothers to test out their own theories, one that was far away from the glaring eyes of the press.

Utilizing data from the U.S. Weather Bureau, Wilbur and Orville set their sights on the 6th-windiest region of the country, an isolated place called Kitty Hawk on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The brothers wrote for more information and received a reply from the local notary and Currituck County Commissioner, William J. Tate.

According to Tom D. Crouch's book "First Flight: The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Airplane," "Tate assured the Wrights that the area was perfect for kite flying, with wide flat beaches, tall sand hills with few trees, and strong, steady winds. 'If you decide to try your machine here?,' he promised, 'I will take pleasure in doing all I can for your convenience & success & pleasure.' Tate closed his letter with an assurance that '?you will find a hospitable people when you come among us.'"

Now that's what I call Southern hospitality, and Tate proved to be a man of his word.

Over the next four years, the Wrights would design and build their aircraft in Dayton, Ohio and then test them in the wind and sand of Kitty Hawk. The first journey to the Outer Banks took 9 days, as you can imagine it wasn't a very accessible place back then, and the trip, as well as succeeding ones, was made all the more difficult because the locals on the other side of Albemarle Sound often knew less about the region across the water than Wilbur and Orville did. What they ended up finding was a small village of about a dozen buildings and William Tate welcomed the two warmly. In fact the first kite / glider was assembled in a tent pitched in the Tate family's front yard and Mrs. Tate helped in sewing the canvas wings.

The initial tests at Kitty Hawk were conducted October 5-18, 1900. The Wrights learned then how difficult it was to deal with the elements, including constantly blowing sand and swarms of aggressive mosquitoes.

Most of these first flights were flown as empty kites and Wilbur and Orville took exhaustive measurements of lift and drag. They moved to the highest elevation in the area, four dunes known as Kill Devil Hills, about 4 miles south of Kitty Hawk and Wilbur made a dozen free glides that totaled about 2 minutes in the air. On October 19 it was back to Dayton.

The move towards a practical airplane was an evolutionary process with 7 different craft: one kite (1899), three gliders (1900, 1901, 1902), three powered aircraft (1903, 1904, 1905).

1901 proved to be the most dangerous year. Returning to Kitty Hawk in July, the brothers tested between July 27 and August 17, experiencing more than a few scary moments. Remember, gliding wasn't as easy as it sounds and many had died, like the German pioneer Otto Lilienthal, in experimenting with human flight. But by the end of the test period, the Wrights were able to get the glider to stay in the air up to 17 seconds and achieved a peak of 350 feet.

1902 saw the brothers back in Kitty Hawk from September 19- October 24 and in that time frame they completed a staggering 700 glides. [20 a day!] The period was a complete success and the new model flew far better than the previous year's version. Orville and Wilbur described it as a "joy to fly, one capable of routine, controlled flights of more than 600 feet. It was ready for an engine." [Crouch]

So back in Dayton they worked on adding a power source and propellers. The difficult part was it made the craft 5 times heavier than the 1902 glider, but on September 26, 1903, they were back on the Outer Banks for what they hoped would lead to the first controlled flights.

Initially, they were still just testing with a glider and on October 26 were able to remain in the air for one minute and 12 seconds, the longest glide anyone had ever achieved.

But in testing the airplane and the engine, severe vibrations kept causing the tubular propeller shafts to break, which they then shipped back to Dayton for repair. After the second mishap, Orville hand-carried them back to Dayton and finally returned on December 11 with larger, stronger steel shafts.

Wilbur won the coin toss for the honor of making the first attempt, but on December 14 he took off at too sharp an angle and the plane went crashing down, damaging the control mechanism.

After working on the plane for two days, they then waited for the wind to pick up and on the morning of December 17 it was determined the conditions were perfect. Winds were in the 20-27 mph range and the air temperature hovered in the mid-30s F. This created an atmosphere called "low density altitude" that increased the effectiveness of the wings. Now it was Orville's turn. As Tom Crouch describes:

"This time the Wrights had staked out the launch rail on the level sand flats near the camp, wanting the liftoff to be unassisted by gravity. Preparations were complete by 10:30 a.m. Orville had set up the camera, aimed at the spot where he thought the airplane might rise into the air, and asked John Daniels to squeeze the bulb if anything interesting happened. The propellers were pulled through to draw fuel into the cylinders, after which the dry battery coil box was carried onto the lower wing to start the engine. With Wilbur steadying the right wingtip, Orville climbed into the pilot's position next to the roaring engine and released the restraining wire that held the machine in place.

"Slowly gaining speed against the cold headwind, the airplane clattered down the rail and into the air, flying 120 feet and touching the sand some 12 seconds after takeoff. The brothers and their helpers carried the 605-pound machine back to the starting point and warmed their hands in the shed for a few minutes. Then Wilbur took his position on the lower wing at 11:20 a.m. and made a flight of 175 feet in 12 seconds. Twenty minutes later, Orville flew 200 feet in 15 seconds. Just at noon Wilbur took his second turn, traveling 852 feet through the air in 59 seconds. On a lonely North Carolina beach, before a handful of witnesses, two men had made sustained controlled flights aboard a heavier-than-air machine. Humans had flown."

If you've never been to Kitty Hawk and the Wright Brothers Memorial, one of the great things about the place is the markers for the distance of each of those first four flights to give you a true perspective of the accomplishment.

Astronaut John Glenn, in a foreword to Tom Crouch's book, wrote:

"The Wrights were the first astronauts. Their initial short flight opened our quest to reach beyond the world we know. They were the first test pilots. Combining science with design intuition, they sought to go 'faster, higher, farther,' and after them the world would never be the same. Aviation was the defining technology of the 20th century, altering international relations, quickening commerce, changing the face of war. When I fly on an airliner, I am covering a distance in seconds that would have taken a day by horse and wagon. And I still try to get a window seat, because I have never lost my sense of wonder at looking down at our world from above."

Wright on.

Brian Trumbore