First in Flight Read online

  To save weight, they used an engine block made of aluminum, cast at a local foundry. Taylor bored the engine’s four cylinders on the lathe. He made the pistons himself, too.

  As always, the Wrights were concerned with aerodynamics. The radiator, built in a vertical configuration, was to be mounted separate from the engine on the central forward upright of the airplane. The long, thin gas tank was attached behind a strut near the upper wing. Its capacity was only four-tenths of a gallon.

  The engine was undeniably crude, with no spark plugs, carburetor, or fuel pump. Gas was delivered via a rubber speaking-tube hose. The fuel-delivery system was gravity-fed, the gas flowing downward from the tank directly into the cylinders. Like the fuel line, the radiator was made of speaking-tube hose, though in this case the tubing was metal. The speed of the engine could not be adjusted in flight; it ran wide-open. The motor smoked, gave off noxious fumes, overheated quickly, spat oil and raw gasoline on the pilot, and made a noise to wake the dead.

  Nonetheless, it was a remarkable achievement under the circumstances. Begun in late December, the engine was completely built by mid-February. On the second day it was tested, February 13, the bearings froze, shattering the crankcase. The Wrights arranged with the foundry to have another one cast, but it was a full two months before it was finally delivered. Taylor had the engine rebuilt by May.

  Its performance was better than expected. The Wrights figured they needed an absolute minimum of eight or nine horsepower to get their airplane off the ground. In testing, their rebuilt engine delivered a surprising sixteen horsepower immediately after cranking, which quickly dropped to a fairly steady twelve horsepower.

  Charlie Taylor deserves a large share of the credit for the engine of the Wright Flyer, but the brothers faced their struggles with propeller design alone.

  They needed to know whether two propellers were preferable to one. They needed to know whether it was better to mount a propeller in front of or behind a wing. They needed to know how long and how wide their propellers should be, and what curvature they should have. They needed to know how fast they should turn for maximum efficiency

  The Wrights didn’t have the time or the means to test a variety of propeller designs. With no tools other than pencil and paper, they had to take a complex practical problem, express it in mathematics, and come up with an unequivocal answer: the best propellers for their particular engine and airframe should be so long, so wide, have such a curvature, and rotate at such a speed. The Wrights gave themselves one chance. They would build only a single set of propellers.

  Orville described the basic problem years later:

  It is hard to find even a point from which to make a start; for nothing about a propeller, or the medium in which it acts, stands still for a moment. The thrust depends upon the speed and the angle at which the blade strikes the air; the angle at which the blade strikes the air depends upon the speed at which the propeller is turning, the speed the machine is travelling forward, and the speed at which the air is slipping backward; the slip of the air backward depends upon the thrust exerted by the propeller, and the amount of air acted upon. When any of these changes, it changes all the rest, as they are all interdependent upon one another.

  Before the Wrights, aeronautical propellers were generally understood along the lines of a screw boring into a hard surface—pushed forward through the air while spinning, they generated lift. By contrast, the Wrights conceived of propellers as rotary wings, or wings moving in a spiral course—spun on their axes, they generated thrust. Much as a wing rises because the pressure on its lower side is greater than that on its upper side, a propeller moves forward because the pressure behind the blade is greater than that in front of the blade.

  Once the Wrights conceived of propellers as rotary wings, they understood that their wind-tunnel data on wing sections could be applied directly to propeller design. The airfoil shape that generated the greatest lift at different angles of attack would also generate the greatest thrust under a variety of conditions.

  No sooner did they solve one aspect of the problem than other difficulties presented themselves. For example, it stands to reason that the faster propellers turn, the more thrust they will produce. But that is not exactly the case. There comes a point at which propellers lose their “bite” on the air and fail to generate thrust. Keeping an airplane in the air requires that thrust be maintained. The Wrights calculated the speed at which their propellers would deliver maximum thrust and geared them accordingly, so that for every twenty-three rotations of the engine shaft, the propellers rotated eight times.

  What they finally arrived at, after filling five notebooks with calculations, were two narrow, slowly rotating propellers nearly eight and a half feet long. They would be mounted behind the wings and spin in opposite directions, so as to eliminate the effects of torque.

  One of the best testaments to the Wrights’ engineering genius is the fact that, on the Outer Banks the following fall, their propellers delivered thrust within 1 percent of what they’d calculated on paper.

  Five years after the first powered flights, other aviators were still discovering that, while their engines had more horsepower than the Wrights’, they still had less thrust at their disposal. The reason was the inefficiency of their propellers. The Wrights’ engine may have had a homemade feel to it, but their propellers were beyond state of the art.

  The brothers kept Octave Chanute apprised of their work, and he followed their progress closely. He also threw a scare into them a couple of times. Knowing the approximate size and weight of their airplane, and knowing that they were planning to power it with an engine producing only eight or nine horsepower, he gave the reasonable opinion that they were cutting their calculations too close. It was advisable to have a surplus of power, yet the Wrights’ engine might be inadequate to get them into the air even if it performed exactly as designed. Chanute further told them that they could anticipate a 25-to 30-percent loss of power between the engine and the propellers. They had only figured on a 10-to 15-percent loss. If Chanute was correct, they would never get off the ground.

  Once they found in Dayton that their engine delivered roughly twelve horsepower, rather than eight or nine, and once they learned on the Outer Banks that the loss of power in transmission was only 5 to 10 percent, not 25 to 30, they knew they could fly.

  Those Who Witnessed

  Long before the 1903 season, the Wrights were well known around the Kitty Hawk area. They had visited in the homes and shops of a number of local people, a good many of whom had in turn come to see their camp. Members of the Tate family—everyone from Bill and Addie to Dan and young Tom—had played an active role in stitching their wing cloth, launching their gliders, or even riding aboard them. But the Wrights had never required more than minimal help with their actual experiments. Having one extra person around camp to man a wing during launching was all they needed.

  That changed in 1903. The 1901 glider had weighed a little under 100 pounds. The 1902 machine had boasted 305 square feet of wing area and a 32-foot wingspan. Craft of such size were easily maneuvered by two men. By contrast, the 1903 Flyer—informally dubbed the “whopper flying machine”—checked in with slightly over 500 square feet of wing area, had a 40-foot wingspan, and weighed nearly 675 pounds. Now, the Wrights needed all the help they could get.

  Their first attempt at powered flight, on December 14, 1903, was a case in point. For launching, the Flyer sat atop a small carriage that ran along a sixty-foot monorail. Built in four fifteen-foot sections, the rail was jokingly christened the “junction railroad.” Faced with moving the Flyer across a flat stretch of sand and part way up the side of the dune from which they planned to launch, the Wrights and their helpers that day apparently laid the junction railroad outside the hangar, pushed the Flyer sixty feet along the track, dug up the last fifteen-foot section, placed it in front of the Flyer, moved another fifteen feet, dug up the last rail, placed it in front of the Flyer, moved another fifteen
feet, and so on. It was a laborious quarter-mile.

  December 17, the date of their historic flights, was no easier in that regard. The Wrights and their helpers laid the junction railroad on a flat stretch of sand and left it there, apparently manhandling the Flyer back to the starting point after each flight.

  All of a sudden, manpower was at a premium.

  With a goal of making the first powered heavier-than-air flights in history, they also wanted witnesses—as many as they could get. They extended a general invitation to people in the area to come and witness their flights, as well as a couple of personal invitations. However, since their activities were heavily dependent on the weather and could not be scheduled far in advance, and since their means of announcing an attempt at flight was no more sophisticated than a flag tacked to the side of one of their camp buildings, it was unlikely that their plans would reach the attention of more than a few. For all practical purposes, their witnesses were to be limited to whatever camp guests were on hand and the men of the Kill Devil Hills Lifesaving Station.

  The Wrights had been developing a friendship with the Outer Banks lifesavers ever since their first visit to North Carolina. Their photographs from 1900 included shots of the Kitty Hawk station and of its crew formally posed and drilling on the ocean. In 1902, they got four men of the Kill Devil Hills crew to pose in the door-way of their station wearing white hats and jackets. The Wrights sometimes visited the stations during idle hours or took shelter there when their camp was in disrepair.

  Their relationship with the lifesavers was never closer than in 1903. Orville’s journal from that year contains numerous references to his and Wilbur’s trips to the Kill Devil Hills station. On other occasions, one or another of the lifesavers traveled to the Wrights’ camp to deliver parcels.

  Jesse Ward, the station keeper, ferried George Spratt across Roanoke Sound to Manteo when he was on his way back north in 1903.

  Surfman John Daniels brought the Wrights word when Octave Chanute left home and headed east in hopes of witnessing the 1903 experiments; surfman Adam Etheridge brought news of Chanute’s imminent arrival on the coast; and Captain Ward apparently escorted the elderly gentleman into camp personally. After Chanute’s visit, surfman Willie Dough sailed him back to Manteo.

  In short, the lifesavers were a part of the daily lives of the Wrights and their associates and a major aid to the running of the camp throughout the 1903 season.

  Anyone familiar with the story of the Outer Banks lifesavers will not be surprised to learn of that level of service. Many of the old stations have been moved, restored, or converted for use as private homes, restaurants, museums, and offices. They are about as beloved among history-minded visitors to the Outer Banks as the great lighthouses, Fort Raleigh, and the national memorial to the Wright brothers.

  The water along the Outer Banks has seen heavy commercial traffic since the early days of the United States. Historian David Stick reports that in the 1830s, visitors to Nags Head could climb Jockey’s Ridge and see as many as half a dozen vessels on the horizon at one time. Conservative estimates of the number of ships lost in the area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic place the total upwards of six hundred. More likely, wrecks number in the thousands. A single major storm could sink six or eight vessels off the Outer Banks.

  The United States Lifesaving Service began operations in 1847 with stations on the New Jersey coast. Seven years later, it expanded to Long Island and the Great Lakes. In 1874, in an effort to cut shipping losses, Congress allocated funds for the building of seven lifesaving stations on the Outer Banks. Those original stations, twelve to fifteen miles apart, were at Jones Hill (Currituck Beach), Caffeys Inlet, Kitty Hawk, Nags Head, Bodie Island (Oregon Inlet), Chicamacomico, and Little Kinnakeet, from north to south.

  Just how necessary lifesaving service was came to light three years later. In late November 1877, the steamer USS Huron sank off Nags Head, 103 persons drowning. Tragically, this took place just a week before the lifesavers—then employed seasonally—were scheduled to begin winter duty.

  In late January 1878, the steamer Metropolis went down off the northern Outer Banks, 85 people perishing. This wreck occurred off Poyner Hill, between the Currituck Beach and Caffeys Inlet stations. The lifesavers could not reach the scene in time.

  Partly due to two such losses occurring within a two-month span, another eleven stations were funded, the Kill Devil Hills station among them. The plan was to have stations spaced roughly seven miles apart, which would allow quick response anywhere along the Outer Banks.

  Though only four years had passed since the first stations were built, the design was already evolving. The differences between the first and second generations can be seen in the 1874 Kitty Hawk station, now a restaurant, and the 1878 Kill Devil Hills station, now a real-estate office in Corolla, on the northern Outer Banks. The 1874 stations were barnlike and had open-air lookouts, while the 1878 versions were more elaborate two-story affairs, generally with enclosed lookout towers and distinctive gingerbread trim.

  More important, the competency with which the stations were run was also evolving.

  By most standards, the stations were a failure initially. Keepers were paid two hundred dollars annually. Surfmen received forty dollars a month for their three or four months of resident service, along with a three-dollar stipend for each time they were called to a wreck during the off-season. This was good pay for the time and place, good enough to tempt local politicians to appoint their relatives and associates to the stations with little regard for their fitness for duty. Investigations into North Carolina and Virginia stations between 1875 and 1877 led to the dismissal of nearly 20 percent of their employees, including four keepers. Among these lifesavers were several teachers and a blacksmith—men with no knowledge of their particular duties, or of sea rescue in general. The investigators found insubordination and nepotism. At one station, five of the seven employees were dismissed as incompetent.

  Hiring practices were well on their way to being overhauled by the time the second wave of Outer Banks stations was built.

  A further problem was the staffing schedule. Unless a vessel happened to wreck during December, January, February, or perhaps March, it was out of luck unless the keeper and the six surfmen could be rounded up immediately from far and wide.

  Staffing was expanded to eight months of the year in the 1880s, and an eighth man was added to the crews. Year-round staffing came after the outbreak of World War I.

  From those haphazard beginnings grew a disciplined, professional service. The lifesavers were not the supermen they are sometimes romanticized to have been, but simply local fishermen. Some of them were illiterate. In fact, the ability to read and write was sometimes the deciding factor in the selection of station keepers.

  Lifesavers were held to a high standard. District supervisors supposedly wore white gloves during unannounced inspections. At some stations, the men were not allowed to play cards during idle hours. One keeper made his men sit down to meals in the same alignment in which they hauled their surfboat to the beach and manned it during rescue operations, with punishment doled out to anyone who deviated. At another station, a surfman supposedly lost his job for no other reason than his inability to see a bird atop a telephone pole some distance down the beach. He wept upon being fired.

  As the service grew in sophistication, so did the stations themselves. They were built for one specific purpose—sea rescue—not as outposts dedicated to civic betterment. Nonetheless, communities tended to grow around them. The lifesaving stations generally had their own stables, coal yard, and separate cookhouse. They eventually had a communications room containing telephone and telegraph equipment. They generally had the best facilities for gathering rainwater in the area, with large tanks to catch water running off each side of the roof, and off the cookhouse roof, too. During dry conditions, local people sometimes came to the lifesaving stations for water. People also came for shelter during heavy weather. They gathe
red to watch the weekly surfboat drills on the beach. Children came to watch the lifesavers can figs or make ice cream.

  Activity at the lifesaving stations was similar to that at modern fire stations, with long stretches of routine drills punctuated by periods of dangerous activity under extreme conditions. One day of the week was devoted to beach-apparatus drills and another to surfboat drills. Another day was spent in groundskeeping and building maintenance, another in resuscitation drills, and another in signal drills, during which the lifesavers were trained in communications with ships offshore.

  That was during the easy times. It was an unfortunate fact of life that the lifesavers were most likely to be called upon to perform rescue operations in the worst weather.

  During heavy storms and at night, tower lookouts were of limited value. Beach patrols were especially important at those times. One heading north and one south, the surfmen walked roughly three and a half miles down the beach to where a small halfway house stood between each pair of stations. There, they waited for the lifesaver patrolling from the neighboring station. The two men exchanged small badges they had been issued before their patrol, walked the three and a half miles back to their home stations, and turned in the badges as proof of having done their duty.

  Nighttime patrols were a difficult task. The men sometimes walked backwards to keep the rain and blowing sand out of their faces. Some stepped on birds huddled on the beach. A few even stumbled across human bodies washed up on the sand. Some contracted pneumonia.

  Naturally enough, the preference was always for staying out of the water during rescue operations. The two best-known implements of rescue for ships wrecked close to shore were the Lyle gun and the breeches buoy. The Lyle gun—a small bronze cannon with a range of five hundred yards—was brought to a point on the beach opposite the wreck, from where it fired a line to the ship. A three-inch hawser bearing a breeches buoy—a life ring with pant legs—was later drawn out to the ship. The stranded sailors stepped into the breeches buoy like a pair of trousers and were pulled to shore one at a time.