December 17th of 1903, marks the very first time a heavier than air machine, driven by an engine and carrying a man, rose into the air and actually flew off the beach near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, by the intrepid aeronauts, Orville and Wilbur Wright.
Americans, such as Hiram Maxim, Octave Chanute and Samuel Langley, along with a German, Otto Lilienthal, the Frenchmen, Louis-Pierre Mouillard and Clement Adler, and an Englishman, Percy S. Pilcher, had all built and flown manned gliders, as well as a few powered models, during the late ’80s and the ’90s. Some of these machines flew and some did not. Both Lilienthal and Pilcher died when their full sized gliders crashed after being caught in sudden wind gusts.
Lighter-than-air craft had been around for a century. Two Frenchmen, brothers Etienne and Joseph Montgolfier, made the first successful manned hot air balloon ascent in 1783. During the American Civil War, both sides used balloons for observation. When Paris was surrounded and besieged by the Germans during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, balloons carried people in and out of the city. However, a heavier than air machine, especially one powered by an engine, was still believed, in most scientific circles, to be impossible.
Both Langley and Adler had experimented with steam-powered aircraft. Adler claimed to have flown 150 feet in one such machine on October 9, 1890, and later he said he crashed after flying 300 feet. He got the French army interested and, with their financial help, built a steam-powered plane named the Avion that looked for all the world like a huge bat. When Adler tried to demonstrate the Avion to army officers in 1897, he said it flew, but there is no documentation that it ever left the ground. In any event, the Avion was wrecked, and the French generals lost interest.
Samuel Langley was a scientist and not a mechanic. He spent years studying birds, wind currents and thermal effects. He built small models of different sizes and shapes and whirled them in the air, studying the effect of air flowing over surfaces. Finally, Langley built a thirteen-foot long model plane powered by a small steam engine. On May 6th of 1896, the model was launched from Langley’s houseboat on the Potomac River, just off Quantico, Virginia, and flew for some 3,000 feet before running out of fuel. This is considered the first heavier than air machine to fly under its own power in America, although it was unmanned.
This flight, as well as the fact that Langley was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, prompted the U.S. Army to give Langley $50,000 to build a man-carrying airplane. A big problem was the power plant. Steam engines were not only heavy, but also difficult to fire in the air, while the required fuel and water were heavy as well and took up a lot of space. Internal combustion engine technology was in its infancy, and gas engines were both heavy and unreliable. Even more troubling was the matter of controlling the aircraft. The uncertainties of the wind, along with thermal effects such as updrafts and downdrafts, were the chief problems facing the early aeronauts, and Langley had not yet completely figured them out.
Langley’s airplane, which he called the Aerodrome, was a tandem monoplane, with one set of wings in front and an identical set behind the engine and pilot. To obtain some stability, a tail with two narrow horizontal, and one vertical surface was mounted behind the rear wing. This tail could be moved up and down to give the pilot vertical control. A small rudder hung beneath the rear set of wings so the craft could be steered right or left. A young pilot and engineer named C.H. Manly built a 5-cylinder, rotary engine that weighed only 207 pounds, including 20 pounds of coolant, yet produced more than 52 horsepower, a marvel for its day. The craft’s frame was made of steel tubing, while the wings were constructed of light wood covered with oiled silk. The total weight of the plane, engine and pilot, was just 830 pounds
On September 7, 1903, the plane was mounted on a catapult on the roof of a large houseboat, which then proceeded to the center of the Potomac River. The boat was turned so the plane would be launched into the wind, and C.H. Manly turned a propeller, starting the engine. Manly then climbed into the pilot’s seat, revved the engine to full power, and signaled a mechanic to release the catapult. The plane shot down the track and everyone held their breath. Right at the end of the track, a forward wing caught on something and the plane plunged into the Potomac. Very little damage was done and Manly was unhurt, so a second attempt was made on December 8, 1903, just nine days before the Wright Brothers famous first flight.
This time, something at the rear of the plane caught, ripping the tail almost completely off. Manly was unable to control the craft and it climbed straight up into the air, hung there for a moment, then flipped over backward and fell into the river. Manly bobbed to the surface unhurt, but the plane was wrecked, the money was used up, and the army and Congress had had enough. One disgusted Congressman wrote: “The only thing he (Langley) ever made fly was government money.”
Langley died three years later, a much ridiculed and disappointed man. He finally received recognition in 1917, when the first dedicated army air base in the country was built in Virginia. Langley Field, now known as Langley Air Force Base, later became the headquarters for NASA and the American space program. Sam Langley would be proud.
Sam Moore
