the event marked the beginning of his lifelong interest in aviation.
In January 1907, Curtiss assembled a saddle, a pair of handlebars, a frame, two wheels, and an 8-cylinder, 40-horsepower, dirigible engine and took it all to Florida. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell was one of the group that watched Curtiss and his motorcycle roar down Ormond Beach at 137 miles per hour. This record was destined to stand as man’s fastest speed on wheels for some 30 years. The Curtiss engine interested Bell. He had been a friend of Langley’s and had lately been experimenting with man-carrying kites. Could an engine be used on his kites? He invited Curtiss to visit him and discuss the possibility.
The following summer, at Bell’s summer home in Nova Scotia, the Aerial Experiment Association was organized. Besides Bell and Curtiss, its members were Lieutenant Selfridge (soon to die in a plane crash), and two young Canadian engineers, John A. D. McCurdy and F. W. Baldwin. It was agreed that each in turn would take the lead in designing a plane, and Mrs. Bell put up the money to build the machines in Curtiss’ shop at Hammondsport, New York.
Selfridge designed the first plane, and late in 1907, F. W. Baldwin flew it some 300 feet over frozen Lake Keuka before he crashed. In May 1908, Curtiss flew Baldwin’s design 1,000 feet. Then on the Fourth of July he flew a mile in a plane of his own design—the June Bug. As the Wrights did not make a first public flight at Fort Myer until September, this flight won the Scientific American prize offered for the first American straightaway flight of more than a kilometer. Despite the fact that the Wrights were still the only Americans who knew how to control an aircraft so as to fly in circles, Curtiss promptly advertised aeroplanes for sale with flying instruction for each purchaser.
Meanwhile, “Cap” Baldwin, the blimp builder, made the low bid for the Army’s first dirigible order. In order to qualify, the machine had to fly under power for two hours and be able to maneuver in any direction. In the spring of 1908, Curtiss built his first water-cooled engine for this machine, and helped Baldwin demonstrate his blimp at Fort Myer. It consisted of a long, open frame under a cigar-shaped balloon. Baldwin sat aft and steered. Out in front, Curtiss manned the engine and the elevator. While they flew, and passed, the Army tests, Orville Wright was assembling his plane on the same parade ground.
Curtiss now went seriously into the aeroplane business. He taught himself more airmanship, and he advertised. In 1909, he delivered a plane to the New York Aeronautical Association at Mineola and showed a couple of its members, who were wealthy sportsmen, how to fly it. Later, financed by them, he represented America in France at the world’s first International Air Meet and brought home the Gordon-Bennett cup for speed. The Aero Club of America gave him the first Federation Aeronautique Internationale license issued in America.
13. Curtiss took the wheels off the June Bug, added two floats, or canoe-like pontoons, and renamed the contraption the Loon.
Curtiss experimented with the hydroaeroplane, as he called it, hoping to recoup his fortunes with basic patents almost as valuable as the Wrights’. In 1908, he began by mounting his June Bug on a pair of canoeshaped pontoons, but the plane could never get up sufficient speed to take off. Before the Belmont meet he tried hydroplane floats, got up to speed, but failed to break free of the water’s suction; however, he was certain that he was close to success.
Curtiss won $10,000, on 29 May 1909, which had been offered by the New York World, for the first flight from Albany to New York City. He made the 137-mile trip in 152 minutes, with two stops for gas; his fame now began to approach that of the Wrights. He organized the Curtiss-Herring Company to build planes, and air show teams to advertise them. The Wrights met this competition with exhibition teams of their own, and patent infringement suits.
On 22 October 1910, the aviation world gathered at Belmont Park, New York, for the United States’ first international air meet. The Wrights kept aloof from social functions, associating only with their own pilots. They looked on other fliers as chiselers, who by using bootleg craft sought to avoid the payment of license fees justly due the Wrights. The Curtiss clique and other pilots regarded the Wrights as dour, unfriendly, and unapproachable. This situation developed into a lengthy suit for patent infringement, initiated by the Wright brothers. The crux of the issue lay between the principle of wing warping, which they had developed, and the hinged aileron that Curtiss built between the wings of his biplanes.
This issue was most bitterly fought out. In the end the federal courts ruled that the principle of wing-warping, invented by the Wrights, had been infringed by Curtiss’ hinged aileron. The legal quarrel quickly developed into a vicious personal feud which divided the aviation world during its early years and vastly complicated the whole aeronautical situation prior to 1917. The Wrights’ cockpit control system was complicated and unnatural, and produced pilots who flew but could solo only if a weight was in the other seat. The Curtiss system used normal reactions somewhat like the Deperdussin, a system of stick control which had been developed in France, and which eventually became standard for all aircraft.
Nearly seven years had passed since the memorable flight of the Wright brothers on the dunes of Kitty Hawk. In the years to follow, the U. S. Navy would take the first moves in making this new plaything of the air a vital part of future fighting fleets.
1. Preparing for Eugene Ely’s flight off the USS Birmingham, 14 November 1910. Sailors had constructed an 83-foot platform from the bridge rail to the main deck at the bow. Ely’s Curtiss biplane was hoisted aboard, and while the Birmingham got under way, the flier and his mechanics installed the engine and double-checked the plane.
CHAPTER TWO: THE NAVY INVESTIGATES AVIATION
Washington Irving Chambers, Captain, United States Navy, was of medium height with brown hair that was beginning to grow thin and a half-moon mustache above his soft mouth. He had stood twenty-seventh in his 1876 class of forty-one graduates from the Naval Academy. In those days, promotion was slow. Two decades after graduation, during the war with Spain, he was a lieutenant commander at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhode Island. Then followed successive tours of duty at sea. His first command was the schooner Frolic. Next came the gunboat Nashville, followed by the monitor Florida.
During the following years, Chambers had finally achieved the line officer’s goal—a battleship command—and wore his captain’s stripes with self-confidence and pride. Chambers worked for Admiral Dewey in 1904, but he did not accompany him to St. Louis when the Admiral watched Santos-Dumont fly his dirigible. When the Wrights flew from Fort Myer in 1908 and 1909, he was Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, but there is no evidence that he took a professional interest in them. When the Wright brothers flew up the Hudson River to Grant’s Tomb, he witnessed the event from his command, the battleship Louisiana, but he was unimpressed.
Less than three months later, because of his familiarity with ordnance material, the Navy Department cut short his captain’s cruise before it had well begun and ordered him back to Washington for duty. He asked to stay at sea, but was told his “special abilities” were needed in Washington, and in December 1909 he became assistant to Captain Frank Friday Fletcher, who was Aide for Materiel to Secretary of the Navy Meyer.
Nine months later Chambers was handed the aviation mail as an additional duty. There was nothing in his past experience to qualify him in the new field of aeronautics, so he proceeded to read everything he, or the naval librarian, could find on the subject. The mechanical details of the flying machines, both proposed and in use, fascinated him. But he had never been in the air, or closely observed any aircraft, and could only assess what he read against his own
