First Flight

(This column is out of sequence, as it was intended for publication on Saturday, April 19, 2014)

I’ve spent the past week in Corolla, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  One of the highlights of that area is the Wright Brothers National Memorial.  If you ever get the opportunity to visit there, don’t miss the memorial, and try to make it in time to listen to one of the rangers give the talk on the first flight. 

I guarantee that you will learn facts that you never knew before, such as the reason why Kitty Hawk was chosen from a list of 126 sites the Wright brothers investigated for their experiment.  It was, after all, a remote location with a travel time of over a week from their Dayton, Ohio home and workshop. 

There were a number of seemingly insurmountable problems that delayed the planned flight, not the least of which was the failure of several mechanical and engine parts that required several trips back to Dayton for repairs. And what started out as an autumn test soon became a race to beat winter weather and to keep a promise to their families to be home by Christmas. 

The improbability of making that first powered flight was astronomical.  Even though the scientific aeronautical theories of the Wright brothers were spot on, use of a 12 horsepower engine against a 27 mph headwind on a takeoff platform of less than 100 feet gave very long odds on the 650 pound structure with a 188 pound man riding it ever making it off the ground.  Ask yourself what airplane of today could achieve that.

It took four attempts that day to make a flight long enough to be considered successful.  The brothers took turns with one at the controls while the other ran alongside the craft holding on to one wing to maintain balance – there were no wheels, as they would have added both weight and drag, and the “plane” rode a single rail as its only contact with the ground. Orville just happened to be the pilot on the successful, 852-foot, 29-second fourth attempt that put them in the record books.

Yes, the history of aviation might have been completely different if that flight hadn’t been a success.  The Wrights were nearly out of time, money and patience, and there were several others vying for the right to be the first.

Another interesting fact about the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft is that it didn’t even survive the day.  Shortly after the successful flight, the wind took hold of it and it cart wheeled across the field to its total destruction.  Any replica you see today in just that – a replica of the original.  There are two of them at the memorial, one inside the museum and another about a mile away just south of the Memorial Hill.

As a footnote, if you do visit the Wright Brothers Memorial, be advised that is actually isn’t located in Kitty Hawk, but is now in what has been incorporated at Kill Devil Hills, NC.  That land was all known as Kitty Hawk back in 1903.  It became Kill Devil Hills back in 1953, fifty years after the famous “First Flight.”