Unlocking the Sky Read online

  Of course, Langley, who had experimented for years with a cleverly designed wind machine to shape his aerodrome’s airfoils, knew that the key lay in the thrust of a powerful motor. But after scouring the United States and Europe, Langley was discouraged to find that no existing manufacturer could deliver an engine with the ratio of weight to power he needed. Internal combustion engines, a relatively new species at the turn of the century, were heavy: the best gasoline engines weighed upwards of twenty pounds for each unit of horsepower they delivered. To get the full-scale aerodrome off the ground, Langley knew, he needed at least a twelve-horsepower engine that was twice as light as the best engines available.

  Unable to find such an engine, Langley decided to build his own. Polling his scientific colleagues to find the brightest new engineering mind in America, he engaged the services of Charles Manly, a promising engineer just graduating from Cornell University. By all accounts, Manly was a gifted, if unconventional, student. His habit was to abruptly leave his exams as soon as he thought he had done enough to earn a passing grade—much to the shock and annoyance of his teachers. Yet there was little doubt about Manly’s command of the subject matter, especially of mathematical principles. When he entered Cornell as a sophomore in 1896, the math department professors determined that he was the best mathematics student ever to grace the university.

  Upon joining Langley as chief assistant in 1898, Manly had no experience in the fledgling field of aeronautics, but he made good use of his exceptional math and engineering aptitude and delivered the final piece of Langley’s grand plan. Although it would take years to complete, Manly created what was arguably the world’s most advanced engine. Taking the most promising engine Langley had found,* a rotary engine that could produce only eight horsepower, Manly rebuilt it, crafting a five-cylinder, water-cooled motor that weighed 207 pounds (with 20 pounds of cooling water) but delivered more than 52 horsepower—an astounding ratio of less than 4 pounds per unit of horsepower. It was such a remarkable piece of engineering that no one would match it for almost a decade.

  Langley joined this engine to a full-sized aerodrome based upon his successful quarter-scale Model No. 6. Like the model, the plane used a tandem-wing design, with one set of wings in front of the engine and pilot and one behind. For stability, Langley placed the wings at a so-called dihedral angle: looking at the aircraft from the front, the wings protruded slightly upward from the fuselage, like a partly flattened letter V. By moving the craft’s gangly Penaud tail up or down, the pilot would have vertical control, and the pilot could steer right or left by means of a small rudder placed below the second set of wings. The result was something like an overgrown mechanical dragonfly, a moniker the press had adopted for Langley’s earlier unmanned models.

  From tip to tip, the two sets of wings had a span of some 48 feet, giving the aerodrome more than 1,000 square feet of surface area to support itself—a total carefully calculated by Langley to take into account the law of the cube. In yet another notable innovation, his team constructed the aircraft’s frame from steel tubing, making it both strong and light. Even including Manly and his engine, the entire craft weighed just 830 pounds.

  On December 8, 1903, the years of effort seemed about to come to fruition. Langley had a tested design. He had the world’s most advanced lightweight power plant, designed and built by his skillful young engineer. Now—with some luck—he would send a human being in a heavier-than-air contraption to soar like Icarus, albeit at a safer distance from the sun.

  By 4:30 P.M., the winter sky is beginning to darken; shifting gusts make it exceedingly difficult for the tugboats, at the end of long cables, to keep the houseboat heading into the wind. In a hurried conference, Langley and Manly agree that they cannot postpone the test. It is a fateful choice. Perhaps Langley feels that his time is running out. As Manly recalls, the unspoken sense between them was that “it was now or never.”

  With excitement and resolve, Manly strips off his outer clothes. Since he knows that even a successful flight will land him in the frigid Potomac, he dispenses with the prevailing starched propriety of the day in the name of science: shedding his jacket and tie, he will make the journey in long johns, light shoes, and a specially made cork-lined jacket. In a charmingly optimistic gesture, Manly has also fastened a compass onto the left legging of his long johns. Presumably, it will help him keep his bearings in the event the machine carries him out of sight, far into the gusty sky before him.

  Reaching between the plane’s wings, Manly opens the throttle and cranks the propellers. The engine’s roar silences the crowd onshore. Two mechanics remain on the upper deck, making final spot checks while Langley shepherds his distinguished guests onto small boats. According to Langley’s plan, the boats will provide the dignitaries the best view of the launching—while allowing them to provide assistance should a rescue attempt be required.

  Climbing through the aerodrome’s brace wires, Manly seats himself in the cockpit. It is a small, three-foot-long, fabric-sided booth containing a wooden board to sit on and a single instrument: a tachometer to show the motor’s speed. The tachometer’s dial quickly registers that the motor has come up to full power, turning the two propellers behind his head at 950 revolutions per minute. He rests his hands upon two small wheels mounted before him. One controls the up-and-down motion of the tail; the other operates the rudder on the underside of the fuselage.

  From his elevated perch atop the metal catapult, some sixty feet above the Potomac, Manly feels the houseboat rock and lurch beneath him. Ever a man of science, he focuses on the task at hand and tries to stay calm. The awed spectators watch as the white dragonfly stands still for a pregnant moment against the fading light. Finally, the young engineer raises his hand, signaling a mechanic to pull the trigger of the launching mechanism.

  Perfectly, as planned, the aerodrome shoots along the rails of the launching track. It gains speed toward the track’s end.

  Suddenly, Manly hears a screeching sound and feels a violent jerk. He doesn’t yet know it, but the tail of the plane bends sideways away from the fuselage. Thrust from the catapult’s springs, however, nothing can stop the machine now, and it careens off the roof of the houseboat. With the plane’s tail uselessly askew, Manly can’t hold the aerodrome steady, and the powerful propellers push it nearly straight upward into the sky. For several long seconds, the aerodrome hovers like a helicopter before it slowly, inevitably, flips back on itself and crashes into the river.

  Almost before anyone can register it, the machine is in the dark, cold water. It sinks below the surface, then bobs up to reveal a crumpled version of its former self. A sympathetic moan rises from the crowd as they watch for any sign of Manly.

  Oddly, there will soon be a palpable sense of relief that the aerodrome doesn’t fly—perhaps a kind of catharsis. While those on hand that day bemoaned the aerodrome’s crash, public reaction to the news will be decidedly less supportive. In newspapers, in scientific circles, and in a rising tide of invective, the crash of the aerodrome is greeted not as a setback but as a deserved defeat—and a comeuppance for its backers. Almost uniformly, the press, academic colleagues, and government officials concur that Langley’s failed attempt represents an appalling waste of money. A crazy idea. Even a national disgrace.

  Press accounts of the fiasco greatly bolster public skepticism about the possibility of human flight. Ironically, in just nine brief winter days, on December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright make history by carrying a man aloft for 852 feet along the windswept beach of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. But, on this fateful cusp of aviation history, a New York Times editorial dubs Langley’s project “Langley’s Folly” and declares that the only way a “man-carrying” airplane might ever succeed is if mathematicians and mechanics work steadily at the task “for the next one to ten million years.”

  A few, like Alexander Graham Bell, defend Langley, but the swell of derision drowns them out. On the floor of the House of Representatives, for instance, Co
ngress member Thomas Robinson of Indiana ridicules the expenditure of government funds on a flying machine. A regiment of Langley machines couldn’t even “conquer the Fiji Islands,” he argues, “except, perhaps, by scaring their people to death.” Robinson likens the military’s sponsorship of Langley’s aerodrome to funding someone who promises to build “a railroad to the moon” or “buildings beginning with the roof, with no foundation.” Many of Robinson’s colleagues in the House concur. As Congress member Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska notes scornfully about Langley: “The only thing he ever made fly was government money.”

  Disappointed and demoralized by the failure and the storm of criticism, Langley turns his back on aeronautics. He resumes his duties at the Smithsonian Institution until his death, a little over two years later in February 1906. During those two years, he suffers often-merciless ridicule. Prior to the abortive flight, supporters had nicknamed Langley’s plane the “dragonfly” for its tandem-wing design. Afterward, it is more often referred to as the “buzzard.”

  And what of Manly, the pilot and engineer? His own account captures the end of the ill-fated spectacle:

  Almost before he could realize what was happening, Manly found himself submerged in the Potomac’s icy December water, trapped beneath the aerodrome. As he recounts: “My cork-lined canvas jacket was caught in the fittings of the frameworks so that I could not dive deeper and get away. At the same time, the floor of the aviator’s car was pressing against my head, preventing me from rising to the surface.”

  Onlookers watched nervously from the tugboats and other craft. But Manly remained trapped below.

  “Exerting all the strength I could muster,” Manly recounts, “I succeeded in ripping the jacket entirely in two, thus freeing myself from the fastenings which had held me. I dove under the machine and swam under the water for some distance until I thought I was out from beneath it.”

  Manly’s ordeal was not yet over, though.

  “Upon rising to the surface,” he recalls, “I hit my head upon a block of ice. This necessitated another dive to get free of the ice.”

  One worker, Fred Hewitt, strained over the railing on the lower deck of the houseboat to try to glimpse Manly returning to the surface of the swirling, dark, deadly cold water.

  “Upon coming to the surface,” Manly recalled, “I noticed Mr. Hewitt, one of the workmen, about to plunge in. Before I could call out that I was safe, Mr. Hewitt had heroically dived in, thinking that I was trapped under the machine.”

  In the confusion, though, the houseboat had drifted and was now moving down upon Manly, Hewitt, and the aerodrome. Seeing this, Manly shouted for the tug to pull the houseboat away. And he and Hewitt were promptly yanked onto a rowboat by onlookers and ferried over to the houseboat.

  Manly was uninjured but the frigid water had taken its toll; he collapsed as Dr. Nash hurriedly cut the clothing from his body. Moments later, wrapped in warm blankets and fortified with whiskey, the ever-courteous Manly startled the group by delivering what one discreet account describes as a “most voluble series of blasphemies.” Dr. Nash said that, in his long career as a naval officer, serving in many parts of the world, he had never seen an act of courage “that equaled the cool valor of the pioneer pilot.”

  The onset of darkness made it difficult for workers to salvage the aerodrome from the river. By the time they finally hauled it back onto the houseboat, it was badly damaged and, having caught on the line fastened to the tugboat, had broken fully in half. Langley recalls that, in his years of testing aircraft, many accidents had caused equally serious damage to his prototypes. But, given the time of year, the lack of funds, and most of all the ignominious disgrace the team all felt, this accident would mark an end point for the aerodrome.

  Nonetheless, Langley used his own personal funds to carefully box up the pieces of the aerodrome for storage at the Smithsonian. He said he was sure the parts might someday “attest to what they really represent as an engineering accomplishment.”

  Why did the aerodrome crash? Despite a century of speculation, the cause remains a mystery. We know the rear section of the machine dragged and collapsed before the aerodrome cleared the houseboat catapult. But what caused it to drag remains uncertain. Given a history of trouble with the catapult, extraordinary care had been taken to ensure that the mechanism would function flawlessly.

  Major Montgomery M. Macomb, the official observer from the U.S. War Department Board of Ordnance and Fortification, leaves the question open in his official rendition of events. As Macomb reports: “The car was set in motion, the engine working perfectly, but there was something wrong with the launching. The rear guy post seemed to drag, bringing the rudder down on the launching ways, and a crashing rending sound, followed by the collapse of the rear wings, showed that the machine had been wrecked in the launching; just how it was impossible to see.”

  The wind could surely have been a factor. The day was clear, but the cold, gusty wind squalls added a considerable element of danger and uncertainty. Especially given the wings’ broad surface area, an untimely gust could easily have blown the plane out of kilter as it sped down the launching track, causing it to snag on the mechanism along the way. In fact, it remains unclear why Langley and Manly decided to make the attempt at all that day given the unfavorable weather conditions. In retrospect, it seems like an uncharacteristic rashness overtook them after years of long and patient labor.

  Of course, the leading explanation for the crash was that the aerodrome’s frame was too weak or its design flawed. And this may have been the case. But Langley’s record of accomplishment with similar designs and his systematic testing regimen—all recorded in copious scientific notes—cannot be ignored. The frame of steel tubing and the wooden-ribbed wings had all survived elaborate stress tests. Increasingly heavy bags of sand had been placed upon them to simulate air pressure, and great care was taken to make sure the wings’ construction was both strong and flexible. As Manly put it: “I cannot emphasize too strongly that there was neither fault in design nor inherent weakness in any part of this large aerodrome. The whole machine had been subjected to the most severe tests and strains in the [Smithsonian] Institution’s shops in the endeavor to find any possible points of weakness and had shown itself able to withstand any strain it would meet in the air.”

  Today, of course, we would simply study the slow-motion replay or conduct a computer simulation to determine what went wrong. Certainly, even in 1903, a photographic record of the event might have helped solve the mystery of the flight’s failure. But not a single photo captured the disabled craft at the onset of its cataclysmic failure. By 4:45 P.M. in December, the light had faded. The only known surviving picture of the flight itself, made by a Washington Star photographer, glimpses the aerodrome against a dark sky in a near-vertical position with its rear wings and tail in shambles.

  Ultimately, all the second guessing cannot fully resolve the question of the aerodrome’s viability—a question all the more dramatic and mysterious given its precedent-setting place in history. True to form, Langley limited his comments about the affair to the facts. He took pride, he said, that he and Manly had indisputably built a powerful engine twice as light as deemed possible by the best engine builders of the day. As for the aerodrome itself, he objected strenuously only to the “erroneous accounts” that asserted that the plane could not fly, noting that “the machine has never had a chance to fly at all, but that the failure occurred on its launching ways; and the question of its ability to fly is consequently an untried one.”

  While Langley was undoubtedly discouraged, turning away from the problem of flight at the end of his life, his younger colleagues and many admirers clung steadfast to the conviction that his “untried” plane would have flown if given the chance.

  A decade later, when the age of aviation was in full bloom, a New York Times reporter looked back on his paper’s earlier dismissive coverage and concluded: “The history of invention has no record more pathetic than that of S
amuel P. Langley. At the very moment when success was in his grasp, when the dreams of a lifetime were about to come true and the labors of years of toil to be rewarded, the cup was dashed from his lips through the failure, not of the invention itself, but of a purely mechanical contrivance of minor importance. Derided in Congress and held up by the newspaper wits of the world as a target for their jests, Langley must have died a thoroughly discouraged man.”

  Alexander Graham Bell had arrived at a similar conclusion much earlier. After Langley’s death, Bell delivered a eulogy at a commemorative ceremony: “No one has contributed more to the modern revival of interest in flying machines of the heavier-than-air type than our own Professor Langley.” Bell added that his friend, as an aviation pioneer, had to face “not only the natural difficulties of his subject, but the ridicule of a skeptical world.”

  Ironically, years before the aerodrome fiasco, Langley had ended his well-known scientific textbook, The New Astronomy, with a parable that presaged much about the aeronautical predicament he faced at the end of his life. Langley intended the fable as an optimistic gloss on how little scientists know about the universe, but it stands equally well as an epitaph for a man who persevered for years amid a chorus of conservative critics and naysayers:

  “I have read somewhere a story about a race of ephemeral insects who live but an hour,” Langley wrote. “To those who are born in the early morning the sunrise is the time of youth. They die of old age while its beams are yet gathering force, and only their descendants live on to midday: while it is another race which sees the sun decline, from that which saw it rise.” In Langley’s story, the generation of imagined insects alive at twilight gathers worriedly to hear from their wisest philosopher about what to make of the imminent sunset. The wise insect explains gloomily that generations of insect scientists have determined through induction that the sun moves only westward. And, since the sun is now nearing the western horizon, he says, “science herself points to the conclusion that it is about to disappear forever,” marking the certain demise of the insects’ world.