JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2772

In the times that I’ve had to research the Wright Brothers (they do deserve that capital “B” if they are not named separately) I’ve never seen a reference for their 1910 flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. The school came to be as part of an effort to educate a team of fliers who could then go out and educate the general public in the art of flying.

This was a solidly-grounded idea much in the same tradition as any of the concerted and considered efforts by the Wright Brothers. (It is remarkable how competent and exploratory they were in their pursuit of flight. Right from the time that Wilbur was laid up in bed recovering from typhoid fever in 1896, he was doing some clear and excellent thinking on the matter, beautifully concluding that getting into the air in an aeroplane was not so much the case as it was staying in the air; and that depended upon control of the aircraft, and for that he gave very considerable time to the study of how birds control their flight. This realized, flight was not long to follow—five years from sickbed and near-death to 1000 glides, seven to powered flight, all paid for by the brothers, and mostly funded by their bike shop. And by the way, according to David McCullough in his biography of the Wrights the whole flying exercise–including materials, books, machinery, travel, food, and so on–from 1900 to 1903, cost the brothers under $1000. )

Seven years after Kill Devil Hills and the great success, the Wrights came to establish their first flight instruction school in a parcel of land that had been a cotton field, a wide piece of flat land outside of Montgomery, Alabama. There was nothing there except for the flatness, and so to attract the school local businesses worked to clear the land and construct a building that would serve many purposes, which explains the advertisements for those who contributed to the project:

[Photo source: Alabama Pioneers,  https://www.alabamapioneers.com/airplane-montgomery/]

Wilbur had made the first flight in Alabama in March 1910, and the school followed soon after. After a relatively short period of instruction, the first graduate of the place, Walter Brookins (1889-1953), would become one of the celebrated Wright Exhibition Team, and set records that same year for highest and longest flights in the U.S. Another early graduate was Henry Arnold, “Hap” Army, General of the Army and only USAF five-star general, who was among other things a barnstormer before his military career.

In any event, I just wanted to share this picture, as I like it so much.

With a fair dose of poetry sprinkled on it, that cotton field is now covered by Maxwell Air Force Base.

Notes:

1. There’s a ton of other stuff, too, that I’ve not seen concerning them, but in this instance the photo of the hangar/school is so charming and the story so compelling that I think I just missed something that is probably a piece of highly visible popular culture.

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

A short article (with a smaller photo illustration)  on a very big topic appeared in Illustrated World in June 1921. The photo showed a remarkable plane constructed by aeronautical engineer Giovanni Caproni (1886-1957)–three planes, really. Three triplanes were attached to a floating Pullman-like fuselage, making this the largest/heaviest aircraft ever built at that time. It was 32′ high, 66′ long, and 130′ wide, and was made to seat 100 and make a transatlantic voyage. This was the “Noviplano” (the Caproni Ca. 6c, and translated in the article as “Nine-plannen”), and presented itself in an impressive if not complicated manner–it was a prototype, though, and was crashed and finished on its second flight.  

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

In the history of aircraft, there’s big, really big, and then Hughes H-4 (“Spruce Goose”) big.  Then there’s the ocean-going aircraft below, found on p. 529 in the 1936 volume of Popular Mechanics. The nameless aircraft would be more than 375′ long and have a wingspan of 550′.  By comparison, an aircraft called the “Stratolaunch” now under construction and designed by Burt Rutan, would have a wingspan of 385′. The “Spruce Goose” was 319′ wide and 216′ long; the 747-8 was 249’wide and 242′ long; and the Airbus A 380-800 stands 262′ wide and 236′ long. In short, of planes having flown, this fabulous thing with the 550′ wings would be twice their size.  

That said, this giant aircraft was limited not by imagination but by flight of technological fancy. It was supposed to require a crew of 100, fly at only 12k feet at 300mph, and make it across the Atlantic in 11 hours. So, the size was certainly awesome by today’s standards; the tech business end of it, not so much. In any event, the image is quite striking:

JF Ptak Science Books  Quick Post

I couldn’t resist sharing this because, well, I don’t often see a one-sheet explanation on how to fly a plane.  This is from the Illustrated London News, May 7, 1910, and concerns the Farman biplane:  

This interesting and exploratory pamphlet,  Application of Seadrome Ocean Dock Corporation (a private corporation) for a Loan Under the Provisions of the National Industrial Recovery (1933) was the result of the work of Edward R. Armstrong (1880-1955), and proposed a series of floating airports to facilitate transatlantic flights.

The outline for this plan asks the federal government for a loan of $30 million (Depression) dollars to undertake the construction of a five floating airports transoceanic network.  “It will require the work of approximately 10,000 men per month for a period of twenty-four to thirty months”.  The labor figures did not include was what necessary to produce all of the material necessary for the project ( for reasons unknown).  Once finished the network would enable aircraft  to make it across the ocean in 18 to 36 hours.

The members of the Seadrome Corporation estimated that the entire 30 million would be paid back by 1945,  and that the corporation would be completely debt-free.  Perhaps all of  this made sense when Armstrong first developed the plan in 1913, just ten years after the Wright brothers’ successful first in North Carolina. The idea of the floating airport girding the Atlantic was a pretty interesting idea, seeing as how the world record for sustained non-stop flight in 1913 was 11 hours (in a Maurice Farman MF-2), and that was under more-or-less optimal conditions; the speed record was 120mph, and again, optimal conditions and not sustained for hours on end.  By 1933 it seems to me that it had become obvious that non-stop transoceanic flight was coming, and coming soon.  That would of course make an investment in the Seadrome project superfluous, like building an antique, though an unnecessary one. The first transatlantic non-stop flight was made by John Alcock and Arthur W. Brown in 1919, averaging about 100mph; Lindbergh would come later to accomplish the first solo non-stop in 1927–by the early 1950’s jet aircraft would be making the trip with regularity, which means that  for most of the life of the completed Seadrome it would have been unnecessary.  I feel certain that the Seadrome–which was supposed to be paid off by 1945, though in 1933 there was no inkling on the part of the Corporation members who wrote the request for the money that a war was looming and that there would have been almost no way for them to have been made at any time between 1939 and 1945–would never have been paid for.Armstrong’s idea would get major play in the popular press from time-to-time, and discussed as a series of floating islands.  Armstrong himself would organize the Seadrome Ocean Dock Corp. in the late 1930’s, his pretty but  impractical idea (reported by Time Magazine¹ in 1933 as little more than “a perennial gift to Sunday feature editors”)  finally grinding to a salty end with greater fuel capacity and efficiency in transatlantic aircraft. 

As I said, this idea seemed pretty good when it was shiny and new, but less so as time went on and aircraft became larger, more powerful, and more efficient, capable of making the trip on their own.