Among those in this list who have done wonderful things, it might be interesting to mention some of the marvellous feats of daring as well as a few of the achievements of Lincoln Beachey, who is credited with being the greatest exhibition aviator in the world.
At the meet in Chicago in the summer of 1911, Beachey flew more miles than any other aviator. He flew all the time and was in the air during all the flying hours in one contest or another. He did all the special tricks in the air that were known, he carried passengers, won speed races, and established a new world's altitude record at 11,642 feet. After flying as high as he could, at Chicago, with a seven gallon tank full of gasoline, Beachey came down and said: "To-morrow I'll go higher." He had a ten gallon tank fitted to his machine, filled it full up to the top, and started right up from where his machine was standing on the ground, so as not to waste a drop of gasoline, and flew up and up until it was completely exhausted and his motor thus compelled to stop, but not until he had set the world's record at 11,642 feet. He deliberately started out on this trip to climb up as long as his fuel would last. He knew his motor would stop and he would have to glide down. It was not an unintended glide but it was the longest glide on record. He brought out all the points and possibilities of his machine; distance, speed, weight-carrying, and altitude. Wilbur Wright said: "Beachey is the most wonderful flyer I ever saw and the greatest aviator of all." Calbraith P. Bodgers said upon his arrival at Los Angeles after flying across the American continent, a distance of over four thousand miles, "Beachey's daring flight down the gorge of Niagara and through the spray of the falls was a greater achievement than mine." Beachey has been remarkably free from serious accidents even though now he pitches straight down from the sky, seeming to fall straight to the earth and just catching his machine up in time to avoid striking the earth.
At Hammondsport on July 29th, 1912, Beachey was trying out a new model military type and he ascended six thousand five hundred feet in fifteen minutes, while he came down in one minute, making one of his perpendicular dives with the engine still. The whistling of the wind through the taut wires of the machine could be heard half a mile away. On this occasion one of the lady visitors to the testing grounds, who had never seen Beachey fly before, thinking that he was falling and would surely strike the ground and be dashed to pieces, fainted. Beachey said, "Flying did not come to me at first but it seemed to come all of a sudden and then it came big." [10]
| [10] | Ralph Johnstone said in a conversation about experiences while learning to fly, "I learned to fly all right but one day when I was up in the air pretty high I seemed to forget all about it and how to operate the controls. I tried them and tested how they worked and it seemed to me that I learned all over again, but it did seem funny to me for just a few minutes." Geo. W. Beatty said, "When I was flying at Chicago, in the contest for duration, when the weather was calm, and I had nothing else to do but sit and think while the machine flew on, round and round, lap after lap, I would look out at a wire and watch it as it vibrated and wonder if it was possible for it to break, while I realised that I could not get out to fix it. This worried me more than flying in a high wind. It seems more natural for me to fly than not to. I have been in the air on an average of two hours every day for over a year." |
Once Beachey had to land in a very small place surrounded with trees and the only way he could do it with the fast machine that he was driving was to kill its speed in the air by skimming over the trees, shutting off his motor, and gliding along to the place where he wanted to stop, and then pointing the machine up suddenly, very much as a bird comes to a stop, and then "pancaking" down, as it is called when you come down "kerflop" like a pancake.
Beachey broke a wheel by this performance and he has worried over that little breakage as much as another man would over smashing up a whole machine.
Beachey flew from New York to Philadelphia in company with Eugene Ely and Hugh Robinson in August, 1911, winning the first inter-city race to be held in the United States.
Among the skilled operators of hydroaeroplanes is Mr. Hugh Robinson who flew down the Mississippi River in the spring of 1912, carrying mail and covering the river course between Minneapolis, Minn., and Rock Island, Ill. Mr. Robinson also went to France in May of 1912, and competed in the first contests and races ever held in this new sport at Monte Carlo. Since his return to America, Mr. Robinson has been the instructor in hydroaeroplaning at Hammondsport.
[CHAPTER II A DESCRIPTION OF THE CURTISS BIPLANE]
No type of aeroplane is more familiar in America than the Curtiss biplane. By long experimentation, this machine has been developed for practical use; and is now used for military purposes in Russia, Japan, Italy, Germany, France, and the United States. The machine is of the general type known as "biplane," in which there are two sets of wings, or surfaces, one being directly above the other. This type of machine seems to be the most favoured by Americans, for it not only allows of a greater spread of lifting surface for a given width of plane than in the monoplane, or single-wing type, but also it is much stronger than other machines of the same weight, as its design permits of a system of bridge-trussing known as the "Pratt Truss." In the Curtiss machine this feature is especially pronounced, because of the greater safety which rigid planes have when compared with the flexible wings.