Unlocking the Sky (2 page)

If the enormous houseboat weren’t odd-looking enough, the fifteen-ton iron superstructure on its roof drew the attention of even the most blasé. The massive launching structure, mounted on a large circular turntable, was designed to point the aerodrome directly into the wind after the houseboat had been anchored. Glimpsing the turntable and catapult, many who lived or worked along the river assumed that the massive and totally unfamiliar metal structure was the secret flying machine itself. And, as the
New York Times
later reported, the prevailing view—expressed repeatedly in bars and on roadsides—was unequivocal: Langley’s machine would never fly.

Langley was for the most part unfazed by such opinions. Few people would say it to his face, but, despite the success of his mod
els, the widespread view was that Professor Langley had gone off the deep end, squandering the Smithsonian’s reputation and now the government’s money chasing after a dream of cranks and charlatans. The disdain of his scientific colleagues was undoubtedly the most difficult to take; most held the view that playing with toy airplanes was not an endeavor worthy of a true man of science.

One highly respected colleague of Langley’s, a Harvard-trained astronomer named Simon Newcomb, even published a high-profile scientific paper purporting to prove that powered “heavier-than-air” human flight was scientifically impossible. Newcomb’s argument rested on the law of the cube: the sound principle that an object’s weight increases at a dramatically faster rate than its surface area. As Newcomb noted, when a three-dimensional object grows in size, its volume increases by the cube, that is to say, by the product of all three of its spatial dimensions: height, width, and depth. But the surfaces that would actually support an aircraft in flight, being essentially two-dimensional, increase only by the square, that is, as the product of their two planar dimensions, height and width. The significance of this principle was that, while Langley might have been able to get a bird-sized model aloft, the task of building a full-scale airplane capable of carrying a person grew exponentially more challenging, if not entirely impossible.

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,
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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, aca
demic 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, Congress 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.