New propeller shafts made of larger, heavier steel tubing arrived from Charlie, only to crack during an indoor test. With no delay, Orville, the better mechanic of the two, packed his bag and on November 30 left for Dayton to see what could be done, with Wilbur remaining behind “to keep house alone,” in his words.
In Washington, by the morning of December 8, the cold wind eased off, and to Charles Manly and the Smithsonian technicians working with him, conditions for another test of Samuel Langley’s much publicized, much derided aerodrome looked as favorable as could be hoped for given the time of year.
Cakes of ice could be seen riding with the current on the Potomac, but the day was bright, the air calm, and given that money for the project was nearly gone by now, any further postponement seemed out of the question.
The brave Manly was again to be the “steersman,” the only one to risk his life, and it was he who made the final decision to proceed. As he saw it, it was “now or never.”
The giant airship, with its wings again set at a pronounced dihedral angle, was to be launched as before by catapult from atop the same monstrous houseboat, tied up this time just four miles below the city at Arsenal Point. Some five hours of frantic effort went into the final preparations. Not until four in the afternoon did everything appear ready, and by then it was nearly dark and the wind was rising.
Professor Langley and a few of his associates were watching from small boats. Other boats of every sort were filled with reporters, and crowds of spectators lined the length of the Arsenal seawall.
Having stripped down to a union suit, Manly put on a jacket lined with buoyant cork, climbed aboard the aircraft, and fired up the gasoline engine.
At exactly 4:45 he gave the signal to release the catapult. Instantly the machine roared down the track and leaped 60 feet straight up into the air, only to stop and with a grinding, whirring sound, hang suspended momentarily, nose up, then, its wings crumbling, flipped backward and plunged into the river no more than 20 feet from the houseboat.
Manly, who had disappeared into the river, found himself trapped underwater, his jacket snared by part of the wreckage. Tearing free, he fought his way up through tangled wires only to hit a sheet of ice before at last breaking through to the surface.
He was pulled from the water, uninjured but nearly frozen. After being quickly wrapped in blankets and administered a shot of whiskey, he broke into what one of the Smithsonian staff would describe as “the most voluble series of blasphemies” he had ever heard in his life.
As the newspapers reported, the failure was worse by far than that of October 7, as was the humiliation for Langley and nearly everyone connected with the costly, long-drawn-out project. Halfhearted and unconvincing explanations were offered by Langley and others, fixing the blame on flaws in the launching apparatus. Few were convinced. Langley was compared to Darius Green, the comic fool of the famous poem whose ludicrous machine flew in one direction only, downward.
The government, said the Washington Post, should promptly sever its relations with the experiment that had covered eight to ten years and involved a very large outlay of public money without disclosing a single ground for hope.
The whole thing had been a colossal failure, to be sure, but as the Chicago Tribune said, it was impossible not to feel some sympathy for Langley.
He has constructed his aerodrome on scientific principles so far as he understands them. He has spent much money, he has shown great patience and perseverance, and he has labored hard. . . . Evidently something is wrong with the scientific principles or the professor’s application of them.
The only one whose reputation did not suffer was Charles Manly. Langley, who would die three years later, in 1906, never got over the defeat and humiliation.
Word of what had happened was brought back to Kitty Hawk by Orville. The news had broken on December 9, the morning he was leaving Dayton with a set of new solid steel propeller shafts. It was while waiting at the station that he had picked up the papers with all the details.
Neither brother was ever to make critical or belittling comments about Langley. Rather, they expressed respect and gratitude for the part he had played in their efforts. Just knowing that the head of the Smithsonian, the most prominent scientific institution in America, believed in the possibility of human flight was one of the influences that led them to proceed with their work, Wilbur told Octave Chanute in a letter written some years later.
As for Langley’s actual work, his successes and failures, Wilbur thought it “perhaps too soon to make an accurate estimate, but entirely aside from this he advanced the art greatly by his missionary work and by the inspiration of his example.
He possessed mental and moral qualities of the kind that influence history. When scientists in general considered it discreditable to work in the field of aeronautics he possessed both the discernment to discover possibilities there and the moral courage to subject himself to the ridicule of the public and the apologies of his friends. He deserves more credit for this than he has yet received.
The treatment Langley had been subjected to by the press and some of his professional friends had been “shameful,” Wilbur said. “His work deserved neither abuse nor apology.”
III.
Orville reached Kitty Hawk at midday, December 11, a Friday, and spent that afternoon with Wilbur unpacking “the goods.” Saturday the wind was too light to make a start on level ground. Sunday, as always a day off, they passed the time much as they might have at home, reading and visiting with neighbors, in this case, Adam Etheridge from the Life-Saving Station, who with his wife and children came by to say hello and see the new machine so many were talking about.
On the afternoon of Monday the 14th, all final repairs attended to, the brothers were ready. With the help of John T. Daniels, a robust man who looked as though he could lift a house, and two other men from the station, they hauled the 605-pound Flyer the quarter mile over to the Big Hill to the face of the slope where they had positioned the 60-foot launching track.
When the engine was started up with a roar, several small boys who had been tagging along were so startled they took off over the hill as fast as they could go.
Everything was set. There was no debate or extended discussion over which of them should go first. They simply flipped a coin. Wilbur won and worked his way between the propellers and in among the truss wires to stretch flat on his stomach beside the engine, his hips in the padded wing-warping cradle, whereby he could control the wing-warping wires by shifting his body, and head up, looking forward out through the horizontal rudder or elevator that controlled the up or down pitch of the craft.