Congressman Nevin forwarded the letter to the War Department. From there it was passed on to the Board of Ordnance and Fortification, the same agency that had seen the $50,000 it provided to Samuel Langley come to nothing.
Congressman Nevin then received a standard formal rejection from the board, dated January 26, explaining that so great were the number of requests for allotments for experiments in mechanical flight that the device in question must first stage a “practical operation” at no expense to the United States; and from Wilbur and Orville’s letter it appeared to the board that their machine had not yet reached that stage. It was a standard reply sent irrespective of the fact that the Wrights had made no appeal for financial support.
Possibly this was an instance of extreme wariness within the board because of the Langley experience of becoming involved again with experimental aviation. Or it could have been a case of plain bureaucratic ineptitude. Or that the claims made by the Wrights for their Flyer, like those in so many crank proposals, seemed too preposterous to be taken seriously.
To Wilbur and Orville it was a “flat turn down,” which they seem to have been expecting. “We have taken pains to see that ‘Opportunity’ gave a good clear knock on the War Department door,” Wilbur told Octave Chanute.
It has for years been our business practice to sell to those who wished to buy, instead of trying to force goods upon people who did not want them. If the American Government has decided to spend no more money on flying machines till their practical use has been demonstrated in actual service abroad, we are sorry, but we cannot reasonably object. They are the judges.
The brothers had already written to Colonel Capper in England to say they were ready to make their proposal. The British War Office responded at once, and serious correspondence began.
As always, they had no time to waste. Work went on. A new 1905 Flyer III was under way, a machine “of practical utility,” as the Wrights would say. In fact, the Flyer III would prove to be the first practical airplane in history.
Talk of ideas continued without cease among themselves and with Charlie Taylor while at work in the shop, or standing beside the Flyer between tests at Huffman Prairie, or at work inside the shed, or while riding the trolley.
The fascination with birds continued no less than ever. If Ohio offered nothing comparable to the multitudes of gannets and gulls and buzzards in the skies of the Outer Banks, Ohio provided crows aplenty. In language few others could possibly have understood or appreciated, Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute:
The power consumed by any bird or flying machine may be figured from the formula wv/ac, in which w = weight, v = velocity 1/a = ratio of drift to lift, and 1/c = efficiency of the screws or wings of propellers. In the case of the crow flying at 34 ft. per second, or 2,100 ft. per minute, I would fix the value of 1/a at 1/8, and 1/c at 1/.75; when we have (1 × 2100)/(8 × .75) = 350 ft. lbs. per pound of weight. The minimum value of 1/a may be rendered independent of velocity by regulating the size of the wings. The value of 1/c is about the practical limit of the efficiency of screws under usual conditions, and I see no reason for believing that wings are more efficient than screws, as propellers. . . .
Birds unquestionably develop power many times greater than is consumed by our Flyer, per pound weight. If you will fix in your mind the distance within which a small bird acquires full speed, say 30 miles an hour, and then figure the power necessary to accelerate its weight to this velocity, I think you will be astonished.
And there was more, always more to learn and think about. The new Flyer III was more sturdily built than its predecessors, its motor more powerful, producing as much as 25 horsepower. The double rudder had been enlarged, the wing area slightly reduced, and the leading edges of the wings made more effective. But the “improvements” this time, as the brothers would stress, resulted mainly from “more scientific design” and changes in methods of balancing and steering. The most important change was to move the forward rudder even farther forward—for better longitudinal, or nose to tail, control. They had discovered that most of their troubles could be remedied by tilting the machine forward a little so its flying speed could be restored.
“The best dividends on the labor invested,” they said, “have invariably come from seeking more knowledge rather than more power.”
Once the test flights got under way in June, it became clear the improvements were working. Moreover, the two pilots were “rusty” no longer.
In one important close call on September 28, as Orville would recount, he was circling the great honey locust tree when the machine suddenly began to turn up one wing and stall. “The operator, not relishing the idea of landing in a thorn tree, attempted to reach the ground.” The left wing struck the tree at a height of 10 or 12 feet and carried away several branches, but by putting the plane into a brief dive Orville was able to nose the plane upward again, and the flight, which had already covered 6 miles, continued on to the starting point. The lesson learned was another step forward—the brief dive had restored the speed needed to increase the lift and thereby straighten the effect of the warp.
Wilbur by then had flown 11 miles on a single run, Orville, 12 miles, then 15. To both of them, this, their Flyer III, with its “improvements,” was as big an advance as Flyer I had proven to be at Kitty Hawk.
It was at Huffman Prairie that summer and fall of 1905 that the brothers, by experiment and change, truly learned to fly. Then, also, at last, with a plane they could rely on, they could permit themselves enjoyment in what they had achieved. They could take pleasure in the very experience of traveling through the air in a motor-powered machine as no one had. And each would try as best he could to put the experience in words.
“When you know, after the first few minutes, that the whole mechanism is working perfectly,” Wilbur was to say, “the sensation is so keenly delightful as to be almost beyond description. Nobody who has not experienced it for himself can realize it. It is a realization of a dream so many persons have had of floating in the air. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with the excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination.”
Once into the air Orville would write, the ground was “a perfect blur,” but as the plane rose higher the objects below became clearer.
At a height of one hundred feet you feel hardly any motion at all, except for the wind which strikes your face. If you did not take the precaution to fasten your hat before starting, you have probably lost it by this time.