The Wrong Wright Story Series #5: Flying Machines on Film

The Wrong Wright Story Series #5:  

Flying Machines on Film 

By Joe Bullmer 

This is the last installment in this series of critical reviews of leading publications concerning the Wright brothers’ creation of the airplane switches from books to video productions.

 

It features what is perhaps the most prominent documentary on the subject, the centennial 2003 production by PBS, NOVA of WGBH, Boston titled The Wright Brothers' Flying Machine. Major funding was provided by the Park Foundation, Sprint, Microsoft, and the National Science Foundation, although the NSF wisely attached a disclaimer regarding the production’s content.

Throughout this discussion, echoes of the same errors found in the Smithsonian books previously addressed are evident. Consequently, although many will be mentioned here, they will generally not be covered in as much detail in this article. More information on what is true can be found in previous articles in this series, and in complete detail in this author’s book The WRight Story. It becomes obvious that the Smithsonian’s falsehoods have infected history and the minds of nearly all those interested in early aviation.

NOVA’s The Wright Brother’s Flying Machine also features Ken Hyde, proprietor of The Wright Experience at Warrenton, Virginia. With the help of Rick Young, Greg Cone, and many others, Hyde recreated Wright gliders, a 1903 “Flyer", and the 1910 Model B featured in the video. Also featured in the video are Tom Crouch, the Curator of Aeronautics of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and John Anderson, its Aerodynamics Curator. Crouch appears in a couple dozen brief clips and Anderson in a half dozen.

Dr. Tom Crouch, PhD
Wright State University, Dayton, OH

 

Dr. John Anderson,
Aerodynamics Curator, NASM

 

The PBS centennial video begins discussion of the Wrights’ work by saying that the U.S. Weather Bureau suggested Kitty Hawk as appropriate for their tests. In fact, Octave Chanute suggested the Carolina coasts to the Wrights in the first place, and then, upon the Wrights’ request, the weather bureau provided weather records of these sites. This is the first in what will become a familiar litany of omissions and errors. 

The documentary launches off into technical matters by showing an exaggerated thick Clark-Y type airfoil with a flat bottom and hugely arched top, and mentioning the familiar sped-up flow across the top lowering its pressure and thus creating lift. This is a particularly ironic way to begin the documentary since the Wrights had no idea that this is how cambered wings create lift. They thought it was due to air smashing into the bottom of a thin cambered wing set at an angle to the airstream and pushing it up, just like the way water supports a skier. They even gave this incorrect explanation for lift in their first patent. Their correspondence reveals that the Wrights still believed this at least into 1906.

Right off the bat, Crouch authoritatively but erroneously states that the Wrights, seeing that Lilienthal’s gliders and Langley’s models flew so well, used their wing shapes as “the basis” for the wing shapes of their 1900 and ’01 glider wings. However in his 1901 speech to the Western Society of Engineers, Wilbur made it absolutely clear that they intentionally did not use Lilienthal’s arc-shaped wings. They also used only half his aspect ratio. A cursory glance at photos clearly shows the differences.



Unfortunately, NOVA falls for Crouch’s assertion, and shows Lilienthal’s circular wing curvatures with maximum cambers at their mid points. But soon thereafter, they clearly show the early glider recreations, carefully and accurately made from excellent photos, having short flat wings with only a very little camber right at the leading edges.

Next, Anderson says the Wrights “made the courageous decision” not to use Lilienthal’s data. This is followed by Crouch claiming that they couldn’t just “keep building gliders” and instead “used a much smarter approach” by deciding to build a wind tunnel. He goes on saying that building the tunnels themselves was fairly simple, but the measuring balances “illustrate the Wrights’ genius”. NOVA puts icing on the cake by claiming that “the balances are one of the most important experimental devices in the history of technology.”

In one minute, this trifecta of screw-ups illustrates how Smithsonian falsehoods have infected subsequent historians. It seems that rather than doing their own research, newcomers just search their vocabularies for unique ways of telling the same tales.

As stated in previous reviews, the Wrights made absolutely no mention of a wind tunnel until Chanute and his cohorts discussed the subject with them during the summer of 1901 at Kitty Hawk. They showed the Wrights photos of wind tunnels, straightening vanes, and the balance scheme for measuring lift vs drag of a wing section. (Of course, a straight smooth flow of air and a device to measure forces on test items are the two primary elements of any wind tunnel.) Armed with this information, the Wrights then built a tunnel at their first opportunity upon their return to Dayton.

The Smithsonian’s errors continue with Crouch reiterating that Lilienthal’s wing shapes were the basis for the Wrights’ 1900 and ’01 wings. The NOVA narrator immediately follows with the “Wrights built their first wings with the same cross sections that Lilienthal had used.” Both falsehoods are yet again immediately contradicted by more clips showing the nearly flat wings of the 1900 glider recreation made from close study of photos of the original vehicle.  

A Lilienthal glider replica. Note the wing shape.

From NOVA

 

Next, diagrams are shown indicating that, from the tunnel data, the Wrights moved their maximum camber from the 50% chord point forward to the 25% point for the 1902 glider. In fact, they moved it from just after the leading edge back to about the 30% point. This tortured subject is topped off with a strange statement by Crouch that “modern engineers with multi-million-dollar wind tunnels” get results “within one or two percent” of the wing profile determined by the Wrights. Things get even weirder in the next clip showing what appears to be the post-wind-tunnel 1902 wing camber curvatures on a 1900/1901 glider, something that never happened.

About 17 minutes into the 54-minute video, Crouch asserts that “The Wrights’ recognition of the fact that the control issue would be critical set them apart from virtually everyone else.” This is yet another idea that first came from Chanute in both his book -- which the Wrights obtained in 1899 --and his later correspondence with them.

Both Crouch and NOVA then excuse the instability of the Wright airplanes by explaining that, as builders and purveyors of unstable bicycles, they were unconcerned about not having “automatic stability” in their flying machines. Yet another often repeated failure of research.

 

In his 1920 sworn affidavit for the Montgomery case, Orville wrote “Our elevator was placed in front of the surfaces with the idea of producing inherent stability fore and aft, which it should have done had the travel of the center of pressure been forward [with decreasing angle of attack] as we had been led to believe.”

 

This error is followed by Crouch repeating another one by again implying that the Wrights were the first to devise wing warping. Then clips are shown of the Hyde/Young recreation of the 1902 glider with two vertical panels aft. This is particularly amusing since those twin panels were fixed and made the early ’02 glider, in the Wrights’ words, "the most dangerous vehicle yet," nearly unflyable.

They quickly replaced the fixed dual stabilizers with one moveable aft vertical rudder to counteract warp-induced yaw. That successful glider was flown that way for the rest or the test session. Perhaps Hyde or someone thought the twin rudders were a better-looking match to the biplane wings.

(Speaking of configuration errors, I have seen a model of a proposed multi-million-dollar memorial to the Wright brothers planned to be located near Dayton at the intersections of interstate highways 70 and 75. It features a gleaming stainless-steel Wright aircraft purported to be the 1905 Flyer III on a huge pedestal nearly 200 feet tall. But so far, the proposals feature an aircraft with no engine or propellers. Wouldn’t it be ironic to expend all that effort to gather many millions of dollars for a nearly 200-foot-high stainless-steel Wright memorial for millions to see every month, and then show something that never existed, particularly when a correct detailed recreation of the powered Flyer III resides in a museum on the other side of town? Worst yet, with no propulsion, the memorial vehicle would look more like their first 1902 glider, a vehicle the Wrights claimed was their worst, nearly unflyable, and which they quickly reconfigured.)

Moving on into propeller design, all the standard blunders on this subject appear. After showing Hyde carefully measuring original Wright propellers at the Franklin Institute, Crouch once more marvels at the Wrights’ realization that a propeller should be just a rotating wing, and that this “underscores the nature of their genius”. Then NOVA joins the cheering by proclaiming “the Wrights solved the fundamental riddle of propeller design.”

 

 

 

This "fundamental riddle" was solved 18 years earlier in a paper Sydney Hollands presented to the British Aeronautical Society describing how propellers should be made up of cambered sections and twisted to account for the airspeeds of the sections along the spinning blades. Hollands also showed that the blades chord or width should be tapered down toward the tips, a now-common practice which the Wrights neglected, but which has been used ever since. Chanute also covered all this in his book that the Wrights had obtained four years before beginning work on a powered vehicle. (This can be seen on page 162 of Lorenz and Herweg's 1976 edition of Chanute's book.)

Unfortunately, the Wrights did just the opposite, making their propellers wider toward the tips. Although somewhat helpful in developing thrust with very low-speed props, this caused excessive stress loading there. This stress may have contributed to the failure of a propeller at Ft. Myer in 1908 causing the crash that injured Orville’s back and killed Lt. Thomas Selfridge.

About 25 and a half minutes into the video NOVA does a completely bungled foray into Langley’s Aerodrome testing. They show the photos of both separate attempts while claiming there was just one attempt, and in that one the aircraft went up 60 feet, then down, and then broke up before falling into the river, a description that’s not even close to what actually happened. It is well known that there were two attempts to fly Langley’s manned airplane. Photos clearly shown two completely different failures, the aircraft not gaining altitude in either attempt.

Next Crouch zips quickly through the 1903 tests at Kitty Hawk, giving the distances and times claimed for Orville’s first and Wilbur’s last attempts on the 17th of December. He then claims that was “the day that changed history.” Not content, NOVA jumps in claiming that within one year after that the Wrights built an aircraft that could fly for 30 minutes. It was actually two years before they accomplished that with a substantially modified aircraft.

NOVA next covers Wilbur’s successful demonstrations in Europe without mentioning Orville’s demonstrations at Ft, Myer that included the crash due to propeller failure that killed Lt. Tom Selfridge. They then show the photo of the first Wright factory at Dayton without noting that, in order to sell airplanes, for their Model B they had to abandon the canard elevator, the patented coordinated control, the catapult, and eventually on a later model, even wing warping. They also don’t mention that the company basically failed within six years and was eventually merged with the Martin company.

Thirty-three minutes into the 54-minute video, the focus changes to Ken Hyde’s ill-fated attempt to build and fly an accurate reproduction of the Wright Model B. He is shown measuring the authentic Model B at the Franklin Institute, using the same type of thread to weave fabric, and the same aluminum stain on the wood struts.

Constructing the replica

He even found an original Wright Model B engine in California, brought it back to his facility at Warrenton, Virginia, and rebuilt it. Creating this exact replica and getting it to flying condition took a team over ten years and required funding of seven figures by donors including the Northrup-Grumman and Curtiss-Wright Corporations.

While showing roll-out of the B replica, Crouch mentions that most of the Wright-trained exhibition pilots were killed in them. Ken follows that by courageously saying one must take chances to fly one, and you had to be brave to attempt it. He then makes the prophetic statement that most pilots of B’s were killed due to confusion and miss-use of the flight controls. He planned to avoid this fate by practicing on a specially programmed simulator. Ironically, he mentions the simulation showed the aircraft had a tendency to side slip when moderately banked.

They first measure the thrust available and find it adequate at over 160 pounds. Ken then attempts a taxi test but starts at mid-field due to storms having created bumpy soggy conditions on half of it. He gets more acceleration than expected, a problem on an aircraft with no brakes. He is heading for trees protruding out into the field, but instead of cutting power, turning away, and using a nearby ditch to stop the vehicle, Ken inexplicably elects to lift off and attempt to fly over the nearby tree tops.

The Model B replica lifting off

While over the trees, he tries a shallow turn to the left in an attempt to return to the flying field, but the aircraft starts slipping to the left and losing altitude. Ken recovers but tries the same maneuver again while still barely over the tree tops. Of course, the same thing happens, but this time he sideslips into the trees. In seconds, ten years of work by whole teams, along with millions of dollars, was turned into a pile of junk. 

The crashed replica

 

Ken’s senior assistant, Greg Cone, sounds really disgusted. After getting the airplane out of the trees and seeing that the engine, one of only two original Wright engines in existence, is busted up, and the airframe demolished, Cone sounds ready to quit. (Apparently, he didn’t.) Ken, who suffered injuries, says they will need a lot more money, and (interestingly) some engineers, to try it again. But perhaps finding out that Hyde demolished the plane within a few seconds of taking off when he wasn’t even supposed to leave the ground soured the confidence of his financial backers. A second try has never been made.

Hyde astutely concludes his comments by saying that avoiding accidents “was not thought out that well.” Then he paraphrases a Wright quote, to wit, “you’ve got to fly to learn.” Maybe, but at least the Wrights had more sense than to try to maneuver while skimming over a bunch of trees on what was supposed to be a first taxi test. Certainly, busting up million-dollar airplanes within ten seconds of takeoff, after a decade of work, is not what the Wright brothers had in mind.

The 54-minute video is concluded without mentioning Hyde’s 1903 reproduction that failed to lift off of the ground in front of over a thousand onlookers at the Wright centennial ceremonies at Kitty Hawk in 2003. Apparently no one involved had a sufficient appreciation of the vehicle’s need for a strong headwind to lift it.

The quality of the NOVA production was of course doomed by relying on Smithsonian officials for technical and historical accuracy. This may be of minor concern for a TV production. As long as they have good video and authoritative sounding narratives, most producers seem happy. But unfortunately, it casts doubt among knowledgeable people about the veracity of other NOVA productions. It also provides yet another illustration of how the virus of faulty Smithsonian research infects the products of others innocently relying on their information.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum personnel are not the only ones who rely on their, or their organizations, reputations to compensate for lack of knowledge of the subject, or diligent research. An excellent recent example of this is the 2015 book The Wright Brothers by two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough.

I have not read the book, but have heard radio interviews and seen TV interviews of McCullough, and talks by him to promote the New York Times bestselling book. His degree of incorrect knowledge on this subject is surprising. Nonetheless, his book will undoubtedly sell well and become another source of errors in future works.

(As you read further, please keep in mind that the following was written over a year before David McCullough died. He was well respected and loved as a historian. However, his recent death does not change history or the inaccuracy of his account of the Wright brothers or their work.)

In a talk to the Massachusetts Historical Society, McCullouch made the following incorrect or misleading statements:

• “Everybody knew man couldn’t fly.” Actually, many newspapers and magazines had been showing for years that many, using unpowered gliders, had already flown over a thousand times.
• There was only one Aerodrome flight attempt that went up 60 feet and then dove into the water. In fact, there were two attempts. Both went down immediately after leaving the launcher, the aircraft not gaining ten feet.
• The Wrights designed their airplanes by watching birds. Although Wilbur alluded to birds bending their wing tips, Orville said he knew of nothing they got from birds.
• Mouillard’s book convinced the Wrights that “riding the wind” was the secret to birds’ soaring flight. McCullough evidently doesn’t know about thermals or updrafts due to surface features. The Wrights always knew power was necessary for the sustained flight of an airplane.
• He relates how their sister Katherine took care of Orville after his crash. However, he says nothing about Orville disowning her for "deserting" him when, after working with him for 18 years, she finally married.
• The Wrights created their wind tunnel and, with it, developed the first correct information. In fact, they were informed about wind tunnels and shown designs for their components and measuring devices by Octave Chanute and his cohorts Ed Huffaker and George Spratt. They subsequently built a tunnel and found that Lilienthal’s data, which he had published 13 years earlier, had been absolutely correct. The Wrights had just applied it to totally inappropriate wing shapes. They admitted all this in a November 24th, 1901 letter to Chanute.

Ken Burns and David McCullough

In 2015, documentarian Ken Burns interviewed McCullough on TV. During that hour-long interview:

• McCullough said “Wilbur was unquestionably a genius”. This may be easy to believe when you don’t understand the science or what Wilbur did, and are unaware of how much he got from others.
• Both McCullough and Burns had Lilienthal’s and Wrights’ wing cambers completely confused.
• In McCullough’s discussion of Wilbur’s and Orville’s personalities and intellectual differences he again had the names mixed up and was somewhat incoherent.
• He again said irrelevant things about “riding the wind”.
• Burns repeated numerous erroneous things he had read in McCullough’s book.
• Again, McCullough discusses Kate, omitting Orville’s disownment of her when she got married.

McCullough says the Wrights would never blame others for failures or attack competitors. In fact, they blamed others for their having the wrong concept of center of pressure movements, for having inadequate lift, for Wilbur’s fatal sickness, plus a number of other things. They attacked Henson, Stringfellow, Marriott, and others as having made no contributions to aviation, called Langley’s successful powered unmanned aircraft “toys”, sued many others in aviation, and even used the courts to try to throw foreign aviators out of America. Not long before Chanute’s death they turned on even him, a man without whose help, as we have seen in these earlier critiques, they may well not have been successful.

They occasionally even belligerently blamed each other for things. Wilbur repeatedly berated Orville’s business acumen, and blamed him for inadequate workmanship and packing when the aircraft Orville sent to France arrived damaged from customs inspections. In interviews for Kelly’s book, Orville blamed Wilbur for their incorrect concept of movement of the center of lift on a cambered wing.

The last flight in 1903 by Wilbur was the only trial that they, at that time, claimed had met their 300-foot criteria for a successful flight. However, after Wilbur’s death, Orville claimed he had made the first successful flight by adding the 27 mile per hour, 12-second wind speed distance to his 120-foot estimated ground distance to claim 570 feet “through the air”.


Summary

This concludes this series of critique articles. In spite of a fairly cordial discussion over ten years ago with the authors of the Smithsonian books discussed in these articles, there has been no subsequent interest expressed by them, or anyone else in the Smithsonian organization, in resolving any of these issues. On the contrary, recently the Institute proudly placed its name on the cover of Flight – The Complete History of Aviation, a book that repeats some of the most egregious long-standing Smithsonian falsehoods concerning the Wrights’ testing.

Cordial approaches to NOVA and PBS documentary producers have likewise elicited no responses. Apparently these authors and producers also intend to continue to enjoy success and royalties with little regard for the truth, arrogantly expecting it to quietly fade away and leave their reputations, incomes, and integrity intact. They probably think they did a noble thing, aggrandizing the Wrights’ by crediting their accomplishments to amazing inspirations of genius. However, in fact the Smithsonian has dishonored itself and its contributors, the Wrights, and particularly their advisors, by falsifying the story of what many consider the creation of the manned, powered, controlled airplane.

The NOVA producers, along with David McCullough, have provided examples of how the books reviewed in the first four articles of this series have infected aviation history. Even someone as well-intentioned and respected as Ken Burns was duped by McCullough’s interpretation of the Smithsonian fantasy. This author would have welcomed an opportunity to meet with Mr. McCullough and show him original source material, but unfortunately he died before this was published. While I respect his intentions, McCullough’s death does not change history nor the dangers of using Smithsonian books or information as source material.

The author of these articles and The WRight Story remains available to participate in open recorded discussions or debate with Smithsonian personnel, or any others in a position to resolve any of the issues raised in any of these five articles, in order to establish truth in aviation history.

-- Joe Bullmer

The Wrong Wright Story Series #4: The Invention of the Aerial Age

 

 The Wrong Wright Story Series #4:

The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age

By Joe Bullmer 

This, the fourth article in this series, addresses the book The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age, ISBN-0-7922-6985-3, a 2003 publication of the Smithsonian press. It was cowritten by the authors of the last two books addressed in this series, Tom Crouch, the Senior Curator for Aeronautics, and Peter Jakab, an Associate Director of the National Air and Space Museum. As one might expect, many of the mistakes by these authors noted in the previous reviews of their individual books are repeated in this book. Most are at least briefly mentioned here since an effort was made to make each of these articles complete.

The authors from left, Tom Crouch , Senior Curator, Ret., Smithsonian NASM, and Peter Jakab, Chief Curator, NASM.

Again, the period from 1899 through 1905 is specifically addressed since this is the period during which the Wrights developed a controllable powered airplane. However the period after that up to Orville’s death is also covered in the subject book, so a few comments on that are included. 

Page 48: Combining two of the sentences in the sixth paragraph, they collectively say “an airplane pilot…..must make constant control movements…..to stay in the air”. As stated in previous articles, anyone at all familiar with flight knows that, once a properly designed airplane is trimmed out, no control movements are necessary to maintain steady straight flight in reasonably smooth air.

Page 51: The authors discuss conflicting statements by the brothers regarding how they came up with wing warping, but don’t mention that twisting wings for control had been done by a number of the Wrights’ predecessors, a few even patenting it. This was also covered in Chanute’s book which the Wrights obtained in 1899.

Page 53: They claim warping was superior to previous methods of control. But separate winglets and ailerons, both causing less drag imbalance and thus superior to warping, had already been used by others. Eventually warping would be abandoned, even by the Wrights, in favor of ailerons.

Page 56: Here adulation for the Wrights’ supposed ability to correctly “visualize aerodynamics” gush forth once more. And again the statements made are not true. The comment in the second article of this series for page 66 of Jakab’s Visions lists seven examples of the Wrights’ failure to properly envision air flow and its effects. These reveal no basis for fantasizing about the Wrights' aerodynamic clairvoyance.

Page 57:  The often-repeated comment on the similarity of airplanes to bicycles is made, to wit, since they both bank to turn, they must both be constantly rebalanced. Although every aviator knows this is wrong, this assertion has become standard fare among aviation historians discussing the Wrights.

Page 58: Here they repeat a whole series of errors on the Wrights’ wing design that were first stated in Visions of a Flying Machine. First, that the Wrights initially used Lilienthal’s camber shape which they didn’t, an error that plagued them with inadequate lift for a couple years until their wind tunnel showed that they had to use Lilienthal’s basic wing shapes. 

Then the Wrights are credited with discovering the center-of-pressure (actually lift) reversal on wings by just thinking about it. In fact, they never knew of the reversal of center of “pressure” movement until Dr. George Spratt and Edward Huffaker, visitors to their camp in 1901, told them about it. Then their visitors proceeded to prove it with tests showing where one of the Wrights’ wings balanced at various angles of attack.

Dr. George Spratt and Edward Huffaker.
Visitors to the Wright camp in 1901, these aviation pioneers taught the Wright Brothers about the reversal of the center of pressure movement on the wing of a plane.

Finally, this rant is concluded by claiming an aircraft is in equilibrium when the center of pressure (lift) coincides with the center of gravity. This is not really true unless the vehicle’s configuration is such that it tends to remain that way. Equilibrium is not a fleeting instantaneous condition. That was the basic problem with all early Wright aircraft. They had no inherent stability allowing them to maintain a state of equilibrium. The Wrights both wrote of their surprise at learning this.

Page 61: Here the authors make an astounding blunder only equaled by the Wrights having made the same mistake. They talk about moving “the center of pressure on the bottom of the wing” back and forth to regain coincidence with the center of gravity to maintain balance. This sounds as though they didn’t know that what they called the center of pressure on the bottom is actually the center of lift which primarily results from a partial vacuum on the top of the wing. This distinction is crucial to understanding the science behind the movement of the center of lift.

In the next paragraph a truly staggering blunder is made by saying that a constantly moving elevator is used by every airplane today to maintain balance with the constantly moving center of “pressure”. Apparently they have no concept of how a trimmed horizontal stabilizer is set to stabilize an airplane so that no elevator movements are required to keep it there.

Page 62: Here the assertion is made that the greater efficiency of a cambered surface (as opposed to a flat one) had been established by 1900. Actually Sir George Cayley established that nearly a century earlier in 1804. That’s why cambered wings had been used by most aviators since then.

Sir George Cayley, aviation pioneer, who established by 1804 that a cambered wing is more
efficient than a flat one.

They go on to give the Wrights’ erroneous thinking that led them to put all of the camber within the front ten percent of the wings, without mentioning that this degraded both lift and longitudinal stability. Finally, they claim incorrectly that Lilienthal used a wing maximum camber that was eight percent of the wing chord whereas the Wrights used five percent. Actually, Lilienthal also used five percent on his gliders.

Chapter 3

Octave Chanute, mentor to the Wright Brothers.

Page 68: Here the absolute falsehood that “Octave Chanute provided the Wrights with little genuine technical assistance and few, if any, useful theoretical ideas” is repeated. This was also stated on page 84 of Jakab’s solo book Visions of a Flying Machine. This statement is so egregious that I will repeat here, in full, the comments I made in that Critique:

According to records of their correspondence, Chanute provided the Wrights with:

• His 1894 book that was the basis for their study of earlier aviation.
• Realizing the biggest problem remaining to be solved was control.
• The need to master control with gliders before adding power.
• Trussed biplane wing construction according to both brothers’ statements.
• The idea of first testing gliders unmanned with tethering lines.
• The best gliding areas being the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas.
• His cohorts Huffaker and Dr. Spratt showing the Wrights the critical reversal of the center of lift’s movement, thus largely solving their control problem.
• Doing tests with a wind tunnel to determine better wing shapes.
• Photos of wind tunnels and the design of their lift/drag balance.
• The basic design of a falling weight catapult enabling them to achieve controllability and maneuverability through testing near Dayton, and enabling all of their flying for the next six years.

In fact, it is evident that without these inputs the Wrights may well not have succeeded. If they did, it would have taken them far longer, probably denying them the distinction of being considered the first to accomplish powered, controlled, manned flight.

Pages 72 & 76: The gliding tests at Kitty Hawk in 1900 are described as validating the pitch and roll controls. In fact, the machine had such poor lifting capability that it was mostly tested unmanned and tethered. Finally, with winds exceeding 20 knots, Wilbur managed just a few short hops, almost all with erratic pitch control and the warping inoperable.

Page 77: They claim the Wrights discovered the reversal of their wing warping roll control by attempting turns. This is absolutely not true. They discovered it by trying to maintain a constant heading while correcting inadvertent rolls caused by wind gusts and the anhedral, or droop, in their wings. They were not interested in developing a turning capability at Kitty Hawk, and the 1902 and 1903 vehicles could not execute intentional turns.

In their first patent they stated that “the machine is apt to become unbalanced laterally” and “The provision which we have just described [mechanically linked warp and rudder] enables the operator to meet this difficulty and preserve the lateral balance of the machine.” In other words, to keep the machine flying straight and level, not to turn. They did not attempt turns until 1904 near Dayton, and could not reliably accomplish them until October of 1905.

In his sworn deposition for the Montgomery case Orville testified, “Sometimes in warping the wings to restore lateral balance….” and “When the wings were warped in an attempt to recover balance….”.  Clearly, they were attempting to fly level, not turn, when they discovered warp reversal. In spite of these numerous absolutely clear statements directly contradicting these books, every “historian” since these books were published parrots this same error. Tour guides in the Air and Space Museum still repeat it.

Pages 84-89: On these pages the authors attempt to once more heap credit upon the Wrights for something they didn’t think of by simply saying that “the Wrights decided to build a wind tunnel”. Reiterating, the subject was brought up during talks with Chanute, Spratt, and Huffaker when they visited the Wrights at Kitty Hawk during the summer of 1901. There is no mention of such a device in any of the Wrights’ records before then. During that discussion Chanute showed them photos of wind tunnel components, and Dr. Spratt showed them the scheme for the lift vs drag balance that the authors credit the Wrights with as a “brilliant intuitive leap”. The Wrights admitted they got this information from their visitors in later correspondence and a legal document, including Wilbur's letters of 10/16/1901 and 10/16/1909 and Orville's sworn affadavit for the 1920 Montgomery case.

These authors go on to write “The brothers’ artful weaving of their clear, straight forward conceptualization of the problem and their clever, effective means of experimentally obtaining results illustrates the Wrights’ engineering talents at their finest.” All this for equipment and procedures that were shown to them by visitors at Kitty Hawk, visitors to whom these authors give no credit at all for providing any help.

The authors also claim that the tunnel tests showed Lilienthal’s lift data to be “off” and that the tunnel allowed them to determine a more correct value of Smeaton’s coefficient. These are both colossal untruths. In fact, Wilbur informed Chanute that they had arrived at the correct value of Smeaton’s coefficient (actually the same value as that determined by professor Langley at the Smithsonian) from gliding data months before they built the tunnel. On 11/24/1901, Wilbur wrote Chanute that “for a surface….like that described in his [Lilienthal’s] book [his] table is probably as near correct as it is possible”.

The authors also wrote that “The wind tunnel experiments showed the brothers that long, narrow wings [i.e., higher aspect ratio wings] are more efficient than short, wide ones….”. Since Cayley published this in 1804, they also could have discovered it years earlier by simply reading. They subsequently abandoned their aspect ratio of 3.1 and adopted Lilienthal’s favored value of 6.5 for their 1902 glider.

Finally, on November 24^th, 1901 Wilbur wrote Chanute that “It is very evident….that a table based on one aspect [ratio] and [wing section] profile is worthless for a surface with different aspect and curvature. This no doubt explains why we had so much trouble figuring our machines from Lilienthal’s table.” In other words, the Wrights admitted, in writing, that their tunnel showed them that different wing shapes produce different lift coefficients. So the Wrights admitted that their lift problems were their own fault, and nothing was wrong with Lilienthal’s data.

These astounding and egregious errors by these authors have led to everyone who has ever written or spoken about the Wrights since, repeating their same false statements. They can be seen in museums, on placards, in numerous books, and heard in nearly all documentaries. Thus, important technical history has been falsified by careless, incompetent research at the highest levels of a Smithsonian museum.

Pages 89 & 90: Here they extol the virtues of tethered testing, what the Wrights called “flying it as a kite”, as though it was yet another wonderful idea the Wrights originated, although their copy of Chanute’s book has a whole section on kite-style tethered testing.

Wilbur left, Orville right, “flying it as a kite.”

They also fail to mention that when kiting, the brothers, being nearly 20 feet apart (one at each wing tip), couldn’t tell that when warping was applied, one end of the wings were pulling on the lines harder than those on the other end. So the tendency of warping to cause the vehicle to yaw, then bank even steeper, and finally spin into the ground, was completely masked to them. This actually set them back a couple years until they had enough lift to do extensive free glides and address the problem in 1902. Another aid in solving the spin problem may well have been their wind tunnel which clearly demonstrated the effect on a wing’s drag by a small change in its angle of attack.

Page 91: This page is ripe with exaggerations concerning the Wrights’ wind tunnel. These authors write that the device “carried the progress toward mechanical flight to another new plateau”. But of course, once more, they don’t mention that this was thanks to Chanute and his cohorts at Kitty Hawk.

Next a comment, similar to one in Visions, is made claiming that after the tunnel tests, the 1902 vehicle “flew just as a 747 or modern jet fighter flies”. Well yes, it used cambered wings and could go in the air in a straight line fairly level, but it couldn’t turn or maneuver, rather desirable qualities in a 747 or fighter plane. In fact, it would take three more years for the Wrights to develop limited versions of these capabilities in their aircraft. By the end of 1905 the aircraft the authors refer to as “only refined” had lengthened structure, relocated center of gravity, changed location, size, and loading of the canard, a fundamentally altered version of their patented control scheme, modified propellers, and oil, fuel, and water pumps added to the 1903 engine. Some “refinements”.

Chapter 4

Page 119 & 120: Picturing a propeller as a rotating wing is characterized as a “breakthrough” and an “intellectual leap”. If it appeared so, it was only because of a lack of research by the authors. As explained in the last article, Sydney Hollands presented the concept of a propeller as a vertically rotating cambered twisted wing at a meeting of England’s Aeronautical Society in 1885. In fact, he also pointed out that it should be tapered toward the tips of the blades, something the Wrights totally missed. Hollands even gave values for the twist angles. All this was covered in Chanute’s book which the Wrights obtained four years earlier. Nonetheless, this "intellectual leap" is another falsehood that has become a staple in subsequent accounts of the Wrights’ work.

Wright propeller reproductions (from Ash, Robert & Miley, Stanley & Landman, Drew. (2001).
Evolution of Wright Flyer Propellers between 1903 and 1912 By. 10.2514/6.2001-309.)

The propellers of the Sopwith Camel, a World War I British fighter, clearly show
a taper toward the tips of the blades.

In fact, three other designers of ships’ propellers, Lanchester in England, Drzweiecki in France, and Prandtl in Germany, had also addressed the design of air propellers as cambered twisted rotating wings. Chanute provided material on Drzweiecki’s work to the Wrights in 1903.

Also mentioned on page 120 is that, for the 1903 powered airplane, the Wrights chose a maximum wing camber depth of five percent. As previously mentioned, and contrary to assertions in this book, that is precisely the camber depth used and recommended by Otto Lilienthal on his gliders.

Otto Lillienthal poised for a glide.

Page 121: At the top of this page they claim that one of the “instruments” the Wrights had onboard in 1903 was a tachometer for both the engine and propellers. In fact they had no tachometer. All they had was a total revolution counter for the engine. This, in combination with the stopwatch, would yield the average engine rpm for a flight attempt. This is a minor unimportant point, but these kinds of totally unnecessary errors lead one to wonder what kind of research was done, and by whom, for this book.

Page 130: The first three flight attempts on December 17^th, 1903 are discussed without mentioning that none of them were actually measured for time or distance. These were simply estimated by the Wrights. Also, they don’t tell us that, according to the Wrights’ descriptions, the aircraft was out of control throughout all three attempts. Finally they don’t mention the 27 mph headwind plus gusts that supplied 90% of the airspeed and 80% of the lift required for the airplane to leave the ground. Without those head winds there would have been absolutely no flying at all by the Wrights in 1903. This is proven by their 1904 aircraft not being able to leave the ground with light winds at Dayton, although it had more power and launch rails up to four times longer.

Page 131: Here the authors discuss the fourth attempt, Wilbur’s last, without telling us the aircraft was out of control at its beginning and end, the Wrights claiming it only flew fairly level for a short period during the middle of the trial. They quote the Wrights’ claim for that attempt as lasting 59 seconds and covering 852 feet, a distance the Wrights said they measured.

Four decades later Orville identified a photograph as having been taken after the end of that attempt. But four independent measurement calculations on the photo, by four different people, using four different methodologies, reveal the aircraft to be between 250 and 280 feet from the end of the launch rail. Also, the propellers are stopped and three dark objects at least three feet tall are on the center of the lower wing. This is all clearly shown on a large cropped version of the photo on pages 126 and 127 of this very book.

At the bottom of this page one of Jakab’s contradictions reappears with the statement that, in spite of the success of the 1903 airplane, “marketing and exploiting the [Wright’s] technology would require an aircraft capable of making turns….”. While correct, this is in direct contradiction to the statement back on page 90 claiming that even the 1902 glider could make coordinated turns.

Page 133: The claim from the Visions book that the Wrights invented a “fundamentally new technology” is repeated here. It’s not clear what fundamentals they are talking about since the only feature of Wright aircraft (besides engines and drive chains) that hadn’t been used by predecessors, namely mechanically coordinated roll and yaw controls, had to be abandoned in 1905 in order to make turns.

Chapter 5

Diagram from the famous Wright patent, granted in 1906.

This chapter, discussing the Wrights’ patents and early efforts to sell their airplanes, is most noteworthy for its numerous omissions. It discusses their first patent without mentioning that it

• Gave a totally incorrect explanation of how their aircraft were actually able to fly.
• Locked them into a configuration that was dangerous and rejected by other designers.
• Had the primary purpose of protecting a control system they already had to abandon.
• Was intended to freeze out competition worldwide, but primarily stifled aviation research and production only in the U.S.

The chapter also discusses the Ft. Myer crash that killed Lt. Tom Selfridge, the world’s first airplane fatality. Although the authors relate that the crash was due to a propeller failure, they don’t mention that one of the propellers had previously split and had been hastily repaired with glue and nails. What’s more, the split was at a tip, their propeller tips being excessively loaded due to the improper reverse taper of the blades.

The Flyer - and propellers - that crashed in 1908, killing Lt. Thomas Selfridge.

Chapter 6

Page 196: This chapter covers the period up to World War One. At the bottom of this page they mention that “The world was not beating a path to their [the Wrights’] door in a mad rush to buy flying machines.” No mention is made of the fact that numerous competitors were doing quite well. That was because Wright airplanes were considered obsolete, poor performing, hard and dangerous to fly, with no useful capabilities beyond lifting someone into the air. Many other countries were buying hundreds of safer, more capable aircraft from their indigenous manufacturers.

Page 199: The book mentions that flying exhibitions were quite profitable at that time. But it does not reveal that Glenn Curtiss paid his pilots and crews far more generously than did the Wrights. That, along with safer and better performing airplanes, enabled him to put on far more thrilling shows. Most of the Wrights' exhibition pilots were killed in their first fifteen months of flying.

Chapter 7

This chapter discusses the era between Wilbur’s death in 1912 and Orville’s in 1948, in particular the wrangling between the Smithsonian and the Wright family regarding the Smithsonian’s claims that Langley’s “Aerodrome“ aircraft was “the first airplane capable of manned flight”. It also contains one last enrichment of the Wright image by avoiding mentioning Orville’s disownment of his sister Katherine when she got married.

She abandoned her young teaching career to care for Orville after his back injury at Ft. Myer in 1908 and never went back to teaching. After devoting her life to her brothers and their aircraft business, finally in 1926 she decided to marry an old college sweetheart. Upon hearing of her marriage plans, Orville disowned her for “abandoning” him. Unfortunately, she was to have only two years of marriage before dying of pneumonia. But Orville had refused to have any contact with her until she was on her deathbed. This episode may well provide some insight into the attitudes he had regarding employees, their competition, the Smithsonian, and his legacy.

Pages 216 – 232: The book concludes with seven photos and over ten pages of text discussing the protracted, nearly four decades, of feuding between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian over who actually came up with the first airplane capable of manned powered flight. Was it the Wrights or Professor Langley, the director of the museum at that time, and creator of the ill-fated “Aerodrome”. In a pique, Orville sent the 1903 Wright “Flyer” to England for exhibition rather than give it to the Smithsonian. Finally, after WWII, a contract was signed, with the Wrights agreeing to bring the Flyer back for exhibit in the Smithsonian in 1948.

The relevant passage of the Wright-Smithsonian contract.

One wonders if this has something to do with museum personnel going out of their way to aggrandize the capabilities and accomplishments of Wilbur and Orville at every opportunity. This also explains why they avoid the issue of Wright aircraft not being able to take off unassisted until 1910. If the Smithsonian admitted this, it would be difficult to deny that numerous other aircraft were fully capable long before the Wrights were.

Summary

Unlike the previous discussions, for this book specific sources for specific comments were not always referenced in this article. This publication is more in the nature of a “coffee table” picture book than were those. Still, its common use as source material warranted it’s review here.

This book’s value is actually in the photographs presented. Its large size and print quality, along with the quantity and enhanced quality of the photos are outstanding. However the value of its text is another matter entirely. Perhaps the motivation of the authors may have again been to instill admiration and pride in Americans (and in their museum) by explaining all the Wrights’ accomplishments as due entirely to their “brilliance” and “genius”.

But as an American, I am offended at such inadequate research and frequent fabrication as this coming from the top levels of a Smithsonian Museum. This is an Institution supported by American citizens, and expected to be the world leader in such research. The Smithsonian evidently does world class research on non-technical historical subjects, and in some technical areas. Evidently its history majors and PhDs are capable in such areas. However with the Wright brothers they stepped off into a highly technical area for which they were obviously unprepared. Worse yet, there existed a plethora of records of the Wrights’ work which largely refutes nearly all of their guesses and fabrications. And perhaps worst of all, those eager to take credit for such publications as these by claiming authorship evidently were completely unqualified to verify contributions to their publications.

It’s easy to find out such information as the ten vital contributions to the Wrights’ work provided by Octave Chanute, or a half dozen examples of the Wrights’ wrong guesses at aerodynamics, or indeed all the other falsehoods cited in these critiques. All one need do is simply read and comprehend all of the first volume of Marvin McFarland’s compilation of original Wright-related correspondence and records, along with Orville’s 1920 affidavit. These resources were in existence at least a half century before the books addressed in this series were written and published by the Smithsonian.

In recent years it has become evident that many people are quite comfortable with fantasies in place of truth. However, having devoted much of my professional life to the science of aeronautical theory, design, and performance, I cannot ignore the origin of the entire technology being falsified. So, along with a growing contingent of others, I will continue to contribute to the establishment of truthinaviationhistory. 

——————————————————————————————————————————

Author Joe Bullmer has a Masters Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan with additional graduate studies in the subject (the exact same academic background as Kelley Johnson, designer of the U-2 and SR-71). He subsequently worked in aircraft design and performance and related subjects for the United States Air Force for thirty years. A substantial portion of this time was spent as an aircraft performance engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. During that time he had the rare opportunity to work with some of the top designers at Boeing, North American, General Dynamics, Lockheed (including Kelly), and McDonnell corporations.  He also collaborated with some of the best designers in the U.S. Air Force.

 

His areas of greatest interest have always been aerodynamics and stability and control. These are the keys to understanding the thoughts and testing of the Wright brothers.

 

Much of his work was in the field of technical intelligence. In this capacity he often was examining someone else’s airplane designs and determining what they did, why, and what the resulting performance would be. This turned out to be excellent preparation for his book since it is precisely what he had to do with the Wright brothers, designs. Intelligence work also developed his investigative and deductive skills which are prerequisites for any historical investigation.

 

Joe has presented aircraft design and performance briefings to U.S. Congressional and Senate committees, Presidential Cabinet members, and at the White House. Now 77, he has been retired for 25 years and has written The WRight Story, and a number of articles on early aviation. He maintains contact with a number of designers, flight test engineers, pilots, and historians.

The Wrong Wright Story Series #2: Visions of a Flying Machine (Part II)

The Wrong Wright Story Series #2

Peter Jakab's Visions of a Flying Machine (Part II)

By Joe Bullmer

Introduction to Part II

The previous article in Truth in Aviation History discussed the first four chapters of the book Visions of a Flying Machine by Peter Jakab. In this article, the subsequent six chapters of that book are critiqued. The article begins with a listing of the largely overlooked, but well documented and vital contributions to the Wrights' efforts made by Octave Chanute. The damage done to the historical record by Visions is summarized at the end of this article.

Left: Peter Jakab’s Visions of a Flying Machine. Right: The Wrights’ mentor, Octave Chanute.

 

 Chapter 5: "Riding the Winds"

Page 84: The Wrights’ relationship with Octave Chanute is discussed by saying that “Chanute provided the Wrights with little genuine technical assistance and few if any useful theoretical ideas.” This egregious falsehood is exactly opposite of the truth. According to records of their correspondence, Chanute provided the Wrights with, or alerted them to:

• His 1894 book that was the basis for their study of earlier works.
• Realizing the biggest problem remaining to be solved was control.
• The need to master control with gliders before adding power.
• Trussed biplane wing construction.
• First testing gliders unmanned with tethering lines.
• The best gliding areas are the coasts of Georgia and the Carolinas.
• His cohorts (Huffaker and Spratt) who showed the Wrights the reversal of the center of lift’s movement.
• Doing tests with a wind tunnel to determine better wing shapes.
• Photos of wind tunnels and the design of their lift balance.
• The basic design of a falling weight catapult enabling testing near Dayton and flying for the next six years.

In fact, it is evident that without these inputs the Wrights may well not have succeeded. If they did it would have taken them far longer, which may well have denied them the reputation of being the first to accomplish powered, manned flight.

 Page 110: The claim is made that the wing tests at Kitty Hawk “confirmed their earlier assumption regarding the reversal of the center of pressure [lift].” As previously discussed in relation to page 65, the Wrights did not have an “earlier assumption regarding the reversal of the center of pressure”. They admitted that the Kitty Hawk tests suggested to them by Huffaker and Spratt in 1901 showing the reversal of center of pressure movement came as a complete surprise to them.

Left: Dr. George Spratt (photo from the Harold E. Morehouse Flying Pioneers Biographies collection in the NASA archives); Right: Edward Huffaker

Page 112: Here, the author’s shoddy research has led countless subsequent authors and historians into an unintended error. A discussion on the Wrights’ problem with wing warping drag is opened by saying “Wilbur took the next step and attempted to make an intentional turn with wing warping.” In fact, the Wrights, particularly Orville in his 1920 deposition, made it perfectly clear that they were not attempting turns at Kitty Hawk, but rather were simply trying to maintain heading and avoid spins while correcting inadvertent banking when they ran into the problem.

They had put anhedral or droop into their wings to facilitate traversing a hill without getting rolled and blown sideways into it. Unfortunately anhedral made their gliders unstable in roll since the higher wing would develop more lift than the low one. But when they used warping to bring the glider back level, the downward warp on the low wing gave that wing substantially more drag causing it to drag back and slow down so much that it actually lost lift. This made the vehicle spin and roll further into the bank rather than level out.

Describing this problem in his 1920 deposition, Orville testified that “Sometimes in warping the wings to restore lateral balance…” In another reference to roll control he stated “When the wings were warped in an attempt to recover lateral balance…” On page three of their 1906 patent, it says “…owing to various conditions of wind pressure and other causes, the body of the machine is apt to become unbalanced laterally…. The provision we have just described [wing warping with coordinated rudder] enables the operator to meet this difficulty and to preserve the lateral balance of the machine.” Nowhere does their 1906 patent address turning.

The Wrights also describe their glider spinning into the lower lagging wing and auguring it into the sand. The Wrights referred to this as “well digging”. Had they been trying to turn, the vehicle would have slipped straight toward the other side, which it didn’t.

Actually, with the rudder mechanically connected to the wing warping, and only deflecting enough to keep the 1902 vehicle going straight, both it and the 1903 Flyer couldn’t turn. In fact, the Wrights were only able to make turns after they disconnected the rudder from warping in 1905. However this error in the book, along with laziness and/or lack of understanding by subsequent authors and historians, has perpetrated to this day the myth of the Wrights practicing intentional turns at Kitty Hawk.

Chapter 6: "Seeking Answers: The Wrights Build a Wind Tunnel" 

A 1949 reproduction of the Wright Wind Tunnel by the National Cash Register company

Page 119: This chapter launches into a two-chapter discussion of what was supposedly wrong with Lilienthal’s lift data to cause the Wrights to have lifting problems in 1900 and 1901. Right away it erroneously states that they used Lilienthal’s incorrect value of Smeaton’s coefficient for both of these vehicles. This is obviously wrong since wing area is proportional to Smeaton’s, and the ’01 vehicle had twice the wing area of the ’00.

This two-chapter discussion of what was “wrong” with Lilienthal’s data and how the Wrights “corrected” it with their wind tunnel, includes a whole series of falsehoods that have been repeated ad infinitum by authors and “experts” for over 30 years. The first blunder is saying that Lilienthal used Smeaton’s coefficient to calculate his lift coefficients from the equation

This is absolutely wrong since, as evident in Lilienthal’s book, Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation, he simply compared the lift on his wing sections at various angles of attack to their drag at 90 degrees. Since, at that time, the drag coefficient of any plate at 90 degrees was taken to be 1.0, the ratio of the pressures was the lift coefficient directly.

Lilienthal's glider. Photo from britannica.com

The next blunder was spending pages on what was wrong with the whirling arm device used back then by many experimenters to calculate lifting data. As its name implies, a long arm went round and round with a test section on its tip. Obviously the test section was (without a breeze) continually passing through its own wake of turbulent air which could cause errors. Lilienthal did use a 25-foot diameter whirling arm to calculate some of his data. However he also did tests in steady natural wind with no turbulence. Both of these data were plotted as “Plates” at the back of Lilienthal’s book.

Lilienthal's whirling arm device.

Later Lilienthal took the tabular data of lift coefficients for one of these plots and published it in James Means’ Aeronautical Annual. Anyone willing to go through the trouble to compare all of the table entries to the corresponding points on the plots in the back of Lilienthal’s book can see that the tabular data, which is all the Wrights had, exactly corresponds only to the points on the plot for a natural steady straight smooth wind. So, contrary to assertions in the subject book, the data the Wrights used had nothing to do with a whirling arm, or Smeaton’s coefficient.

James Means' Aeronautical Annual

Along with a lengthy discussion of the Wrights’ wind tunnel (we’ll get to that in a moment) the author spends a substantial part of the next 30 pages trying to say what could cause errors in Lilienthal’s data without actually determining anything. He uses the terms “could have”, “might”, “if”, “could be misleading”, “problems”, and “may have’s” without ever reaching a conclusion. The author’s task is made worthless by the fact that the Wrights admitted in a November 24, 1901 addition to a letter to Chanute (originally dated November 22, 1901) that the errors causing poor lift were theirs, not Lilienthal’s, and that there was nothing really wrong with Lilienthal’s data.

Page 124: Near the bottom of this page we are told that “the Wrights’ wind tunnel work best demonstrates their brilliance as engineers”. No mention is made of the fact that the idea and design of the tunnel was discussed with the Wrights by Chanute and his cohorts, Huffaker and Spratt, at Kitty Hawk. In fact, the subject was probably brought up by the Wrights’ guests since there is no mention anywhere of a tunnel by either of the brothers before then. As previously mentioned, during the summer of 1901, Chanute showed the Wrights photos of existing wind tunnels, and Spratt gave them the design of their “ingenious” and “inventive” lift balance with which to take test measurements.
 

Visitors to Kitty Hawk: l-r Octave Chanute, Orville Wright, Edward C. Huffaker, and Wilbur Wright.

In a letter to Chanute from October 16^th, 1901, Wilbur refers to the photos, and in a letter to Dr. Spratt from October 16^th, 1909, he discussed Spratt’s lift balance and claims he will be sure to give Spratt his due credit for the idea in the future. Orville also mentioned that the lift balance was Spratt’s idea in his sworn deposition for the 1920 Montgomery court case.

Throughout just this one chapter he lavishes gushing adjectives and phrases on the Wrights, including “imaginative, clever, conceptualizing, genius, marvels, ingenious, incredibly impressive, amazing, sophistication, inventive, visualizing, think through a problem clearly, and technical skill.” He even, on page 135, gives the Wrights credit for devising the scheme of calculating lift coefficients from force ratios and thus avoiding the use of the controversial Smeaton’s coefficient, not realizing, as was just discussed, that is exactly how Lilienthal did it ten years earlier.

Page 144: Here the erroneous claim that Lilienthal’s lift coefficients were wrong is repeated. A blunder trifecta is completed by repeating his claims that Lilienthal used a whirling arm and an incorrect Smeaton’s coefficient to generate the lift coefficients the Wrights used

Page 146: A plot of the Lilienthal lift coefficients versus angle of attack is presented along with the Wright data for a similar wing. This clearly shows that the data are basically coincident at the angles used in flight, and that Lilienthal’s data are more consistent than are the Wrights’ data. Not questioning the validity of his previous claims, the author merely attributes this data agreement to coincidence.

Pages 147 & 148: Here the author goes completely off the rails again saying that “Lilienthal’s….table had an even greater drawback” in that it could only be used for one wing shape! This statement is nothing short of bizarre. That is the purpose of lift coefficients, to express the different performances of differently shaped wings of the same size at the same flight conditions. This statement is exactly equivalent to saying that Volkswagen wheels are no good since they won’t work on a dump truck, or the recipe book has a drawback in that it calls for different temperatures or baking times for different dishes.

Page 149: While he’s out of his element, the author calls the fact that Lilienthal’s lift coefficient data can only be used for one given airfoil or wing shape a “stumbling block” and a “pitfall”. But farther down the page he magnanimously forgives Lilienthal’s “mistakes” because of all his “contributions to the advancement of aeronautics.”

Page 150: Here, after having sung their praises in previous chapters, the author finally acknowledges that the 1900 and 1901 Wright gliders had inadequate lift.

Page 152: The subject of induced drag is raised and the author ascribes the improved efficiency of the 1902 wings to an improved camber or curvature shape. Although the Wrights’ camber change probably changed lift coefficient somewhat, the vast majority of the reduction in induced drag was due to their more than doubling the aspect ratio from 1901 to 1902.

Page 153: The Wrights’ discovery of the significance of aspect ratio is mentioned here with no recognition that this was known by George Cayley a century earlier, and by many aviators in between. The Wrights could have learned this, years earlier, simply by reading. He also fails to mention that, along with changing their wing camber shape to much like that used by their more successful predecessors, they also changed their wing’s aspect ratio from 3.1 to 6.5, exactly the value used by Lilienthal on his test wings.

Sir George Cayley

Page 156: Reprinted here is Orville’s boast about how their predecessors were so ignorant of camber that they all used highly inefficient shapes and none had developed good data. Orville wrote “we possessed in 1902 more data on cambered surfaces, a hundred times over, than all of our predecessors put together.” Unfortunately this author, and apparently all others, are unaware that although the Wrights may have had more data that any others, they totally failed to understand the basic aerodynamic principal that caused their data

But their predecessors, Augustus Herring, Horatio Phillips, and Otto Lilienthal, did understand lift. They all knew that the primary cause of lift on a cambered wing was lowered pressures on its upper surface. The Wrights thought it was all due to pressure on the bottom of a wing that met the flow at a positive angle. In fact, that’s why they always used the term “center of pressure” (on the bottom of the wing) instead of center of lift (on the top surface).

In their 1906 patent they stated that their aircraft were “…supported in the air by reason of the contact between the air and the under surface of one or more aeroplanes [wings], the contact surface being presented at a small angle of incidence to the air.” They thought the only purpose of camber was to allow the wind to impact the forward upper surface of the wing to keep it from flipping over backwards. They held this erroneous belief for years after creating their powered airplanes.

Chapter 8: "'We Now Hold All Records!'"

Page 175: The author claims that the moveable rudder “provide[s] another instance of the presence of visual thinking in the Wrights’ inventive method.” Unfortunately their “visual thinking” did not recognize the problem of warp induced yaw beforehand, and that the fixed rudder, which they tried first, would make the problem worse.

Chapter 9: "The Dream Fulfilled"

Page 184: Yet another example of careless research is the claim that, in the Wrights’ first patent granted in 1906 “No mention of power is made in the claims.” In fact on page 1, lines 12-15, the patent states “….[the] aeroplanes [wings] are moved through the air edgewise at a small angle of incidence either by theapplication of mechanical power or by the utilization of the force of gravity.”

Page 186: Another try at belittling Octave Chanute is made by claiming that his statement that three-axis control was “ancient and well known” showed “almost unfathomable ignorance on the part of Chanute.” This claim actually shows “unfathomable ignorance” of the history of flight by a Director of the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. The concept of three-axis control was evident in a few glider concepts and vehicles, including Professor John Montgomery’s in the 1880s and going as far back as Le Bris’ 1857 glider which had wing warping and moveable horizontal and vertical tail surfaces. Moreover, the argument can be made that the Wrights didn’t actually have three-axis control until 1905 since their earlier vehicles all had vertical rudders only as an adjunct to wing warping to make the roll control work as intended. Those vehicles could only erratically control pitch and recover from inadvertent rolls, but could not intentionally execute turns.

The 1857 flight patent by Jean-Marie Le Bris

Page 189: We are told how Wilbur and Orville “cleverly used their tables…and lift and drag equations to determine the ….power requirements for the aircraft.” Unfortunately they were only “clever” enough to do it for level ground skimming flight. They did not heed warnings going all the way back to Cayley a century earlier, that an airplane would need additional power for taking off and climbing away from the ground. As a result, their aircraft could not “raise itself by its own power into the air” as they so proudly claimed in their post-1903 statements. In fact, their airplanes could not climb out of ground effect until 1905, and could not achieve flight without the help of strong headwinds or a catapult until late 1910, long after numerous other aircraft were routinely doing so.

Pages 194-198: On these pages the Wrights are lauded for making the “intellectual leap” that a propeller was just a wing moving in a spiral pattern and thus needed to be made up of cambered sections twisted as they went out from the hub to account for their increasing speeds through the air. Actually, this exact concept was presented to the Aeronautical Society of Great Britain in 1885 by Sidney Hollands and published in the U.S. by Chanute in February, 1893. (See the previous article Propelled to Absurd Heights by Paul Jackson in the January 26^th, 2020 posting of this blog.)

 

Sidney Hollands, pioneer of the modern propeller

In fact, Hollands went the Wrights one better by also pointing out that the blades should be tapered as they progressed out from the hub to minimize bending loads and aerodynamic tip losses. It was primarily the increasing blade widths of the Wrights’ propellers that limited their efficiencies to around 65 percent. It may well also be this excessive tip loading that contributed to one splitting and causing Orville to crash during a 1908 demonstration at Ft Myer, killing Lt. Tom Selfridge and braking Orville’s back.

Page 206: The assertion is made that the Wrights use of a 60-foot launching rail would “make it clear that the [1903] takeoff[s] had been unassisted, allaying any possible doubts that the Flyer had made a true flight.” However the author says nothing about the fact that at Kitty Hawk, on the morning of December 17^th, 1903, the 27 mph headwind with gusts even higher, supplied at least 90 percent of the airspeed, and over 80 percent of the lift required to get the Flyer into the air. It was almost flying sitting still without the engine and propellers turning. In fact, later that day the unattended vehicle did just that, the wind raising it up and rolling it over, destroying it. It would seem this wind constituted an essential assist and could raise, in Jakab’s words, “doubts that the Flyer had made a true flight.”

Chapter 10: "The Meaning of Invention"

Page 213: Although previous chapters lauded the Wrights’ “three-axis control” as enabling their 1902 glider to make turns, here that is directly contradicted by stating that “Before marketing their invention was possible, they would have to be able to make turns”. The author correctly points out that this was the purpose of their testing in 1904 and 1905 at Huffman Prairie, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he has made yet another contradiction within his own book.

l to r: 1902 Wright glider, 1903 Wright flyer, 1905 Wright flyer

Page 217: After spending the whole book describing the Wrights’ fabulously inventive genius, the book winds up by saying on the last page that “with the exception of the propellers, there was nothing fundamentally original about the way in which the 1903 machine was designed”. But as a last treat, two paragraphs down the author yet again demonstrates a somewhat schizophrenic style by following that statement with “they invented a fundamentally new technology.”

 

Summary

At this point I am somewhat at a loss for words to conclude this review. Not only is this the most inaccurate and confused book on the Wrights I have ever read, it is also possibly the most inaccurate record of technological history. And it was written by an Associate Director of the World’s premier aviation museum along with the help of some supposedly qualified technical contributors. Possibly some pressing deadline was imposed on the book preventing any real research. Or perhaps the intent was to do America a service by deifying two of its favorite sons. But still, these would not explain the numerous contradictions.

The real shame is that so many of the errors in this book have become part of the accepted historical record, and been repeated many times over, for decades, in subsequent books and media. This book seems to be yet another example of authority trumping truth.

--Joe Bullmer