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Latham attempts to cross the English Channel in his Antoinette.
The honor of having built a prac- tion enthusiasts (one of whom was
A History of tical seaplane belongs, however, to Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, USA)
\ Glenn Curtiss of the United States. formed the Aerial Experiment Asso-
Sea -A ir A via tion
Born in Hammondsport, a small vil- ciation (AEA). The sole purpose of
lage in central New York situated on the AEA was to build a man-carrying,
Lake Keuka, Glenn Curtiss got his powered aircraft designed by Bell.
business start as the owner of a bicy- Curtiss served as director of experi-
cle shop. From bicycles his interest ments for AEA. In the 18 months
turned to motorcycles and, in 1902, during which AEA existed (it was
he formed the G. H. Curtiss Manu- dissolved by mutual agreement on
facturing Company to make and sell March 31, 1909)) Curtiss helped to
motors. motorcycles and accessories. build several aircraft. The third of
The following year Curtiss won his these machines, June Bug, won the
first national motorcycle champion- Scientific Ali?erican Trophy at its first
ship. In 1907 he set a record by rid- public flight in the United States,
ing a motorcycle of his own design This prize was the first of three.
and construction 136.3 miles per Scientific American Trophies which
B 0th in the United States and Eu-
rope other aviation pioneers
would extend and refine the Wrights’
hour, a speed faster than any man
had ever gone.
Glenn Curtiss became involved in
Curtiss would win. He also won the
first Gordon Bennett Trophy
Rheims, France (1909), in eompeti-
at
ideas about flying. One outgrowth of aviation when Thomas Scott Baldwin, tion with Europe’s fine’st pilots, and
this work that is of particular im- who was a dirigible ‘balloonist, or- The World (New York) prize of
portance for sea-air aviation was the dered an engine from the Curtiss firm. $10,000 for a flight from Albany to
development of the hydroplane, or The Curtiss engine performed so well New York City in 2 hours and 51
seaplane, between 1910 and 1912. A that other balloonists sought Curtiss minutes.
Frenchman, Henri Fabre, made the power plants. In 1905 Baldwin and While Curtiss was working with
first hydroplane flight in March 1910. Curt& collaborated in building the AEA and also becoming a famous
Using a float-plane powered by a SO- first Army dirigible. But two years aviator, he fitted the June Bug, in
hp Gnome engine, Fabre took off, later Curtiss turned his attention from 1908, with twin floats which were
flew about a third of a mile, and dirigibles to airplanes, after meeting little more than covered canoes. The 1
alighted on the water at Martigues Dr. Alexander Graham Bell and result was a seaplane which he named
near Marseilles. Later that year, Fabre learning of his ideas about, aviation, the Loon. Despite having mounted a
made seaplane flights up to two miles On September 30, t1907, Bell, Cur- more powerful engine on the Loon,
in length, tiss, Bell’s wife and three other avia- Curtiss was unable to get it airborne.
Undeterred, Curt& kept experiment- plane to naval uses when he taxied the water. these blocks broke up the
ing. For example, when he made his his tractor hydro-aeroplane across the suction effect of the water on the
prize-winning flight from Albany to bay to USS Pennsylvania. Using a after portion of the hull, thereby pro-
New York City in May 1910, Curtiss boat crane. the ship’s deck force viding a much quicker getaway. This
attached an inflated tube of rubber- hoisted Curtiss’ plane aboard and then first Curtiss flying boat had a 26-foot
ized cloth in a fore and aft direction lowered it back into the water. Where- hull that was three feet wide and
along the landing gear. He also fixed unon Curtiss returned to his base at three feet deep. A single hydroplane
a small hydrofoil on the end of the North Tsland. A few days later the step ran the width of the flat bottom.
tube to prevent the plane from cap- inventive Curtiss added a tricycle The flying boat also had biplane wings
sizing. Flotation tanks mounted on the landing gear which could be raised or and an 8%hp Curtiss Model 0, V-S
wing tips also helped to balance the lowered with a lever by the pilot. The water-cooled engine. Cylindrical floats
plane if it had to land on water. Cur- result was the first amphibian which on the wing tips gave additional bal-
tiss never tested this crude flotation Curtiss called the Triad because it ance to the aircraft.
apparatus because he planned to use could operate from land, from water Two years after he had developed
it only if he had to make an emergen- and in the air. the flying boat, Curtiss built the
cy landing in the Hudson River. In recognition of his pioneering de- America, another flying boat. for
When the U.S. Navy encouraged velopment of the seaplane, Curtiss re- wealthy aviation patron Lewis Rod-
Curtiss to continue experimenting ceived the Robert J. Collier Trophy man Wanamaker. When it was fin-
with hvdro-aeroplanes. he subse- and the Aero Club of America Gold ished in 19 14, the Atrwrica was the
quently hit upon an efficient flotation Medal in 191 I. Sale of a hydro- first heavier-than-air craft designed
system more by trial-and-error methods aeroplane and a land-plane trainer for transAtlantic flight. While Curtiss
than by scientific theory. He tested to the U.S. Navy, along with a few had been busy with theqe projects,
all sorts of floats. secured in various other sales to aviation enthusiasts, the Smithsonian Institution had
places on his aircraft. Eventually he soon enabled Curtiss to expand his awarded him the coveted Langley
found that a large float, six feet wide, enterprise. Within a few years he had Medal for his development of the hy-
seven feet long, and up to ten inches sold similar machines to England, dro-aeroplane.
thick with a flat bottom positioned France, Italy, Germany, Russia and Thus in a period of less than 10
in a downward angle of about ten Japan. years from the first powered flight at
degrees, worked satisfactorily. Cur- Curtiss was not satisfied, however, Kitty Hawk, Glenn Curtiss had initi-
tiss kept tinkering with this configura- with just having converted a landplane ally adapted the landplane for practi-
tion until he had modified it to a for use on the ocean. Using his trial- cal use on the water and then had
single float 1, feet long, 2 feet wide,
3 and-error technique once more, he built the amphibian and the flying
1 foot thick and weighing about 50 began work on producing an airplane boat. Aviators now had practical air-
pounds, which was mounted under with wings, engine and propeller on a craft for use on the land or on the
the center section of the plane. For true boat hull. Together with Naval sea. The next logical step in the de-
balance he mounted tubular floats and Constructor Holden C. Richardson, a velopment of sea-air aviation was the
paddles on the wing tips. naval officer and engineer, Curtiss conquest of distance, particularly the
Glenn Curtiss first tested this single found that he could improve the per- Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In the
main (or sled profile) float success- formance of a flat-bottomed boat hull attempts to conquer over-ocean dis-
fully on San Diego Bay on February by mounting blocks athwartships on
1, 1911. A little over two weeks later, the bottom of the hull to make a step.
on the 17th, he convincingly demon- The effect of the step was dramatic.
strated the adaptability of the air- While taxiing the flying boat across
tance, modern descendants of Daeda- land, provides few safe havens for sessed the impact of the dramatic
lus would try to shrink the globe by an aircraft in trouble. Yet these ob- first flight across the Atlantic by LCdr.
reducing the time necessary to travel stacles had to be confronted and Albert C. Read and his crew in the
between any two major cities, say overcome if man was going to fulfill U.S. Navy flying boat NC-4. In his
New York and Paris. Some of these the ancient promise of flight. analysis, Mr. Grey remarked: “After
brave pilots would give up within The gradual development of trans- the first non-stop journey we shall be-
hours after they had started because oceanic flight came through a series gin to introduce an illimitable series
of some unexpected problem or un- of historic flights over the Atlantic, of minor classes in the competition.
foreseen danger. Others would fall Pacific and Polar Oceans. Yet an ac- We shall have the ‘first one-man
from the sky like Icarus, doomed by count of the important firsts in sea- flight,’ then we shall have the ‘first
a failure in the oil line, or a faulty air aviation is an inadequate chron- flight with one engine,’ ‘the first flight
compass, or bad weather conditions - icle if it fails to illuminate the process with two engines,’ . . . ‘the first flight
instead of the heat of the sun. Never- by which aviators learned to fly the with one passenger,’ ‘the first flight
theless, there were others who were oceans as easily and as safely as they with ten passengers,’ ‘the first flight
careful, as well as brave, who would learned to fly over land. Today the with a woman passenger,’ and so forth
succeed, and although their destina- air traveler thinks no more about the and so on ad infinitum.”
tions differed from that of Daedalus, problems of flying from New York Editor Grey’s point was very sim-
their goals were very similar. to Paris than he thinks about the dif- ple. What really counted was that the
ficulties involved in jetting from New NC-4 had been the first aircraft to
&I The Development of York to Los Angeles. Within a few cross the Atlantic and that it de-
hundred miles, the distances are near- served full credit and honor for hav-
Transoceanic Flight 62~
ly the same; however, one flight is ing been first. In making this point,
over the Atlantic, the other is over Grey showed great prescience. An
0 nce mankind had taken to the
highways of the air, flying only
over the land would not suffice as a
the continental United States. Yet any
reader of Lindbergh’s account of his
flight from San Diego to New York
“illimitable series” of competitions did
spring up after the flight of the NC-4
in a manner very similar to what he
means for conquering distance and via St. Louis, prior to his nonstop had predicted. Within the limits of
for providing freedom of geographical solo flight from New York to Paris, space in this history it is neither pos-
mobility. Mankind would also have is aware that he and the public sible nor productive to recount all the
to learn to fly over the oceans. The weighed the difficulties involved in the firsts in sea-air aviation. Nevertheless,
development of sea-air aviation would two flights quite differently. In 1927, Mr. Grey’s warning is, in one sense,
not, however, come easily. The oceans Lindbergh’s San Diego to New York misleading. If aviators around the
of the world cover nearly three-quar- air time of 21 hours, 45 minutes set world had been content to let the
ters of the earth’s surface. There are a record; yet his 33%-hour flight from achievement of an aviation first stand
few landmarks by which aviators can New York to Paris rightly received unchallenged in other classes of com-
navigate once they have left friendly public acclaim as the more difficult petition, then there would have been
shores behind. The weather over the achievement. a much slower and more hesitant de-
seas is often stormy and uncertain. Before beginning an account of the velopment of transoceanic flying. The
The surface of the oceans, even near various historic flights over the oceans very competition among the illimit-
of the world, one additional point able classes which Grey frowned upon
needs to be made about them. In 1919, was, in part, directly responsible for
C. G. Grey, the editor of the British fostering the development of over-
aviation weekly The Aeroplane, +s- ocean flying. When sea-air aviation
firsts became commonplace, the gen- by balloon would be possible. Four by Mason and companions. Poe had
eral public no longer had grounds for years later, Green built ,a small model merely written an account of what a
looking upon transoceanic flying as a balloon which was powered by spring- transoceanic flight might have been
dangerous sport fit only for a few gal- driven propellers. This forerunner of like.
lant souls. Instead commercial avia- the dirigible was further developed by Although John Wise made a second
tion began to gain broad acceptance a fellow aeronaut, Monck Mason, request to Congress in 1851 (which
as a means of safe transportation for who in 1843 built a model balloon was again rejected) and actually at-
the great mass of persons who wanted with a clockwork motor that propelled tempted a crossing in 1873, which
to get quickly from one place to an- it at about five miles per hour. At the ended in a crash in Connecticut, the
other, even when that meant flying same time an American balloonist, Atlantic has never been crossed by
over the ocean. John Wise, petitioned Congress for a free balloon. The first air crossings
Sea-air aviation began with bal- grant of money to construct a balloon would not come until the twentieth
loons. Two years after the Mont- capable of making the crossing from century and they would be made by
golfiers had invented the balloon, Jean the United States to Europe. Con- heavier-than-air craft rather than bal-
Pierre Blanchard and a rich American gress refused, however, to support loons. But before the U.S. Navy’s
physician, Dr. John Jeffries, crossed Wise’s scheme. NC-4 and the British aviators Alcock
the English Channel from Dover to a With the public growing more con- and Brown made those historic flights
forest near Calais on January 7, 1785. scious of ballooning, the New York of 1919. early aviators, like early bal-
When Blanchard and Jeffries reached Sun published, on April 13, 1844, an loonists, first had to conquer the Eng-
France, they had trouble with a too- account of what it thought was the lish Channel.
rapid descent. These pioneer aero- first crossing of the Atlantic by air. In 1909 the London Daily Mail of-
nauts had to throw out all their bal- The English aeronaut Monck Mason fered a prize of Z 1,000 (about
last and even part of their clothing to and seven others had made the trip $5,000) for the first airplane flight
slow the descent of the balloon and
to avoid crashing. Two Frenchmen,
Pilitre de Rozier and P. A. Romain,
tried to duplicate the feat of Blanch-
ard and Jeffries in the reverse direc-
tion on June 15, 1785. They used a
hydrogen-filled gas bag fitted with a
hot-air cylinder heated by a large
burner beneath it, which they ex-
pected would help in controlling the
altitude of their craft. Unfortunately
the device worked for only a short
time before it ignited the hydrogen.
causing both men to fall to their
deaths. They were the first aeronau-
tical deaths.
Aeronauts were not deterred by the
disaster which killed de Rozier and
Romain. Jean Pierre Blanchard came
to the United States in 1792 and made
what is believed to have been the first
air voyage in America using a hy- in 75 hours in the “steering balloon” across the Channel. Twice in 1909
drogen-filled balloon. Blanchard as- Victoria from Great Britain to Sulli- Hubert Latham tried to make the
cended, on January 9, 1793, from the van’s Island, S.C. The Sun account crossing in an Antoinette monoplane.
yard of the old Walnut Street Prison waxed grandiloquent. “The great prob- On July 19th he left France for Eng-
in Philadelphia leaving behind a lem is at length solved. The air, as land, but engine trouble forced him
throng of people, including President well as the earth and ocean, has been down into the sea seven miles short
George Washington, who had given subdued by science and will become of his goal. A French torpedo boat
Blanchard a letter of introduction. a common and convenient highway rescued him. Undaunted, Latham
The flight lasted 46 minutes and for mankind. The Atlantic has been tried again on July 27th. This time he
Blanchard descended some 15 miles crossed in a balloon and this, too, got within a mile of the English coast
to the southeast, across the Delaware without difficulty, without any appar- before engine trouble again forced
River near Woodbury, N.J. ent danger, and with thorough- con- him into the water. Again he was res-
Balloonists soon began to make trol of the machine, and in the incon- cued.
greater demands on their craft than ceivably short period of seventy-five Even if Latham had succeeded in
crossing the English Channel or the hours from shore to shore.” this second try, he would not have
Delaware River. By 1836 an English Alas, the New York Sun was a vic- been first because another French-
aeronaut named Charles Green pre- tim of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Balloon man, Louis Bliriot, had already flown
dicted that crossing the Atlantic Ocean Hoax.” There had been no crossing across the Channel on July 25th. BIC-
38 NAVAL AVIATION NEWS
insular safety, BlCriot was probably
more immediately gratified by the
celebrity and wealth which he gained
as a designer and builder of aircraft
following the flight.
The next significant step in the de-
velopment of over-ocean flying oc-
curred in 1911 when John A. D. Mc-
Curdy, a former member of the Aer-
iel Experiment Association of Alex-
ander Graham Bell and Glenn Cur-
tiss, tried to fly from Key West, Fla.,
to Havana, Cuba, a distance of about
106 statute miles. McCurdy took off
from Key West early on the morning
of January 30 in a Curtiss biplane
and headed for Cuba using a mag-
netic compass and visual checks on
a series of four U.S. Navy destroyers
which were stationed along the route
of the proposed flight to guide him
Vickers Vimy
toward Havana. Flying at an altitude
of from 700 to 1,500 feet and at
speeds between 40 and 50 miles per
hour, McCurdy had covered about
riot had been building and flying air- in 10 minutes after having left France, 90 miles when the oil lubricating sys-
craft for several years before he took he had lost sight of land and become tem in his engine malfunctioned forc-
off from Sangatte on the coast of uncertain as to where Dover was. ing him to alight on the sea. The de-
France at 4 a.m. At the time. Bliriot Lacking a compass, Bliriot let the stroyer Terry, which was following
was suffering from a leg injury re- plane take its own heading, which McCurdy, immediately rescued the
ceived in an earlier aircraft accident. took him to Deal, a town far to the aviator and his plane.
Shortly after 5 a.m. the French pilot north of where he expected to land. Although he did not reach Havana,
arrived over the English coast having One British authority, Sir Alan Cob- McCurdy did stay aloft for 2 hours
made the crossing in an official time ham, commented that Blkriot’s flight and 11 minutes before he had to ditch
of 37 minutes. Blkriot’s plane was his “marked the end of our insular safety, his plane. Besides making the longest
# 11 monoplane which had a 25% - and the beginning of the time when over-ocean flight to date and the first
foot wingspan and a 25-hp engine. Britain must seek another form of sea flight out of sight of land, Mc-
As if as a forecast of future dif- defense besides its ships.” Although Curdy’s effort also had its financial
ficulties in sea-air aviation, Bl&iot re- he may have been aware of the con- rewards-a $5,000 prize from a Ha-
ported to his English hosts that with- sequences of his flight on England’s vana newspaper and a $3,000 prize
from the Havana city fathers. Prior
to the flight, the New York Times
had editorialized that McCurdy’s pro-
posed flight would “in no degree ad-
vance the art of aviation” and would
“prove nothing except the aviator’s
willingness to risk his life unneces-
sarily,” but the brave Canadian pilot
proved the Times to be wrong. His
flight not only showed the effective-
ness of having naval vessels stationed
along the aviator’s proposed route to
minimize the risks involved and to
aid in navigation, but also demon-
strated that airplanes could safely fly
long distances out of sight of land.
Thus McCurdy set the aerial stage for
others who would come later to at-
tempt a crossing of the Atlantic, and
he showed the U.S. Navy how that
crossing might possibly be done,
To be cmtinued
September 1977 39
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