Chasing Icarus (30 page)

I was myself told by Chairman McCoy of the committee in the presence of a witness, that the Liberty prize contest would be open to the end of the meeting, which as he and everyone else knew, was definitely intended to include Monday. He also gave me to understand that the same man could make more than one flight, and that the best time would win. This, too, was the general understanding of the aviators, and no denial of it by the committee can explain or excuse their subsequent action.

The plain fact is that the committee, seeing a chance of winning the prize for an American, went back upon their word, and by closing the contest and the official meeting, stopped two men, Messrs. de Lesseps and Grahame-White, from trying again, and the other fliers from even competing.

My disgust at this betrayal is more almost than I can express. What the feelings of the Englishmen and Frenchmen are could they be induced to speak their mind, I dare hardly imagine. Anyhow, it is my intention to resign immediately from the Aero Club of America, and I hope all American sportsmen will follow my example.

It will of course be understood that I write this letter with no personal bias either for or against Messrs. Moisant and Grahame-White.

I am, yours truly

J. Armstrong Drexel

Cortlandt Bishop’s retaliation was swift. He likened Drexel and Grahame-White to grand opera singers, saying “they are jealous and very difficult to manage.” However, he slyly added, perhaps this was inevitable as the pair’s “nerves are on edge from their flights.” As for Drexel’s resignation, Bishop told reporters he was disappointed but not that surprised: “Mr. Drexel has lived much of his life abroad although he is a native born American. Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

Having resigned from the Aero Club, Drexel then invited his fellow aviators to a soiree of his own at Sherry’s, just a couple of blocks away from the Plaza. Count de Lesseps was in—he had already made an official protest of his own at the committee’s volte-face—and Latham had also lodged a complaint, questioning the absence of official observers from the pylons in the latter stages of Moisant’s flight in the International Aviation Cup race. For all he knew, Moisant might have cut a few corners in the gloom of Saturday evening. Hamilton, Harmon, and Willard accepted, but Glenn Curtiss and Eugene Ely opted for neutrality, which was also the stance of the Wrights. They attended neither dinner and left it up to their team to make their own choices. Walter Brookins was recovering from his injuries, Ralph Johnstone chose to spend the evening with his family, and Arch Hoxsey went to the official dinner, along with James Radley and Alec Ogilvie. British they might have been, but they considered it a breach of etiquette to snub one’s host, what ever the reason.

As General Miles addressed the audience, the
New York Times
reporter slipped out of his seat and tiptoed across the ballroom toward Drexel. “Would you explain the reason for the dinner at Sherry’s to night?” he asked in a whisper. “The dinner,” said Drexel, talking to the reporter’s ear, “was a protest against the action of the committee with regard to Mr. Grahame-White and the Statue of Liberty race. I was exceedingly indignant at it, and I did not feel that I could bring myself to sit down with the other members of the Aero Committee at the official dinner.”

When the general concluded his speech, J. A. Blair, one of the committee members, left his seat and welcomed the latecomers. Please, he told them, smiling, sit down. They did, all except Drexel, and Grahame-White “got a thoroughly cordial reception” as he took his place at the top table between Augustus Post and Theodore Schaeck. Cortlandt Bishop got to his feet, and, said the
New York Times
reporter, “a thrill ran through the audience” as he made the official pre sentation to Grahame-White of the International Aviation Cup, telling him, “In handing you this cup I also in the name of the Aero Club of America challenge you for it. We shall take profit by your example and shall work early and hard for it, and I hope that next year an American will bring it back again.”

The pair shook hands and Grahame-White took delivery of the trophy, as well as a check for $13,600—his tournament winnings. He admired the trophy for a moment, in the way he liked to admire himself in the mirror each morning, then placed it carefully on the table. He was in his element now, the center of attention, with three hundred people on tenterhooks waiting to discover if he would turn on the men he had earlier described as “bandits.” But Grahame-White was far too much of an English gentleman to give in to his emotion.

He was humble in his gratitude for the victory, but, he wondered, what might have happened had it not been for the “lamentable disaster” that befell Walter Brookins? Then he turned to Alfred Le Blanc and told the audience with fulsome modesty that the Frenchman was “an aviator of far greater experience than I am and has qualities as an aviator which I cannot claim. His ability is far superior to mine.”

Next Grahame-White gestured toward two of his fellow companions at the top table, Augustus Post and Alan Hawley. You know, he said, with a sheepish grin, “We aviators are sometimes prone to look down on balloonists, but in view of the performance which recently startled the whole world, our hearts went out to Messrs. Hawley and Post, and we realized that these pilots of balloons cannot be looked down on, for they showed themselves men of courage and audacity, and their sporting and daring attempt which broke all records was a very, very, very fine feat.”

The
New York Times
reporter joined in the applause, then listened as Grahame-White brought the speeches to a close by “extending an invitation to all the aviators present to come to England next year for the international meet and he promised them a hearty welcome.”

EPILOGUE

We’re Sending Sputniks to the Moon

There was indeed a “hearty welcome” for all those who came to Eastchurch, in southeast England, in July 1911 to compete for the International Aviation Cup. But Claude Grahame-White wasn’t there to greet them, and nor were most of the aviators who had thrilled the fans at Belmont Park the previous year. Cortlandt Bishop was present and threw a Stars and Stripes around the shoulders of Charles Weymann when he won the cup back for the United States. In second place was Alfred Le Blanc, beaten again, this time by influenza, or at least that was his excuse.

On November 1, 1910, the morning after the acrimonious dinner at the Plaza Hotel, the
New York Herald
used its editorial to reflect on the Belmont Park tournament. Of course, it said, “It is to be regretted that a misunderstanding arose just at the close but that such things were to be expected when men are engaged in eager competition.” Of greater pertinence was the significance of the meet, and the
Herald
concluded, “Whatever may be the merits of the controversy, it cannot change the fact that the international aviation tournament this year was the greatest ever held and nothing can detract from the wonderful results or from the powerful stimulus it will give to the development of the art that is to play such a wonderful part in the world’s future.” The next day, November 2, the
New York Evening Sun
reported that as a result of the recent aviation tournaments in Europe and the United States, the German War Office had ordered airplanes of five different types, including the Wright biplanes, and “elaborate tests are to be made of these machines and then it is said that the Government will make extensive purchases for the army.”

In addition, Britain and France were equipping themselves with flying machines, so it was therefore with no little relief, continued the
Evening Sun
, that General James Allen, fresh from Belmont Park, “recommends the purchase of at least twenty airplanes to be used in regular practice at different parts of the country during the year.” These would complement the current American aerial strength of one dirigible and two aircraft.

Less than a fortnight later, General Allen was one of the guests on board the cruiser
Birmingham
, anchored five miles off the Virginian coast, as Eugene Ely took off from the deck and successfully completed the first ship-to-shore flight. In doing so, proclaimed the
Chicago Daily
Tribune
, Ely “proved that the airplane will be a great factor in naval warfare of the future.”

Before the year was out, the first successful message had been sent from an airplane to a wireless station midflight, and Phil Parmalee had demonstrated the commercial capabilities of the airplane by transporting a consignment of silk from Dayton, Ohio, to a dry-goods firm in Columbus, only sixty-five miles but the first air-freight flight. Also the United States Aeronautical Reserve, established on September 10, 1910, had expanded at a prodigious rate, boasting among its members not just military men but “financiers, sportsmen and hundreds of others interested in aeronautics, from President Taft down to the humblest airplane mechanic.”

In an end-of-year article for
Fly
magazine, Glenn Curtiss described 1910 as “a year of triumphant progress,” and Louis Blériot enthused that “the airplane as it exists today really stands upon the threshold of the most amazing, sporting and commercial possibilities . . . There is absolutely nothing to prevent flight becoming one of the greatest developments in the world’s history.”

Fly
’s rival publication,
Aero
, joined in the applause in its editorial of December 31, 1910: “Perhaps when years pass and the airplane is accepted universally upon its superior merits, when it is admittedly the King of Transit; when the sight of the flying machine is no rarer than that of its gasoline motored cousin on the ground; then, let us hope, some altruistic pioneers will look backwards, remember 1910, and erect a giant pylon of marble in the memory of the year when aviation came into its own. Good old 1910!”

The Wright exhibition team traveled to Denver in mid-November 1910 to put on a show. Flying at five thousand feet above sea level was a new experience for Ralph Johnstone and Arch Hoxsey, but they dazzled the huge crowds with stunts over the foothills of the Rockies. Walter Brookins joined in, too, in his first public appearance since his Belmont Park smash. The morning demonstration on November 17 had been rapturously received, and in the afternoon the trio were up again, Brookins and Hoxsey performing a series of death-defying stunts close to the ground while Johnstone climbed to one thousand feet to demonstrate one of his legendary spiral glides. “He swooped down in a narrow circle,” wrote a reporter from the
Chicago Daily Tribune
, “the airplane seeming to turn almost in its own length. As he started the second circle, the middle spur which braced the left side of the lower plane, gave way and the wing tips of both upper and lower planes folded up as if they had been hinged.”

Shrieks came from the stands as the biplane started to hurtle toward the ground. Johnstone was pitched forward out of his seat, but his body caught on the wires between the planes. His cap flew off and fell from the sky. One of the aviator’s flailing arms grasped a wooden brace, and as his legs dangled nine hundred feet above the Denver earth, with extraordinary strength and dexterity he pulled himself up so he was standing between the two planes. The crowd wasn’t sure if it was Johnstone’s latest trick, but the reporter from the
Tribune
had attended enough aviation meets to know this was no stunt. He looked up as Johnstone tried to manipulate the two planes with his hands and feet. For a second the reporter thought he’d succeeded—perhaps so did Johnstone—“but the hope was momentary, however, for when about 800 feet from the ground the machine turned completely over and the spectators fled wildly for safety as the broken airplane, with the aviator still fighting grimly in its mesh of wires and stays, plunged among them with a crash.”
*

Johnstone lay under his engine, which was enveloped by the white canvas wings, a shroud for the dead aviator. The hordes that had been fleeing paused, turned, then ran toward the wreck. “Frantic for souvenirs,” wrote the
Tribune
’s correspondent, “the spoilers quarreled and pulled and tugged among themselves even for the possession of the gloves that had protected Johnstone’s hands. These had been torn from his hands by the first of the mob, but even more heartless was the action of one man, who, cheated of any other booty, tore a splinter of the machine from Johnstone’s body and ran from the scene, bearing his trophy with the aviator’s blood still dripping from its ends.”

Brookins and Hoxsey had seen the whole incident, every terrifying, desperate second. Hoxsey was led away from the broken body of his friend, murmuring the same words over and over: “Poor Ralph, poor Ralph.”
†

In the days following the Belmont Park Meet, John Moisant became the idol of America. The tournament had enriched him to the tune of $13,550 (although the $10,000 for the Statue of Liberty race had been held back while Grahame-White’s appeal was taken to the International Aviation Federation), and not a day passed without his appearance in a newspaper or magazine. His life story was told in comic strips, and he became a favorite subject for feature writers. Kate Carew salivated over him in a piece for the
New York American
on November 6: “His head is round and shapely. His face tapers from the cheekbones to a square chin, chiseled as if by a sculptor. His mouth is large, full-lipped and very widely arched—a bold, Roman mouth to match the dark, imperturbable eyes. You’d look at him twice, dears, I know you would.” In short, who needed Claude Grahame-White?

Moisant capitalized on his fame by forming the Moisant International Aviators, combining his flying skills with his brother Alfred’s finances. In the long term Moisant planned to open an aircraft factory and manufacture dozens of his aluminum airplanes, but for the rest of 1910 he and his troupe of aviators—including Roland Garros, René Simon, and Edmond Audemars—toured America thrilling their legions of fans.

In late December they were performing in New Orleans, and John Moisant had his eyes on a $4,000 prize tabled by the French tire manufacturer André Michelin, for the longest sustained flight of the year. Some of his team, however, were becoming ever more concerned with Moisant’s daredevilry; earlier in the month he’d glided down from nine thousand feet after suffering a frozen carburetor while trying for the world altitude record. One of his business managers, Albert Levino, advised him to be more prudent, but Moisant brushed him off, saying, “There’s no danger in making an airplane flight if the machine is properly adjusted before the ascent is made.” Don’t worry, he told Levino, “I don’t expect to die in an airplane flight.”

Moisant woke early on the morning of Saturday, December 31, in more of a frenzy of activity than usual. He had only a few hours before the window closed on Michelin’s prize. He took off at nine fifty-five A.M. from City Park aviation field in New Orleans, said the correspondent from the
Indianapolis Star
, “confident of winning the Michelin Cup record for 1910 as a final triumph to his year of achievement.” The reporter was among a sizable crowd that had already gathered to watch his attempt, and for the first few minutes they were treated to some of Moisant’s most daring stunts as he warmed up his machine, including “his famous right circle . . . pronounced the most daring feat ever attempted by an airman.” They purred with delight as Moisant swerved suddenly to the left, then the right—then something went wrong. The machine got caught in one of the holes in the air, and instead of making the famous right circle, it “pointed its nose directly at the ground and came down like a flash.” The first people to reach the wreckage were a group of railroad laborers; they found Moisant lying in some long grass, without a bruise on his body, and with not the “slightest trace of fear or pain” on his face. His neck was broken and death had been instantaneous.

News of Moisant’s death hadn’t yet reached California as the passengers stepped off the Pacific Electric trains at the stop for Aviation Field. The sky was gray and overcast, with the same zephyr as there had been in January, when Louis Paulhan so enraptured the spectators. People skipped along the road in merry anticipation as the sounds of the revving motors grew louder. Whom were they looking forward to seeing most? The daring Frenchman Hubert Latham? Boyish but indestructible Walter Brookins? Eugene Ely? Charles Willard? No, they all wanted to see the hometown hero, Arch Hoxsey.

Five days earlier Hoxsey had climbed to 11,474 feet, a new world’s record, and one he dedicated to his friend Ralph Johnstone, whose Belmont Park mark had been bettered by a Frenchman called Georges Legagneux in early December. Hoxsey had won back the record for the Stardust Twins, but he’d warned his rivals he’d raise the bar even higher before the year was out. His mother, Minnie, had seen him break the record, as she’d seen him on every day of the meet, but today being Saturday she had a few chores to do before she would be able to travel from her Pasadena home.

Hubert Latham was first in the air in his yellow-winged Antoinette, then James Radley took up his Blériot. Hoxsey was in his hangar making his final preparations for his flight when a friend appeared in the doorway. He was panting and held in his hand a newspaper. “It’s an extra,” he said between gasps. “Moisant’s killed!” The friend told reporters later that Hoxsey took the news “almost listlessly” and said in a barely audible voice, “Poor fellow. He must have become tired out fighting the wind.” Hoxsey’s friend was alarmed by his reaction and tried to talk him out of flying that day, but the aviator shook his head and smiled. As his machine was trundled out of its hangar, Hoxsey turned to his friend and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder: “If it’s after me, it’ll get me any other place as well as here.”

Walter Brookins stood in front of the press stand chatting to some reporters as Hoxsey’s biplane rose into the air. Hard to credit, isn’t it, he said, that Arch was here in January as a spectator, and now eleven months later he’s the star turn.

They watched as Hoxsey began to ascend in his familiar long spirals, and Brookins gave a running commentary on his friend’s altitude. Guess he’s at five thousand feet now, six thousand feet, seven thousand feet. Brookins turned to answer a question from a reporter, and as he did, someone in the crowd let out a scream. “Brookins whirled round at the sound of the cry,” wrote the reporter from the
Colorado Springs Gazette
, and as the biplane dropped from the sky, “. . . he uttered but one word, ‘God,’ his legs gave way and he fell into the roadway. Although he had been in several serious accidents himself, he rose thoroughly unnerved and cried like a child. At the time the field announcers were rushing up and down, shouting through their megaphones: ‘No cause for alarm. Hoxsey is all right.’ But Brookins was not convinced. ‘That’s a lie,’ he shouted back at one of the announcers. ‘Hoxsey’s dead. I know it.’ And again he burst into tears.”

They wouldn’t let Brookins near the crash site. Kind arms ushered him away. Latham had been the first to reach Hoxsey, and Latham now sat in his hangar, silent and white and trembling. The sight of Hoxsey impaled on the wooden strut, his legs contorted under his body, the crushed rib cage, the blood seeping from under the shattered goggles . . . Latham’s mind was seared with the image.

A squad of mounted police patrolled the field, driving away those who wished to ransack Hoxsey’s corpse the way the Denver crowd had Johnstone’s, while other spectators angrily demanded a refund when the organizers canceled the rest of the day’s events. Glenn Curtiss watched in silence, then, turning to his mechanics, he said, “Tear down the bunting, lower all the flags.”

Reporters besieged the home of Minnie Hoxsey for the rest of the day, hoping for a few words. They waited on the porch, well wrapped up against that chill zephyr, and “every little while could be heard the suppressed sounds of sobbing.” Finally, when she had run out of tears, Mrs. Hoxsey emerged from the gloom of her house. “I wish I had gone up with Arch,” she said. “Then I would have died with him. All along I have been in dread he would someday meet with accident, but I rather he would have been killed outright than crippled for life. For, knowing my son as I did, I feel certain he would have lived a life of torment had he been compelled to have gone through life maimed and helpless.” One of the reporters, greedy in his ghoulishness, wanted to know if she would be visiting the undertaking rooms to view her son’s body. She stared long and hard into the reporter’s eyes: “I shall not look on his dead form. I wish to remember him as he was—cheerful, loving, and smiling.”
*