Jetrader - September/October 2011 - 55

Curtiss winning Scientiﬁc American Trophy with June Bug, driven by a Curtiss Motor in Hammondsport, New York, 1908.

Curtiss in August 1909 at the Grande Semaine d’Aviation at Rheims, France.

standing mile record of 26 2/5 seconds when he installed the ﬁrst motorcycle V8 engine by joining two of the four cylinder ones and ﬁ tted them to an 8-foot frame. By 1909, the G. H. Curtiss Company employed 100 men and shipped motorcycles worldwide with an agency in England; the factory ran 24 hours a day. It was in 1903 that a Curtiss V-twin made its ﬁrst airborne ascent installed on a dirigible built by Captain Thomas Scott Baldwin and set Curtiss on the road for which he is famous. A ﬂ amboyant 50-year-old ex-circus acrobat and a quiet young engineer at the small village workshop would seem to be like oil and water, but they hit it off and remained close friends until Baldwin’s death in 1923. Various means were tried to lighten the engines, initially by removing metal and thus shortening life; finally it was an in-line, air-cooled, four-cylinder design that proved to be reasonably reliable and powerful enough to get off the ground with a pilot. Eventually, Captain Baldwin moved his factory from San Francisco to the village, and Curtiss continued to manufacture motorcycles and struggled to meet the demand worldwide. A gas-powered generator provided the factory’s electricity. Meanwhile, to develop a suitable propeller for the dirigible engines Curtis was supplying Baldwin, he built a three-wheeled wind machine for testing them. Apparently driving it around succeeded in terrorizing any horses within earshot.

After Samuel Langley’s failure in 1903 to twice catapult his airplanes from a boat house roof on the Potomac and twice nose diving directly in to the icy water, (see Jetrader April/May 2004 issue), his sponsor, Alexander Graham Bell asked Curtiss to join him and produce an engine for his giant kite built with 3,000 tetrahedral cells of fabric. The Aerial Experimental Association (AEA) agreed to pay Curtiss $5,000 a year to head development with three other engineers; all had no conﬁdence in the practicality of the project. Without the engine and towed by a steamboat, it got airborne with a man but a few minutes later splashed down and was wrecked. Now it was the turn of each engineer to lead design and build an airplane. The ﬁrst was created by Thomas Selfridge, a biplane with a Curtiss V8, air-cooled engine; the top wing had anhedral while the lower one had the more common dihedral; there was no lateral control like the Wrights wing warping or Santos-Dumont’s ailerons on his 1906 Bagatelle. With Selfridge away on business and the airplane having only skids for taking off on the frozen Lake Keuka, it was essential that a ﬂ ight be made before the ice melted in late March. Canadian Casey Baldwin won the straw draw among the three remaining designers to make the ﬁrst ﬂ ight which on 12 March 1908 measured 318 feet. This made him possibly the third man to ﬂy after the two Wright brothers and the ﬁrst Canadian. A Dr. William Christmas claimed he was third, as he had ﬂ own his own

design in Virginia four days earlier. On St. Patrick’s Day, Baldwin’s second ﬂ ight ended by wrecking the airplane, known as Red Wing, after only 120 feet. White Wing was No. 2 and designed by Baldwin. It had a tricycle undercarriage, the ﬁrst airplane to have one, plus a form of aileron at the wing tips instead of the Wrights wing warping lateral control. They were not aware of the Santos-Dumont 1906 ailerons in his ﬂ ights outside Paris, (Jetrader April/May 2004). To make the White Wing bank and turn, the pilot turned the control wheel to crank the rudder and the ailerons with a shoulder yoke by leaning in to the turn, as on a bicycle. On 18 May 1908, Baldwin took off before a large crowd at the Pleasant Valley Wine Company ﬁeld and covered 279 feet. Selfridge, back from his business trips, managed only 100 feet and 240 feet on ﬂ ight two; then it was Curtiss’s turn. His ﬁrst ﬂ ight ever, he travelled 1,000 feet with perfect control at all times to the astonishment of the experienced Baldwin and Selfridge; he stated that now he understood the dynamics of ﬂ ight. For No. 3, christened June Bug, it was Curtiss’s turn at the drafting board, assuming they had one. His airplane looked similar to the No. 2 June Bug, but there were a number of small differences that improved its controllability; his natural ability that made him a world champion motorbike record holder gave him the sensitivity to detect the subtle changes to make a good design better. In addition to lengthening the fuselage frame and Jetrader 55

Jetrader - September/October 2011

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