The Santos-Dumont No. 5, which was in reality the modified No. 4 with
new keel, motor, and propeller, did the course of the Deutsch Prize,
but with it Santos-Dumont made no attempt to win the prize until July of
1901, when he completed the course in 40 minutes, but tore his balloon
in landing. On the 8th August, with his balloon leaking, he made
a second attempt, and narrowly escaped disaster, the airship being
entirely wrecked. Thereupon he built No. 6 with a cubic capacity of
22,239 feet and a lifting power of 1,518 lbs.
With this machine he won the Deutsch Prize on October 19th, 1901,
starting with the disadvantage of a side wind of 20 feet per second. He
reached the Eiffel Tower in 9 minutes and, through miscalculating his
turn, only just missed colliding with it. He got No. 6 under control
again and succeeded in getting back to his starting-point in 29 1/2
minutes, thus winning the 125,000 francs which constituted the Deutsch
Prize, together with a similar sum granted to him by the Brazilian
Government for the exploit. The greater part of this money was given by
Santos-Dumont to charities.
He went on building after this until he had made fourteen non-rigid
dirigibles; of these No. 12 was placed at the disposal of the military
authorities, while the rest, except for one that was sold to an American
and made only one trip, were matters of experiment for their maker. His
conclusions from his experiments may be gathered from his own work:--
'On Friday, 31st July, 1903, Commandant Hirschauer and
Lieutenant-Colonel Bourdeaux spent the afternoon with me at my airship
station at Neuilly St James, where I had my three newest airships--the
racing 'No. 7,' the omnibus 'No. 10,' and the runabout 'No. 9'--ready
for their study. Briefly, I may say that the opinions expressed by the
representatives of the Minister of War were so unreservedly favourable
that a practical test of a novel character was decided to be made.
Should the airship chosen pass successfully through it the result will
be conclusive of its military value.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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