Aeronautics -- United States -- Biography; Wright, Orville, 1871-1948; Wright, Wilbur, 1867-1912
On his return to Dayton, Orville opened a flying school at the same
Huffman field[14] the Wright brothers had used for their experiments in
1904–5. Here he trained A. L. Welsh and Duval LaChapelle. When Brookins
arrived there from Montgomery, near the end of May, he took on the
training of Ralph Johnstone and Frank T. Coffyn, besides completing the
training of Hoxsey. Two others trained at the same field later in the
year were Phil O. Parmalee and C. O. Turpin.
Orville Wright continued to make frequent flights until 1915,
personally testing every new device used on a Wright plane. (He did not
make his final flight as a pilot until 1918.) More than one person who
witnessed flights at the Huffman field (or at Simms station, as the
place was better known) has made comment that it was never difficult to
pick Orville Wright from the other flyers, whether he was on the ground
or in a plane. Students, and instructors too, would be dressed to the
teeth for flying, with special suits, goggles, helmets, gauntlets, and
so on; but Orville always wore an ordinary business suit. He might put
on a pair of automobile goggles and shift his cap backward, and on cold
days he would turn up his coat collar; but otherwise he was dressed as
for the street. When he was in the air anyone could recognize who it
was--from the smoothness of his flying. And when he wished to test the
control and stability of a plane, he would sometimes come down and make
figure eights at steep angles with the wing tip maybe not more than a
few feet from the grass.
The public was no longer unaware of the significance of the flights at
Huffman field. Sightseers began to use every possible pretext to come
as close to the planes as possible. One evening as Orville Wright was
standing near the hangar, a bystander edged up to him.
“I flew with Orville Wright down at Montgomery,” he declared, “and he
told me to make myself at home here.”
Never before having seen Orville, he had mistaken him for an employee.
[Illustration: TWO ACES AND KING. Orville Wright, Wilbur Wright, and
Edward VII of England at Pau, France, March 17, 1909.]
Three flights at Huffman field in May, 1910, were especially
noteworthy. A short one by Wilbur--one minute twenty-nine seconds--on
May 21, was the first he had made alone since his sensational feats
starting from Governors Island. And it was the last flight as a pilot
Wilbur ever made. But on May 25 he and Orville flew for a short time
together--with Orville piloting--the only occasion when the Wright
brothers were both in the air at the same time. Later that same day,
Orville took his father, Bishop Milton Wright, then eighty-two years
old,[15] for his first trip in a flying-machine. They flew for six
minutes fifty-five seconds, most of the time at about 350 feet. The
only thing that Bishop Wright said while in the air was a request to go
“higher, higher.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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