clutching cups of coffee, the thousands who gathered on the sand dunes
near Kitty Hawk Wednesday had hoped to see history repeat itself on
the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ first flight. But it
was just as they feared: Nature hogged the spotlight.
Organizers of the First Flight Centennial Celebration had
planned to culminate the six-day affair with a re-enactment — 100 years to the minute later — at 10:35 a.m. Wednesday.
But sporadic downpours and insufficient wind
interfered with two attempts to re-create the 120-foot, 12-second
flight of Dec. 17, 1903, and transformed the place where Orville and
Wilbur Wright first flew into puddle-ridden terrain.
Had all gone as planned, the 35,000 spectators who
clustered at the Wright Brothers National Memorial would have
witnessed a pilot propel a reproduction of the world’s first
successful airplane — the 1903 wood-and-cloth Wright Flyer
— along a wooden launching rail and soar into the air.
But humidity crippled the performance of the replica’s
primitive 12-horsepower engine, causing it to produce less power than
needed. A driving rain and blustery conditions forced re-enactors to
skip the attempt at 10:35 a.m.
And during later
tries at 12:30 p.m. and 3:45 p.m., the lack of a stiff wind dashed
efforts to get it airborne.
Pilot Kevin
Kochersberger, an engineering professor at the Rochester Institute of
Technology, did manage to lift off the rail to an altitude of six inches for
a 1-second flight during the noon attempt, but the craft stopped dead
when the winds abruptly faded.
The 605-pound plane
landed in a puddle.
The Wright Experience, a
plane-restoration facility in Warrenton, Va., was commissioned by
the Wisconsin-based Experimental Aircraft Association to duplicate
the plane to the smallest detail and train pilots to re- create the
flight.
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EAA President Tom Poberezny said that
despite the failed attempts, the event was a success.
“Our goal was to focus attention on the 100th anniversary
of flight,” he said, adding that the plane had three successful test
flights in the past six weeks.
Arriving by
helicopter earlier in the morning, President Bush used the occasion to
deliver a patriotic tribute to the inventors of the airplane.
“In the future, flight will advance in ways that none of
us can imagine as we stand here today,” Bush said, his trench
coat soaked by rain. “Yet always, for as long as there is human
flight, we will honor the achievement on a cold morning on the Outer
Banks of North Carolina.”
Noting that it was just 66
years between the Wrights’ first flight and Neil Armstrong’s walk
on the moon, Bush highlighted the progress of aviation and said that
“by skill and daring, [Americans] will continue to lead the world in
flight.”
There had been speculation that the
president might announce his support for future space exploration,
including building a permanent base on the moon or returning to Mars.
But he made no such announcement during his 13-minute re
marks.
From man’s first mimicking of birds, through
the Greek parable of Icarus to Leonardo da Vinci’s 15th-century
designs for a flying machine, the dream of flight has captivated the
human mind. That might explain why thousands braved frigid air and
pelting rain to assemble around an 800-foot circle of sand in the
middle of the Wright Brothers National Memorial park in hopes of
witnessing the re-creation of the first powered flight.
John and Edie Bleattler of Colonial Heights, Va., turned
out at 6 a.m., and while they were happy to get education materi
als and Kochersberger’s autograph for their grandson, they were
surprised that organizers had not scheduled a rain date for the much-
anticipated event.
“It all hinges on this one day,”
Edie Bleattler said. She wound up watching video of a successful
Flyer test flight on a Jumbotron screen broadcast by organizers.
For Terry Queijo, an American Airlines pilot from
Trappe, Md., who served as backup pilot, the event marked the end of a
17-month journey. She was the lone female candidate among four competing
for a chance to portray Orville or Wilbur and pilot the Flyer
reproduction Wednesday.
Her chances were looking
good in July when she made the cut as one of two “Pilots of the
Century” who would flip a coin — as was the Wrights’ custom — to determine who would assume the role of Orville and attempt
to re-create his historic flight. The loser, as Wilbur, was to attempt a second flight later in the day.
But
Queijo’s quest came to a disappointing end Saturday when the EAA
decided to scrap the coin toss and announced Kochersberger as the
pilot who would re-create the flight.
EAA officials
said the decision was based on results: Kochersberger had two
successful test flights with the Flyer reproduction, and Queijo’s
one flight had ended in a crash. With training time exhausted, Queijo
had no time to make what she described as a “confidence-building
flight.”
“I’m pretty disappointed about it,” she
said before the event. “It was a hard thing to swallow that we had no
more time and there was a financial factor as well. It was all very
difficult to come to terms with. But I’m glad I could help as far as
the ultimate goal of this team.
“It’s been such an
incredible experience for me,” Queijo, 48, said Wednesday. “I’ve been
thrilled.”