The change from the crowded, stifling hot, noisy confines of the workspace at Dayton to the open reaches of sea and sky on the Outer Banks could hardly have been greater or more welcome. They loved Kitty Hawk. “Every year adds to our comprehension of the wonders of this place,” wrote Orville to Katharine soon after arrival.
The previous winter on the Banks had been especially severe, one continuing succession of storms, the brothers were told, the rain coming down in such torrents as to make a lake that reached for miles near their camp. Ninety-mile-an-hour winds had lifted their building from its foundation and set it down several feet closer to the ocean. Mosquitoes were said to have been so thick they turned day into night, the lightning so terrible it turned night into day.
But the winds had also sculpted the sand hills into the best shape for gliding the brothers had seen, and the September days now were so glorious, conditions so ideal, that instead of turning at once to setting up camp, they put the glider from the year before back in shape and spent what Wilbur called “the finest day we ever had in practice.” They made seventy-five glides and with some practice at soaring found it easier than expected. All was looking highly favorable.
With the help of Dan Tate, a new 16 × 44-foot building in which to assemble and store the new Flyer went up in little more than a week’s time, its doors hung and hinged just as a terrific storm struck, the wind at one point blowing 75 miles per hour.
Progress on the new machine had to go forward, of course, though indoors. “Worked all day in making connections of sections of upper [wing] surface, putting in wires at rear edge and putting on some hinges,” Orville recorded on October 12 the same day Dan Tate reported that five boats had already been driven ashore between Kitty Hawk and Cape Henry.
On October 18, as Wilbur wrote to Katharine, “a storm hove to view” that made “the prayers of Elijah look small in comparison.
The wind suddenly whirled around to the north and increased to something like 40 miles an hour and was accompanied by a regular cloudburst. In this country the winds usually blow from the north, then from the east, next the south, and then from the west, and on to the north again. But when the wind begins to “back up,” that is, veer from south to east and north, etc., then look out, for it means a cyclone is coming. . . . Maybe it got so in love with backing up that it went forward a little sometimes just to have the fun of “backing up” again. It repeated this process seven times in four days. . . .
The second day opened with the gale still continuing. . . . The climax came about 4 o’clock when the wind reached 75 miles an hour. Suddenly a corner of our tar-paper roof gave way under the pressure and we saw that if the trouble were not stopped the whole roof would probably go.
Orville put on Wilbur’s heavy overcoat, grabbed a ladder, and went out to see what could be done. Wilbur, coatless, followed after and, fighting the wind, found Orville at the north end of the building, having succeeded in climbing the ladder only to have the wind blow the coat over his head.
As the hammer and nails were in his pocket and up over his head [Wilbur continued, delighting in telling the story for those at home once the storm had passed], he was unable to get his hands on them or to pull his coattails down, so he was compelled to descend again. The next time he put the nails in his mouth and took the hammer in his hand and I followed him up the ladder hanging on to his coattails. He swatted around a good little while trying to get a few nails in. . . . He explained afterward that the wind kept blowing the hammer around so that three licks out of four [he] hit the roof or his fingers instead of the nail. Finally the job was done and we rushed for cover.
The driving wind and rain continued through the night, Wilbur wrote, “but we took the advice of the Oberlin coach, ‘Cheer up, boys, there is no hope.’?”
By mail, on October 18, came a newspaper clipping sent by their Hawthorn Street neighbor George Feight reporting the failure of another Langley test flight on October 7, and this time it was the full-sized Great Aerodrome with Charles Manly at what constituted the controls. No sooner had the “buzzard” with a wingspan of 48 feet been launched than it dove straight into the water. Manly, though thoroughly drenched, suffered no injury.
“I see that Langley has had his fling, and failed,” Wilbur wrote to Octave Chanute. “It seems to be our turn to throw now, and I wonder what our luck will be.”
In the same letter, Wilbur left no doubt that their confidence was at a new high. “We are expecting the most interesting results of any of our seasons of experiment, and are sure that, barring exasperating little accidents or some mishaps, we will have done something before we break camp.”
Scratching off a postcard to Charlie Taylor, Orville expressed the same spirit in a lighter vein.