“We tried,” Daniels said, “but it was mighty weak shouting with no heart in it.”
In the time since 1900, when Wilbur had gone off on his first trip to Kitty Hawk bringing a camera as part of his equipment, the brothers had become increasingly interested in photography as essential to their flying experiments. They had even begun selling photographic equipment at the bicycle shop. In 1902 they had made what for them was a major investment of $55.55 in as fine an American-made camera to be had, a large Gundlach Korona V, which used 5 × 7-inch glass plates and had a pneumatic shutter. Early that morning of December 17, Orville had positioned the Korona on its wooden tripod about 30 feet from the end of the starting rail and assigned Daniels to squeeze the rubber bulb to trip the shutter as the Flyer passed that point.
Orville now positioned himself on his stomach at the controls, as Wilbur had, while Wilbur stood to the right at the tip of the lower wing ready to help keep the machine in balance as it started down the track. Minutes passed while the engine warmed up. As they would later emphasize neither had had any “previous acquaintance” with the conduct of the machine and its controlling mechanisms.
At exactly 10:35, Orville slipped the rope restraining the Flyer and it headed forward, but not very fast, because of the fierce headwind, and Wilbur, his left hand on the wing, had no trouble keeping up.
At the end of the track the Flyer lifted into the air and Daniels, who had never operated a camera until now, snapped the shutter to take what would be one of the most historic photographs of the century.
The course of the flight, in Orville’s words, was “extremely erratic.” The Flyer rose, dipped down, rose again, bounced and dipped again like a bucking bronco when one wing struck the sand. The distance flown had been 120 feet, less than half the length of a football field. The total time airborne was approximately 12 seconds.
“Were you scared?” Orville would be asked. “Scared?” he said with a smile. “There wasn’t time.”
“It was only a flight of twelve seconds,” he would also stress later, “and it was an uncertain, wavy, creeping sort of a flight at best, but it was a real flight at last.”
The machine was picked up and carried back to the starting point, after which they all took a short break to warm up inside the camp.
At about eleven o’clock, the wind having eased off somewhat, Wilbur took a turn and “went off like a bird” for 175 feet. Orville went again, flying 200 feet. Then, near noon, on the fourth test, Wilbur flew a little over half a mile through the air and a distance of 852 feet over the ground in 59 seconds.
It had taken four years. They had endured violent storms, accidents, one disappointment after another, public indifference or ridicule, and clouds of demon mosquitoes. To get to and from their remote sand dune testing ground they had made five round-trips from Dayton (counting Orville’s return home to see about stronger propeller shafts), a total of seven thousand miles by train, all to fly little more than half a mile. No matter. They had done it.
There was talk of going again, of even attempting a flight down the beach to the weather station. But a sudden gust caught the Flyer and tossed it along the sand “just like you’ve seen an umbrella turned inside out and loose in the wind,” remembered John T. Daniels.
Daniels had been standing holding an upright of one of the wings and suddenly found himself caught in the wires and the machine “blowing across the beach, heading for the ocean, landing first on one end and then on the other, rolling over and over, and me getting more tangled up in it all the time”—all 600-plus pounds of the machine, plus Daniels, who weighed over 200 pounds, swept up by the wind as though they weighed nothing at all.
When the machine stopped momentarily, Daniels succeeded in breaking loose. (“His escape was miraculous,” Orville later wrote, “as he was in the engine and chains.”) “I wasn’t hurt much. I got a good many bruises and scratches and was so scared I couldn’t walk straight for a few minutes,” Daniels would say. The brothers “ran up to me, pulled my legs and arms, felt of my ribs and told me there were no bones broken. They looked scared, too.” From that day on Daniels could proudly claim to have survived the first ever airplane accident.
The Flyer was a total wreck, nearly all the ribs of the wings broken, the chain guides badly bent, uprights splintered. Any thought of another flight had vanished.
Daniels and the others said their goodbyes and walked back to the Life-Saving Station. For their part Wilbur and Orville fixed and ate some lunch, then washed the dishes before walking four miles to the Kitty Hawk weather station to send a telegram home.