July 30, 1909 was an exciting day for the Wrights. Orville completed the final army contract requirement for selling their airplane to the U.S. War Department. He flew the Wright Flyer in a speed trial to Alexandria, Va. and then back to Ft. Myer at an average speed of 42.58 mph over the 10-mile round trip.
It would have made headlines around the world except that a Frenchman, Louis Bleriot, had flown his airplane, the Bleriot XI, across the English Channel five days earlier.
In 1908, Lord Northcliff had offered a prize of $5,000 for the first pilot who flew across the English Channel. Bleriot, an avid aviator who was close to bankruptcy, decided to try for it.
He pointed a finger toward in the direction of Dover, England and took off from France on a rainy morning of July 25, 1909. He had no compass. Crutches were strapped to the side of the airplane because he had badly burned his foot on his plane’s exhaust pipe on a previous flight.
He headed for a place along the English coastline known as Northfall Meadow beside Dover castle. The meadow was only 100 feet off the water and the only site where he could safely land because the white cliffs were too high for him to reach and the beach at Dover was too small for a plane to land.
A French newspaper reporter standing in the meadow would wave a flag to direct Bleriot to the spot.
It was a calm day. It was so calm he didn’t have to use wingwarping or the rudder to fly a straight path. Events were going smoothly until he saw the English coastline in the distance. Then a strong wind came up and with it a mist that made it hard to see.
The wind was blowing him off course to the North. Just as he appeared to be in trouble, three ships came into view. He gambled and followed the ships, hoping they were headed to Dover. He guessed right.
He then headed southward along the famed white cliffs. Suddenly, he saw the flag being waved in the meadow and headed for land.
By now the wind was blowing harder, making a landing extremely difficult. He cut the engines as he neared the ground and made a controlled crashed landing. It broke
the landing gear and damaged the propeller, but he had made it! The flight lasted 37 minutes.
The Wrights had flown much farther by that time, but flying the English Channel had the crowd appeal that Lindbergh’s flight over the Atlantic would have 18 years later. The French newspapers immortalized the moment for the glory of France.
A crowd of over 100,000 welcomed Bleriot back to Paris as a national hero with a grand parade. It was comparable to a reception for Napoleon Bleriot was born in Cambrai, France in 1872. He established a successful automobile accessories business and then turned his interest to aviation around the turn of the century.
He made a series of airplanes with little success. His model XI first displayed in 1908 would be a success. The monoplane weighed about 500 pounds and was constructed of a frame consisting of ash and spruce covered in Irish linen. The wing area was 150 square feet. It employed an adaptation of the Wright Brothers wingwarping, the first European machine to employ it effectively.
A 3-cylinder, 25-hp engine built by an Italian named Alessandro Anzani powered the airplane. The engine spewed out a cloud of castor-oil vapor oil that covered everything including the pilot. It was crude but reliable.
Eventually, 132 of the airplanes were built. Some of them were used by the French military in the early years of WW1. A few of them still exist and can still become airborne.