Katharine Wright

by Dr. Richard Stimson

in Others

Katharine Wright

Katharine Wright, sister of Orville and Wilbur Wright, inventors of the first heavier than air powered flying machine, was the only Wright sibling to graduate from college.

Interestingly, Milton Wright, the children’s father, claimed that he gave his children distinctive first names so that they had no need for middle names. In addition, Katharine’s brothers bestowed upon her the nickname of “Swes” which is an affectionate German derivative for “Little Sister.”

Although she was indeed her brothers little sister, Katharine had a short childhood, since her mother Susan Wright’s early death from the effects of tuberculosis when Katharine was but 15, threw her into the role of the lady of the house with all its duties. The loss was devastating for her, but at a suggestion by her father, Katharine found solace in the collection of many varieties of flowers which she dried and pressed into an album that she kept with her always.

Not only did Katharine have household duties, but she also inherited other responsibilities. Because her father was a Bishop and an important leader in the United Brethren Church, Katharine found that she must also be a hostess at her father’s church functions at home and when he traveled as well as being head of the Wright household.

Actually there were five Wright children in the Wright household, but the youngest ones, Orville, Wilbur and Katharine were exceptionally close as they were growing up. It has been speculated that Will, Orv, and Kate had made a pact never to marry. Since the three of them enjoyed each other’s company. However, as Katharine grew into adulthood, she drew the attention of quite a few gentleman admirers, related to the fact that she was described as “Having coal black hair, deep blue eyes and a smile that could blind you.” She was also very out-going and comfortable engaging anyone in conversation.

It was her father, Milton, who determined that Katharine should have the advantage of attending a college so that she could realize a career to depend upon. It was he who chose teaching as the ideal career opportunity for Katharine. She excelled in the language arts, but did not do well in mathematics. Katharine attended the co-educational Oberlin College in Northern Ohio, one of the first to admit women and did indeed graduate with a teaching degree. Katharine returned to her home town of Dayton, Ohio, and taught at Steele High School. Her first assignment was to teach beginning Latin.

By 1901, Katharine found that her Latin class, a required course for all the students, had poor students as well as good ones and some disruptive students. As the only sister of four older brothers, she was no stranger to boisterous behavior. That and her self-assurance and natural bossiness made her more than a match for teenage boys. She was ready for them and nipped their smartness in the bud.

Managing to bring some of the rich social life she had enjoyed in college home to Dayton with her, Katharine initiated parties, bicycle outings and camping trips from her home. When Orville and Wilbur were working on achieving actual flight for their heavier than air powered flying machine, Katharine helped them by watching over their bicycle shop, paying bills, depositing receipts and fighting with the help. {She and Charlie Taylor, the Wright’s machinist, were not fond of one another}

In 1902 when the brothers were laboring at home before taking their plans to Kitty Hawk, NC, Katharine complained “the flying machine is in the process of making now. Will spins the sewing machine around by the hour while Orv squats around marking the places to sew. There is no place in the house to live but I’ll be lonesome enough by this time next week and wish that I could have some of their racket around.”

However, Katharine found another phase added to her life when extended family members needed care-giving following illness and then again when Orville was seriously injured from a crash while flying, she took emergency leave from teaching school to tend to his needs.

When the Wrights went to Europe in 1907, Katharine’s found that her unofficial position for them at home increased. She corresponded with newspapers and magazines for them and answered queries for scientific information, screened business offers and politely handled cranks.

In 1909 Katharine requested an extended leave of absence and traveled with Orville to join Wilbur in France to help sell their flying machine to the French. Katharine provided the social chemistry the Wrights needed to make their enterprise work. She also learned to speak fluent French while she was there.

When Katharine returned home, she renewed her friendship with a gentleman by the name of Harry Haskell she had met at Oberlin College and that led to marriage. It was a marriage that was frowned upon by her brother Orville, who refused to speak to her after she had married. In spite of Orville’s painfully selfish reaction to her marriage, Katharine was extremely happy in her new life. Then when Katharine fell ill with pneumonia, and lay dying, Orville finally relented and hurried to her side just before she passed on.

File Photo: Bain News Service

Red Tails

by Dr. Richard Stimson

in Famous Aviators

The Red Tails Squadrons consisted of brave black pilots, mechanics and tecthnicians of World WarII who helped  defeat NAZI Germany. They became know as the Tuskegee Airman. There are three different parts to the Tuskeegee Airmenfighter pilots, bomber pilots, and support group.

The Original Tuskegee Airmen served  between 1941 and 1948. There are over over 14,000 names certified as Tuskegee Airmen.

Not all Tuskegee Airmen were pilots They had mechanics, instructors,etc.

In addition to the red tail P51s, the Tuskegee pilots flew P40, P39, P47 and the P51 Musta was Tuskegee.

The name Tuskegee came from Tuskegee Universty founded in 1881 by Booker T. Washington. In 1939, all black colleges were given  money to pay for pilot training programs. One of the first was Tuskegee University.

Not everyone liked these programs. They fully expected the program to fail and titled the program the “Tuskegee Experiment.”

There was one influencial person who helped turn this kind of thinking around. It was Eleanor Roosevelt, the President’s wife. The staff was shocked when they learned that this wasn’t a walk around and back visit.

She wanted a black pilot to fly her around the sky. Her pilot was Charles Anderson. She asked him whether it was truly possible for blacks to fly.

He answered, “certainly we can” For the next 40 minutes, Roosevelt flew with Anderson.

In 1928, The National Aeronautical Association wanted to suitably mark the spot where Orville Wright first began to move along the ground when the first flight was made.

The Association asked Bill Tate to assemble the eyewitnesses to the event for the purpose of agreeing and marking the spot.

The eyewitnesses were:

Adam Etheridge, John Daniels, and Will Dough from the local lifesaving station, and W.C. Brinkley, a local lumber buyer from Manteo, and Johnny Moore, a young man who lived with his mother in a shack in Nags Head woods.

Tate was able to find Dough, Etheridge, and Moore to perform the task. Daniels and Orville Wright were not able to attend. The others were deceased.

The task was not easy because the landscape had significantly changed since 1903. Getting the correct spot was important because the association was planning to erect a monument at the spot and they did not want any future disputes over the location.

Here are the exact words (misspellings and all) of their finding:

“Beginning with the site of the building which housed the Wrights’ plane at the time, distinctly remembering the wind direction at the time, and that the track was laid directly in the wind, collaborating our memory on these facts by the records of the Weather Bureau, remembering that we helped bring the machine from the building and placed it on the track, referring to distances laid down in feet in Orville Wrights article, “How We made our first flight.”

“We proceeded to agree upon the spot, and we individually and collectively state without the least mental reservation, that the spot we located is as near correct as it is humanly possible to be with the data in hand to work from after a lapse of twenty five years. We marked the spot with a copper pipe driven into the ground.”

In 1932 at this location, The American Aeronautical Association placed a large granite boulder containing a commemorative plaque consisting of the pictures of Orville and Wilbur and a statement that reads, “THEY TAUGHT US TO FLY.”

At the dedication of the new Wright Field in 1927, Brig.-General William E. Gillmore, Chief of the Materiel Division, spoke about what Wright Field will mean to the science and progress of the Nation’s Aviation Program.

The dedication of Wright Field provided the United States with the world’s Largest Aviation Plant.

Here is what he said (with some editing):

A Quarter of a century ago, Dayton saw the beginning of a new engineering industry. I speak of that which the Wright brothers engaged in as a sideline in their bicycle repair shop. To such vast proportions has that industry grown in this short span, that today it is regarded as a major arm of national defense by all civilized nations of the world.

The development of this industry was hastened through its early and anemic stages by the Great War and after the war it could not be allowed to lag. The Army’s course lay very clear ahead in that respect. To take part in, encourage, and aid in every phase of the process of flight was sheer duty to nation.

Reservoir of Science

Under this peacetime program, McCook Field and Wright Field, to which the McCook Field organization has been transferred, became the clearinghouse between manufacturer and the Army Air Corps. It interprets its needs in specifications and drawings of articles to be built, testing the products when completed, and refusing them if they did not come up to specifications.

If they did and still not prove all that was needed, “we study the weaknesses, pooling engineering experience, and suggestions with the manufacturer with hope of obtaining better functioning or more useful products.” In many instances it was breaking virgin ground, trying for equipment never used before.

Because of the large volume of testing carried on by the Materiel Division at McCook and Wright Fields through the years — static and dynamic testing of airplane structures, dynamometer testing of engines, whirl testing of propellers, precision testing of instruments, strength testing of every raw material used in connection with flight, and finally through flight testing of every airplane brought to the hangers — Wright Field has become a great reservoir of scientific aviation data.

These data have been open to the aviation public and have been drawn upon by the industry in every step of its forward progress with the exception of a few military secrets.

Because of this vast experience with and complete facilities for testing, Wright Field has been able to discover new building methods and materials. It has freely disseminated this knowledge, both for the purpose of obtaining satisfactory products for Air Corps use and also for simplifying the problems of design for the commercial builder.

Because of the great amount of all types of flying done by Air Corps pilots and because of the facilities for development at Wright Field, new problems of flight, as well as things needed for pilot and plane have been brought early for solving to the notice of technicians and engineers in charge of such work at Wright Field.

It was in answer to such problems that the idea of the earth induction compass, the radio beacon, night flying equipment, the modern air-cooled aviation engines, the airplane parachute, and other items too numerous to mention, had their inception in the organization now at Wright Field.

Reference: Aviation Progress, NCR, October 8, 1927.

The citizens of Dayton on October 12, 1927 donated a large tract of land for the site of the new Wright Field. The new Wright Field would house facilities for carrying on and expanding the experimental and research work of the Air Corps at McCook Field in Dayton.

This is the story behind this event beginning with the occasion of Orville Wright returning to the airplane business.

In 1917, Orville was back in the airplane business again in Dayton. This time he didn’t own the company named Dayton-Wright Airplane Company, but was a technical advisor. Six Dayton businessmen formed the new company. The president of the company was Edward Deeds, a vice-president and later president of the NCR Company. The vice-president was Charles Kettering, the noted inventor. Both were good friends of Orville.

A new factory was built at Moraine City, just south of Dayton. In addition, a flying school was formed and land procured just north of downtown Dayton and named North Field. In 1917, North field was leased to the Army and renamed McCook Field. Orville was instrumental in selecting the location.

The new investors hoped to make Dayton the manufacturing center of the United States using modern automobile production techniques to mass produce airplanes.

Fortuitously, the United States declared war on Germany five days before the new company was incorporated. Subsequently, the Dayton-Wright Company received a contract to deliver 4,000 modified British De Havilland DH-4 combat planes and 400 J-1 trainers.

The DH-4 was a 2-bay airplane with a 42-1/2 foot wing span. Its fuselage was about 30 feet long. It was armed with two Lewis guns in the rear cockpit, and one or two Marlin forward firing guns.

Following the world war the government began to figure seriously on abandonment of the McCook experimental field, where so much of useful aviation activity had been carried out during the conflict. The Miami River surrounded McCook field on one side and city of Dayton housing, the other. It could not be enlarged. The Air Staff had realized for some time that McCook Field’s physical facilities were inadequate to handle all of the work involved in the Army aviation research and procurement programs.

The search for a permanent home had begun before the end of World War I. Langley Field in Virginia was frequently mentioned as a likely site. After the war, cities across the country submitted competing proposals to the Army, offering land and facilities to house engineering activities. Dayton was faced with the prospect of losing McCook’s activities to another location.

John H. Patterson, founder and president of the National Cash Register Co (NCR), vowed to keep Army aviation in Dayton and began a local campaign to raise money to purchase land large enough for a new field. The land would then be donated to the U. S. Army with the understanding that it would become home of the Engineering Division. Orville was consulted on the selection of the this location.

Mr. Patterson died in 1922 before his plan could be carried out.

Fortunately, his son, Frederick B. Patterson, inherited both his father’s position at NCR as well as his interest in keeping Army aviation research and development activities in Dayton. In 1922, Frederick Patterson organized the Dayton Air Service Committee, a coalition of prominent Daytonians and businessmen dedicated to raising the money necessary to purchase land for the Air Service.

Calling on the citizenry of Dayton, Frederick B. Patterson laid plans for a campaign, which had in mind the acquirement of 5,000 acres of land near Dayton, to be presented to the government free of charge. The land included the existing Wilbur Wright Field that was leased by the Air Service. It also included the Wright brothers’ flying field on Huffman Prairie.

The campaign lasted two days and resulted in subscriptions totally $425,000. With this money farms were bought and land secured and accepted by the United States government. The new facility was named Wright Field in honor of the Wright brothers.

President Coolidge himself thanked President Patterson and the Dayton committee for the patriotic endeavors. Some 600 people and businesses contributed to the fund.

The dedication of the Wright Field, which was held on October 12, 1927, is a monument to the perseverance, foresight and patriotism of father and son. Photograph shows Orville Wright and Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis at the dedication

The present Wright Field occupies this land and is a fitting testimonial to the fine service rendered to the government by Dayton citizens.

The dedication ceremony was a grand occasion attended by Orville Wright and numerous military and political dignitaries. The crowd was thrilled with parachute jumps and flight demonstrations by McCook Field test pilots, including Lt. James “JImmy” Doolittle.