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KH:The other biggest surprise is the aeronautical authorities, the people that were the experts that supposedly knew the answers. And the Wrights basically trusted their tables; Lilienthal and others. To question that, to reach a point where the leading aeronautical authorities could possibly be wrong, was a major, major step for two bicycle mechanics.
JS: The propeller alone is an outstanding case, isn't it?
KH: Absolutely, absolutely.
JS: They found so many tables were wrong.
KH: In 1901, when they started doing their wind tunnel testing, it became very, very obvious that..uh..that there was something (wrong). With their 1900 and 1901, but especially in their 1901 glider, the tables just didn't match. And that's when they got suspicious. And, course, that's when they almost gave up. I mean, they wrote that nobody will figure this out in our lifetime or in a thousand years. Kathrine said, "The boys are home early and they're not talking about flying." So they just about quit at that point, but two weeks later they were (working) with a bicycle with a Lilienthal airfoil on one side and a flat plate on the other and they were trying to determine if the Lilienthal airfoil would overcome the resistance of a flat plate, and it would not.
So the question mark started getting bigger at that point and then they got into building the wind tunnel and the balances and started measuring different airfoils. That starts leaving the media theory that these were two 'lucky bicycle mechanics' on the shelf because it's not true. And that was the most exciting time in their life. Orville wrote that they couldn't wait for the sun to come up to go back to work because every day they were plowing new ground. And they did that from October, 1901, all the way into January of 1902.
JS: Sounds like a description of Ken Hyde.
KH: Well, to a certain extent, maybe. Yeah. Especially when we can have a part to take apart and learn, yeah, we feel that same pleasure that they felt in the process.
JS: What it all boiled down to with the propeller, wasn't it, was the discovery that it actually was a wing?
KH: Yes, they were the first to determine that it was a wing in rotation.. They kinda put that off till the last, figuring they'd use marine tables. Because, for sure, everyone else was using Marine tables if they were using anything. And they came to find out that there really was no solid data (there) that they could bank on.
JS: Well, didn't I hear that, from their work, all of those (marine) propellers proved to be only 35 percent as efficient as they could have been?
KH: That's true. They thought if they could get a propeller that was 35 to 50 percent efficient, that would be OK. But there just really was some guessing going on with Marine propellers at that time; they were beautiful, but they wouldn't work on an airplane. Water and air's slightly different. But the propeller's probably their (the Wright's) most significant gift to us all, and it's the thing they've gotten the least amount of credit for.
JS: I talked to a British historian one time who said their biggest accomplishment was control.
KH: Well, it was the combination; it was the three-axis control for sure, and the propeller. When they got it all together..they got the three axis control together in 1902 on the glider, and then they got the propeller together in 1903 for the Flier. And, really, no one, even though the French had in 1908, engines that were 60 and 70 HP..beautiful construction..they did not have three axis control and they did not have the propeller. And it was not until they saw Wilbur fly in LeMans in August of 08 that they pieced it all together.
JS: What were they doing for any kind of control before then?
KH: They were doing things like steering with the rudder alone, not banking. They didn't have a way of wing warping. I mean, ailerons had been invented very early, but nobody had pieced together the three, you know adverse yaw in process. They had either one of the three or in some cases two of the three, but they didn't have the third axis.
JS: In this case, Glenn Curtiss came as close as anybody to doing a real improvement on what the Wrights did, didn't he?
KH: Oh, yes. He refined it and, of course, as speed increased the aileron was much more effective. We get it here quite often: people say, "well, the Wrights were way behind the times because ailerons were much more effective than wing warping," and so forth. But at the speeds and airfoil shapes that the Wrights machines were, ailerons wouldn't have been effective at all. And if you look at the early films of Orville flying at Ft. Myer in 08, for instance, they're having to roll into a 45 degree bank immediately to stay within the tree line..at those speeds, ailerons would not have worked. But as speed increased, and power increased in the airplanes..which happened pretty rapidly in '08 and '09 and '10 and '12..then this airfoil was outdated and, of course, they had a lot of problems with their Wright Model C with the military for that reason. It would start to build up speed and would start to tuck.
But that's been the problem; people have tried to build the Wright Flier for the 1903 machine, using the techniques that we know today. We know too much about airplanes today compared to what they did at that time. And so they build a version of what WE know and not what the Wrights know. And our goal is to make sure that we know that the airplane that we build is actually the machine that was there on December 17th.
JS: To understand a man, you have to put yourself in his time.
KH: That's true.
JS: Finally, is there any question in your mind that these two men were geniuses?
KH: I think that they would be opposed to the word 'genius'..there's no doubt in my mind that they had a genius quality. I think the best description that I can give of these two gentlemen..is you know when you're changing a tire or you're working on your car or doing something and somebody just walks out of the blue while you're trying to solve the problem and says, 'Well, why don't you try such and such?' That person is seeing the problem from the other side. And I spend all my time fixing this tire or whatever, and I'm looking at it from the south side instead of the north side. I think these two gentlemen, from what I've learned, had the ability that they each saw the problem from the other side.
So as a result they were a perfect pair and they had the love of each other..or respect of each other..to switch those sides, not be so steadfast in their thinking..especially in the discovery of the propeller..they would argue all day and evening about one point or the other and defend their point and get up the next morning and say "I think you're right," and the other would say, "No, I think your're right." They would switch the sides and in the process, when you look at that, that's the way we build airplanes today with a series of maybe a hundred or a thousand engineers..all picking at this problem till they get it solved. They had that ability and it was very obvious that when Wilbur died in '12, half of that view went away. And Orville invented some things and patented a number of things, built his laboratory and went to work 7 days a week, just like he had a job testing. And a couple of kids were peeking in the window one day, he used to tell the story, and one kid asked, "What's he doing?" And the other kid said: "He's inventing."
So that's what he tried to do but he spent most of his life defending the fact that they were the first to fly, became rather reclusive in the sense that he got tired of telling people that they flew. They showed us a picture, they told us, and you know, after about the third time it's like the old Texas story: "You're gonna have to find out for yourself."
(This) is a very humbling experience, it is a very rewarding experience. It's taken a long time to get to this point and I know everybody is very much interested in 2003 but the real technological breakthroughs came after that. That's when we feel that the real data of understanding what these two gentlemen did will really come out.
JS: You gonna fly it yourself?
KH: I'll be one of the pilots. I'm on the crew. There'll actually be four. And we'll be qualified. Scott Crossfield is running the flight test program, and Mr. Crossfield will select the pilot. And if I'm the one that's selected, that's fine..if I'm not, that's fine, too because he's the boss.
JS: After all, Wilbur wasn't the first pilot, and he helped build it, too.
KH: Well, that's right. I know I'll get some flying in the airplane.
2003 is kinda anticlimactic to us in many ways because of the work we've been doing. It really was anti-climactic to them, too. There was no jumping up and down and shouting and slapping on the back...they knew. As he wrote home on the 14th with Wilbur's first (test) flight, he said, "Success is assured."
