MANKIND’S PURSUIT OF FLIGHT
The following timeline of significant historical steps made towards the achievement of powered human flight is presented with the acknowledgement that it is impossible in this space to provide a comprehensive list of each and every contributor to this effort.
Achievements specific to the Commonwealth of Virginia have also been highlighted.
1783
Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier makes a tethered, ascent in a hot-air balloon which he designed with his brother, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, becoming the first human to experience lighter-than-air flight.
1792-1810
After sketching flying machine concepts as early as 1792, English engineer Sir George Cayley develops and hand-launches a glider model with kite-shaped wings and a cruciform tail combining elevator and rudder in 1804. From 1809-1810, Cayley publishes his three-part treatise, "On Aerial Navigation,” in which he identified the forces acting on an aeroplane in flight: lift, thrust and drag, and conceived the idea of a lifting airfoil.
1852
Sir George Cayley publishes his description of his “Governable Parachute” a manned glider designed to be released from a balloon at a height from which it could navigate “five to six times the distance horizontally that the balloon is then above the earth.” Cayley theorized that with the means of lightweight propulsion, “mechanical aérial navigation would be at our command without further delay.” Cayley’s full-sized Governable Parachute glider achieves the first manned glider flights in recorded history in 1849 and 1853 shortly before his death in 1857.
1801
Eight years after the first balloon flight in the United States in 1793, the first recorded evidence of aeronautics in the Commonwealth of Virginia occurs in Williamsburg, Virginia on May 7, 1801. The balloon, powered by ethanol alcohol, was decorated with sixteen stars representing each of the existing states. Joseph Shelton Watson, a student at the College of William and Mary who was a member of the balloon club wrote, “I never saw so great and so universal delight as it gave to the spectators.”
1861-1865
The first use of military, aerial reconnaissance in the U.S. takes place on July 31, 1861 at Fort Monroe in Hampton, Virginia when John LaMountain, a civilian aeronaut, privately contracts with U.S. Army Major General Benjamin Butler to make observations of Confederate forces sixteen miles away at Young’s Mill. Professor Thaddeus Lowe’s Balloon Corps would provide surveillance to direct Union ordinance towards Confederate troops at Falls Church, Virginia, the first time aerial surveillance was used to direct fire in warfare history. Balloons would provide the Union Army with critical intelligence during the Pennisula Campaign, the sieges of Yorktown and Fredericksburg, the Battle of Fair Oaks, and Chancellorsville.
1866
British marine engineer Francis Herbert Wenham publishes “On Aerial Locomotion on the Laws in which Heavy Bodies impelled through Air are Sustained,” and patents the design of parallel superimposed planes that will become the basis for bi-plane and tri-plane designs of the future. In 1871 he builds the first wind tunnel with John Browning and utilized it to test lift characteristics of different wing forms.
1871-1876
Frenchman Alphonse Pénaud’s “planophore,” the first truly stable airplane model in history, flies 131 feet in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris on August 18, 1871. The 20-inch-long monoplane with tapered dihedral wings is propelled by a pusher propeller located behind an adjustable tail powered by twisted rubber strips. In 1876, Pénaud patents a full-size amphibian monoplane design that had many features of modern aircraft, including counter-rotating propellers, a glass cockpit, landing gear, elevators and a rudder connected to vertical fin. The design was never built.
1883-1894
After retiring from his railroad engineering career in 1883, French-American Octave Chanute begins promoting organized engineering dialogue on flight research in the United States. Between 1891 and 1894 he compiles the leading research on heavier-than-air aviation, culminating in his influential work, Progress in Flying Machines, in 1894. Chanute personally funds aviation research by others and facilitates collaborative research that will play a key role in American leadership in flying-machine development.
1886-1897
Frenchman Clement Ader develops several steam powered aircraft prototypes. In 1890, his Éole is credited with achieving a powered take-off and uncontrolled flight in ground effect when it flies a few inches off the ground for 165 feet. Several of his subsequent designs, developed in concert with the French Army, fail to fly.
1887-1891
American Samuel Pierpont Langley is appointed Secretary of the Smithsonian Institute in 1887. Inspired by a lecture hosted by Chanute in 1886, American Samuel Pierpont Langley begins substantial research culminating in “Experiments in Aerodynamics,” published in 1891, the first substantial American scientific contribution to aerodynamics. Langley analyzed the properties of rigid plane surfaces in flight using data captured by his recording instruments he designed mounted to a “whirling table,” a belt-driven contraption with two 30’ long spinning arms which moved up to 70 miles per hour. Langley’s work was credited with inspiring aviation enthusiasts and bringing respectability to the science of aeronautics.
1889-1894
In 1889, Hiram Maxim, an American-British inventor, begins construction of a massive flying machine with a 110-foot wingspan and two 17-foot diameter steam driven propellers. In 1894, the 3.5-ton machine briefly lifts off of the bottom rail of the 1,800-foot test track Maxim has constructed at Baldwyns Park, in Bexley, England, an achievement celebrated by Scientific American as the “first time in the history of the world, a flying machine actually left the ground, fully equipped with engines, boiler, fuel, water, and a crew of three persons.” During a later test, the machine jumps the test track and is irreparably damaged, ending Maxim’s manned flight experiments.
1893-1894
Australian Lawrence Hargrave invents the “Cellular Kite,” a biplane box-kite structure with two parallel wing surfaces, the precursor to future biplane winged aircraft. In 1894, he utilized multiple connected box kites to lift him sixteen feet into the air. Hargrave shares his designs with others in the Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales.
1891-1896
German inventor Otto Lilienthal, the “flying man,” develops and successfully flies multiple stable monoplane and biplane gliders which he controlled by shifting his body position during flight. On August 9, 1896, after earlier achieving a sustained flight of over 800 feet, Lilienthal’s glider stalls in mid-flight and crashes headlong into the ground. Lilienthal succumbs to injuries and dies two days later. Lilienthal is credited with the first successfully controlled heavier-than-air glider flights and was a major inspiration to contemporary and future aviation inventors.
1896
Augustus Herring and Octave Chanute develop a two-surface “strut-wire” braced glider which improved upon the superimposed plane designs of Wenham, Hargrave and Lilienthal. The “Chanute-Herring Machine” would greatly influence the Wright Brothers early glider wing design.
1891-1896
Between 1891 and 1896, Samuel Pierpont Langley and his team of engineers (Augustus Herring, Dr. Carl Barus, Edward Huffaker, R.L. Reed, and L.C. Maltby) developed a series of steam-powered airplane models he called “aerodromes,” Greek for “air runners.” Beginning in 1893, Langley began test flights of his aerodrome models launched from a houseboat in the Potomac River in Stafford, Virginia. The tests culminated in the first sustained heavier-than-air mechanical flights of a craft of substantial size in human history in 1896. Aerodrome No. 5 achieved a flight of 3,300 ft on May 6, 1896, followed by a 4,200 ft flight of Aerodrome No. 6 on November 28, 1896.
1899-1900
Orville and Wilbur Wright, bicycle manufacturers from Dayton, Ohio, construct and fly their 1900 glider, a large-scale kite based on the Chanute-Herring machine with wires allowing the brothers to warp the wing shape to balance and steer the craft, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1901
On June 19, 1901, Samuel Pierpont Langley’s quarter scale Aerodrome A model becomes the first heavier-than-air craft to fly with an internal combustion engine in Stafford, Virginia. In 1903, Langley attempted two launches of his full-size Aerodrome A. Both ended with crashes caused by structural failures, ending Langley's pursuit of manned flight.
1901-1902
By 1901, the Wright Brothers had advanced their research to a 98-pound, man-carrying glider with a 22-foot wingspan. The glider included an innovative roll-control system in which the pilot could warp the shape of the wings by shifting his body The 1901 glider accomplished a flight of 300 feet but was stubbornly difficult to control. By 1902, the Wright's solved this control problem by integrating a moveable rudder into the wing-warping system, giving the pilot the first three-dimensional system of aircraft control. By the end of the year, the Wrights had made over 1,000 flights in the 1902 glider, some of which exceeding 600 feet.
1903
By 1903 the Wright Brothers were ready to add a propulsion system to their glider, which they dubbed the "Flyer." The Canard biplane, with its pilot, weighed over 600 pounds and utilized a 12-hp four-cylinder engine driving two pusher propellers located behind the wing. On December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright piloted the Flyer on a 12-second, 120-foot flight. It was the first manned, heavier-than-air mechanical aircraft flight in human history.
1908
In September 1908, Orville Wright makes the first large public airplane demonstration in the U.S. at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia. Over 1,000 spectators watch Orville break the world record by flying the Wright Flyer for over one hour. On September 17, a malfunctioning propeller causes the flyer to crash with Wright and passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge on board. Selfridge died of the injuries he sustained, making him the first powered aircraft fatality in the world. Despite the tragedy, the demonstration convinced the U.S. Army to contract with the Wright Brothers for the production of military aircraft and the training of pilots between 1909 and 1910 in College Park, Maryland.
1910
On November 14, 1910, Eugene Elk makes the first manned airplane takeoff from a warship in his Curtis pusher in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The successful launch was made from the cruiser U.S.S. Birmingham, which had been modified with a superstructure and wooden platform. Two months later, Elk would takeoff from and land his airplane on the U.S.S. Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.
1916
On December 30, 1916, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) established Langley Field (named after Samuel Pierpont Langley) in Hampton, Virginia as the Army’s Aviation Experimental Station and Proving Grounds. This joint airfield and proving ground for Army, Navy and NACA aircraft was used during World War I as a flying field, balloon station, observers’ school, photography school, experimental engineering department, and for aerial coast defense. One of the oldest aviation research facilities in the United States, it would be renamed renamed Langley Air Force Base in 1948. Today, Joint Base Langley-Eustis (JBLE) is comprised of more than 20,000 Air Force, Army, and civilian personnel serving in more than 60 organizations.
1917
In 1917, NACA established the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory on Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia. The facility was initially established to research airframe and propulsion engine design. In 1934, NACA constructed the world’s largest wind tunnel at the laboratory which allowed scientists to discover improvements allowing supersonic flight. On October 1, 1958, the facility became a component of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was renamed the Langley Research Center. The facility played a key role in training the first crews of astronauts, and contains the Lunar Landing Facility and the Viking program for the exploration of Mars.
1921
After returning home as a pilot in World War I, Brigadier General William “Billy” Mitchell advocated for the expansion of naval airpower over surface fleet vessels. In 1921, he conducted demonstration bombing runs with the 1st Provisional Air Brigade in Hampton, Virginia against captured German warships. The demonstration convinced Army and Navy officials to accelerate the development of naval aviation.
1922
In March 1922, the USS Langley (CV-1) became the first commissioned U.S. Navy's first aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Virginia. The Langley was converted from USS Jupiter (Collier #3), which was the U.S. Navy's first surface ship propelled by electric motors when commissioned in April 1913. Following tests in the Atlantic in 1924, she became the test platform for developing carrier operating techniques and tactics while serving in the Pacific.
1945
In 1945, the Wallops Flight Facility was established in Wallops, Virginia to collect information on the flight characteristics of airplanes, launch vehicles, and spacecraft, and to increase the knowledge of the Earth's upper atmosphere and the environment of outer space. Since its founding, over 16,000 launches have occurred at the rocket testing range. The Wallops Flight Facility also supports science missions for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and occasionally for foreign governments and commercial organizations. Wallops also supports development tests and exercises involving United States Navy aircraft and ship-based electronics and weapon systems in the Virginia Capes operating area, near the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay.
1946
On May 25, 1946, the headquarters of U.S. Army’s Tactical Air Command were established at Langley Field in Hampton, Virginia. The command's mission was to organize, train, equip and maintain combat-ready forces capable of rapid deployment to meet the challenges of peacetime air sovereignty and wartime air defense. The arrival of Tactical Air Command and jet aircraft marked the beginning of a new era in the history of the field, and in January 1948 Langley Field officially became Langley Air Force Base.
1976-Present
In January 1976, the U.S. Air Force 1st Tactical Fighter Wing was transferred to Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia from MacDill Air Force Base in Florida with the mission of maintaining combat capability for rapid global deployment to conduct air superiority operations. To accomplish this mission, the 1st Tactical Fighter Wing was the first U.S. Air Force operational wing to be equipped with the F-15 Eagle. In 2005, the FTW became the first operational wing equipped with the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor.
