Higher, Steeper, Faster

Introduction

THE MAN WHO OWNED THE SKY

March 14, 1915. San Francisco, California

Fifty thousand people sat in the grandstand of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, facing the bay, and perhaps one hundred thousand more lined the waterfront. The Panama-Pacific was the biggest, most important event ever staged in San Francisco, a world's fair to announce that the city had finally recovered from the terrible 1906 earthquake.

Millions would come to see its attractions: walk-through replicas of Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon, a five-acre working model of the Panama Canal, the actual Liberty Bell, on loan from Philadelphia. The Ford Motor Company had set up an assembly line and for three hours a day would build an automobile every ten minutes. Fairgoers could watch hula dancers, ride a miniature railway or a submarine, or sit in a compartment on a swing arm that propelled those inside to and fro over the grounds. There was even a 435-foot-high Tower of Jewels, decorated with more than one hundred thousand pieces of polished colored glass, called Novagems, imported from Europe and strung on wires. Fifty colored spotlights shone on the tower each night, making it visible in every corner of what was now known as "the Jeweled City." For local children, many of whom lived without plumbing or electricity, the fair was a door to another world.

But on this day, those thousands and thousands of people had not come to see automobiles, submarines, the Liberty Bell, or even a jeweled tower that seemed to stretch all the way to the heavens.

They had come to see a man attempt the impossible. They had come to see Lincoln Beachey fly.

In a hangar, out of sight of the crowd, Beachey checked his airplane. He was a short man, only five feet seven inches, and stocky, with a shock of red hair. Just eleven days before, he had celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday. He was wearing his trademark flying outfit—a pin-striped suit, a two-carat diamond stickpin in his cravat, and a peaked cap that he would turn backward before taking off. In public, Beachey always appeared serious, all business. Few could remember ever seeing him smile.

Beachey pulled at one of the thin cables that braced the wing to the fuselage. He would check every piece of every airplane in which he flew, but never more closely than today. It was taut, with no give. Just right.

And it would have to be just right. This day, Lincoln Beachey was to attempt a feat of flying that no man or woman had tried before, one so dangerous that other flyers had begged him not to try.

But Lincoln Beachey hadn't become the greatest, most celebrated aviator in the world by shrinking from danger. In the United States, he was a better-known figure than President Woodrow Wilson. In a country with a population of almost eighty million people, it had been said that more than twenty million Americans had seen Lincoln Beachey work his magic in the skies above them. For his incredible flying, he made more money in one day than most Americans earned in a year. Reporters called him "the Master Birdman," or "the Man Who Owns the Sky."

He had gained those accolades through a series of daring and harrowing maneuvers. Four years earlier, at the great Chicago International Aviation Meet of 1911, the highest anyone had ever flown was 11,150 feet, and Beachey had been determined to claim the record for himself. But there was only one way to do so. He would need to use all his fuel on the way up. That would leave him in the thin, freezing air with no way down but to glide more than two miles in the strong, swirling winds over Lake Michigan, left totally to the mercy of crosscurrents and updrafts. Flying without power—called "dead-sticking"—was one of the most difficult maneuvers any flyer could attempt. Doing so from as low as two hundred feet takes incredible skill. From eleven thousand feet, coming in over water, where the tiniest error meant losing control and plunging to certain death, it was considered impossible. No other person on earth would consider such a stunt.

And the airplane Beachey was to take aloft wasn't even really an airplane at all; at least not the way we would think of one today. It was just a frame, totally open, with wings, a motor, a rudder, and a seat. There was nothing to protect him from the terrible cold and wind at higher altitudes, or to cushion him from jolts worse than the bucking of a bull in a rodeo. Early airplanes had no instruments, not even a fuel gauge to tell flyers when fuel was running out; nothing to tell them where they were, or how high, or if something had gone wrong with the motor. And if something did go wrong, there was no way to communicate with the ground. All that protected Beachey and aviators like him from horrible death was their own skill and experience.

For many, that was not enough.

At five thirty PM on August 20, 1911, Beachey got into his airplane. The crowd of 350,000 people fell silent. There was no one else in the air—every eye was focused on him. Beachey took off easily and "ascended steadily, first in circles around the borders of Grant Park and then in wide sweeps that swung him out over the city and then over the lake." With the sky totally clear, Beachey was never out of eyeshot of the ground. Eventually, his airplane seemed no larger than a speck in the sky. But then, after a few moments, the speck began to grow larger. Soon it had taken shape enough for those on the ground to see that, indeed, his propeller was not moving! He had used all his fuel.

But somehow, although the airplane wobbled and dipped as Beachey descended through the air of the "Windy City," he kept control. "One great circle carried him several hundred yards out over the lake and curved back over Michigan Avenue. His third circle was more nearly around the flying course and his fourth and fifth narrowed as he neared the earth. At the north end of the field he seemed almost to shoot downward." As he neared the ground, the great crowd watching him could hardly breathe—could Beachey actually land the craft safely?

He could and he did! At about seven thirty PM, after more than a two-mile, fifteen-minute glide, Beachey set his airplane down not ten yards from where he had taken off. The tension broke and the spectators erupted in applause. After careful examination and testing, it was determined that Beachey had ascended to 11,642 feet above Lake Michigan. The altitude record was his. It was a feat of flying so incredible that without hundreds of thousands of people there to witness it, pilots even today would refuse to believe it actually happened.

But the Chicago altitude record was merely one of Beachey's remarkable achievements. He had been the first man to fly at Niagara Falls and the first to successfully pull out of a tailspin. He was the first American to fly upside down and to loop the loop. He was the only man to have flown a plane indoors, through a huge exhibition building at this very Panama-Pacific fair. He had won innumerable races and set altitude records. He flew the Barrel Roll, the Corkscrew Twist, and every other trick that had ever been attempted.

And one trick that hadn't: a trick that no other flyer could do, although more than a dozen had died trying. He would take his airplane three thousand, even five thousand feet into the sky and then dive—straight down. Sometimes he would turn off his engines; sometimes he would hold his arms out at his sides and control the airplane with his knees. Just when he was so close to the ground that it seemed nothing could prevent a horrible crash, Beachey would pull the airplane out and either gently land or fly off to perform more stunts.

It was a unique trick with a unique name: the Dip of Death.

The Dip of Death had become Beachey's signature maneuver, what all those millions across America had paid to see.

But he had never performed "the Dip" as he would today. For the first time ever, for his hometown crowd, Lincoln Beachey would complete the Dip of Death in a monoplane. One set of wings instead of two.

The monoplane was the future—Beachey knew that. The top wing on a biplane didn't do anything really, except hold the craft together. The cables would work just as well.

Still, he had never flown a monoplane in an exhibition before.

He had designed this airplane himself. He had chosen aluminum, the new miracle metal, for the wings and fuselage, lighter than steel and even stronger. In the thirty years since researchers had discovered how to manufacture it, hundreds, if not thousands, of uses had been found for aluminum. It had even been used to line the dome in the Library of Congress building.

He could have chosen any city in the world—New York, London, Paris—to use his monoplane for the first time, and likely a million people would have turned out, but where better than his hometown to advance aviation's boundaries just that much further?

Lincoln Beachey finished his safety check. The airplane was exactly the way he wanted it. Faintly, he heard the megaphone man begin his introduction. Walking up and down in front of the packed grandstand, he trumpeted, "Laaa-dies and gentlemen, don't move from your seats. You are about to witness the premier birdman of them all performing a feat of derring-do that no other man has mastered. Twelve of the greatest aviators in the world have plunged to horrible deaths trying to match him. Today, for the very first time in a monoplane, Lincoln Beachey will perform 'the Dip of Death.'"

That was his cue. Beachey adjusted the diamond stickpin, turned his cap backward, and put on his flying goggles. He climbed into the open cockpit, slipped his arms into the shoulder harness, and signaled his mechanic to crank her over.

As he began to taxi from the maintenance shed to the front of the grandstand, even the roar of the engine could not drown out the cheers of the crowd that grew louder every second.

It was time to make history.

This is the story of the pioneers of flight. Not so much the inventors, as the men and women who flew. These were the test pilots before there were test pilots—almost impossibly brave men and women who floated in balloons and with makeshift wings, soared in gliders, and finally piloted powered airplanes. They blazed a trail for every flyer, jet pilot, and even astronaut who came after them. Like every pioneer, they were drawn to riches or fame or simply the same need to explore the unknown that sent primitive sailing ships across the oceans centuries before. And the airplanes that these flyers took into the skies were every bit as primitive as those sailing ships, were every bit as dangerous, and took every bit of bravery just to climb aboard, for every time someone did, death might be waiting.

But because of these remarkable men and women, for whom pushing forward the boundaries of human experience often seemed more important than life itself, the first years of powered flight became one of the most exciting and important eras in human history.