It was 121 years ago. December 17, 1903. There was no such thing as motorized air flight. That changed, as the Wright Brothers made the first motorized flight on a desolate island off the outer banks of North Carolina. Kitty Hawk? No. It was at nearby Kill Devil Hills.
In the following 121 years — all the way up until now — air flight went from non-existent to a ubiquitous mode of travel for commercial passengers, private flights, air mail, cargo and military. We now cannot imagine life without air flight.
One of the earliest and most important steps after the first flight was also taken by Orville Wright, and it was done in Alabama—the first flight school. Planes could not fly without trained pilots—then and now.
After the initial flight, first came improvements during months of test flights near the Wright Brothers’ hometown of Dayton, Ohio, which the media mostly ignored, to their later regret.
There was no interest in the planes from the U.S. government, which had wasted $50,000 in collaborating with a different unsuccessful attempt at flight.
Then, thousands watched Wilbur's demonstration flights for weeks in France, the country that first bought Wright planes.
Then, thousands watched demonstration flights for weeks by Orville outside Washington. They witnessed Orville's injurious crash, which killed his military passenger, Lt. Selfridge.
The Wright Brothers came to Alabama and built the world's first flight school in Montgomery. In the spring of 1910, Orville Wright opened the first civilian flying school on The Kohn Plantation, an old cotton farm outside Montgomery. The location was later used for aircraft repair during "The Great War," later called World War I. In 1922, the site became Maxwell Field, which would evolve into what is now Maxwell Air Force Base.
The first-ever class of pilot training consisted of five students, taught by Orville Wright himself. The school was an attempt to train pilots for a growing commercial market.
The Wrights had problems flying in their home area around Dayton, Ohio, caused mostly by cold weather. Montgomery, Alabama, did not have that problem.
The following description of the Montgomery flight school came from historian Scotty Kirkland of Wetumpka, a freelance writer for Business Alabama magazine:
… the brothers felt their homebase of Dayton, Ohio, too cold for a training camp. Seeking a warmer climate, Wilbur Wright toured several southern cities. In February 1910, he arrived in Montgomery, where he was soon recognized.
Locals alerted Fred Ball, president of the Montgomery Commercial Club, a forerunner to the chamber of commerce. Ball accompanied Wright on a hastily arranged tour of the city, scouting potential sites for the training school. The most suitable location proved to be a cotton plantation owned by Frank Kohn a few miles outside of the city.
Ball presented Wright with an attractive set of incentives. The Montgomery Commercial Club would prepare Kohn’s land and build a hangar according to Wright’s specifications. Free accommodations would be supplied at the palatial Exchange Hotel downtown. A local dealer offered automobiles for transportation needs. Their time in Montgomery would cost the Wright Brothers nothing. Ball and others knew the publicity would be worth the expense. “The press of the world will watch…this city,” the Montgomery Advertiser predicted.
The biplane arrived by rail on March 15, 1910, followed soon thereafter by Orville Wright. In Montgomery, he completed a design change to the plane, adding a rear wing to the rudder, which he felt might stabilize the machine at higher altitudes. It was the first major modification since Kitty Hawk in 1903. On March 26, Orville Wright tested the new design. Satisfied with the change, he commenced student training two days later.
“A strange new bird soared…to the West of Montgomery,” the local paper reported. To help accommodate spectators flocking to see the school, the Mobile & Ohio Railroad offered six daily excursions from Montgomery’s Union Station to the airfield for 25¢ per ticket. Thousands came.
Flight training continued on until the second week of April, when a persistent engine problem brought instruction to a temporary halt. Seeking the familiarity of his Dayton workshop, Orville removed the plane’s engine and headed to Ohio. He returned two weeks later, and the flights resumed.
Throughout the many weeks of training, Orville rejected “with uniform politeness” all requests from locals for personal flights. The aviator broke this rule on May 3, taking landowner Frank Kohn aloft for a brief excursion. One makes exceptions for benefactors, of course. “The machine obeys his slightest touch,” Kohn said. “I felt no more in danger than I would in a streetcar.”
A few days later, Wilbur telegraphed his younger brother and suggested he return to Dayton to begin preparations for a summer of exhibition flights. Before he departed Montgomery, Orville oversaw the 12-minute solo flight of student Walter Brookins, marking the first and only graduation from the Montgomery school. Brookins then assumed the continued training of the remaining students, including Archibald Hoxsey, with whom he embarked on a historic evening flight by the light of a full moon on May 25, 1910.
The short-lived school had the desired outcome. Montgomery’s boosters were satisfied with the publicity and their city’s place in aviation history. And the Wright Brothers had new pilots. Brookins and several other students who began their training in Montgomery flew under their banner for several years. In October 1910, Montgomery student Archibald Hoxsey (who would die in a crash later that year) had the privilege of taking former President Theodore Roosevelt on a plane ride in St. Louis.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at ZeiglerElderCare@yahoo.com.
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