Paper Airplanes, part 3

 

It's useful to have a good friend
join you when taking a trip.

A buddy riding shotgun
helps with navigating
through unfamiliar places.

And, of course, conversation with a companion
breaks up the monotony of a long journey. 

And when in heavy traffic
a second pair of eyes
reduces the chances of a nasty accident.

Today I feature four photos of good pals 

who once bravely took to the air
undeterred by the rickety framework
of their aircraft.

My first intrepid duo sit just aft of the wing of a monoplane, apparently balanced by the little inline motor at the front. There is no propellor but I suppose that is because it is spinning too fast for the camera. A sizeable crowd of people are lined up on the airfield below them. The landing gear with its shopping cart wheels does not inspire confidence. But maybe the airplane never flew very fast.

 This postcard was mailed in France to a young woman in Rennes, the capital city of Brittany. Though the postmark is unclear the sender helpfully wrote a date of 4-10-1910 above their message. 

4-10-1910 
Voulant profiter du beau
temps ce nouvel aviateur
a pris  la voie dis airs pour
venir dire mille chosis aima.
bles anx amis de Rennes
De plus les amities du
tant la famille.

~

Wanting to take advantage
of the good weather,
this new aviator took
to the skies to say a thousand
kind things to his friends in Rennes.

Furthermore, to the friendships
of both the family.

The Wright brothers first demonstrated their Wright Flyer on 8 August 1908 at a horseracing course near Le Mans. In the following two years other aviation inventors had demonstrated their flying machines. So in 1910 when the "nouvel aviateur" (I think it is the younger man riding behind the pilot at the front) had a faux photo made of himself and his older companion, the idea of flight in a powered machine had clearly taken hold of the French public's imagination. However, due to the popularity of novelty photo postcards, I think it likely that most people then had seen more pretend aviators than real ones. 

In the case of this postcard the aeroplane was imitating one developed by a celebrated Frenchman, Louis Blériot (1872–1936) one of the great pioneers of aviation. He is credited with designing the first successful single-wing monoplane which he flew across the English Channel on 25 July 1909. Here is a video of a replica of the famous Blériot XI, built and flown by Mikael Carlson at the 2019 Hahnweide Oldtimer Fliegertreffen, a major aviation event that brings together enthusiasts of historic aircraft at the Hahnweide airfield near Kirchheim unter Teck in Germany. This airplane is powered with an original 7-cylinder Gnôme-Omega rotary, 50 hp engine. 

* * *

This second paper airplane photo shows two gallant German army officers in a biplane not unlike the Wright brothers machine, though with questionable construction. They seem to be lost among the clouds with two other aeroplanes, a similar biplane and a monoplane. So it's a good thing one officer has a map and can point out the direction they need to go.

The postcard was sent on 19 June 1913 from Darmstadt, Germany to Fräulein Luise Krimmel of Kostheim, a district of the city of Wiesbaden on the Rhine River. 

Hanging off the frame of the airplane's cockpit
is a chalkboard with the message:  

Beim Höhenweltrekord
auf dem Griesheimer Sand
~

At the altitude world record
on the Griesheimer Sand

The reference is to a place, the German military base of Griesheim, which was near Darmstadt and was the site of the Imperial German Army's first airfield. It was a built on a sandy grassland area, previously used as an artillery firing range, called the "Griesheimer Sand." In 1908 a German aviation pioneer, August Euler (1868–1957), conducted glider flights there and recognized the land as suitable for an airfield. In 1909 he secured a lease on a portion of the site (380 acres) to use as an airfield.

On 31 December 1909, Euler earned the first civil pilot's license in Germany and began a pilot training program. By 1911 he had trained 74 pilots including Prince Henry of Prussia, the brother of the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. In 1913 the airfield was designated "Flying station Darmstadt-Griesheim" so it's very likely that these two officers were student pilots from the first official class of German military aviators. 

I couldn't find any reference to an actual altitude record set at Griesheim, so it's probably a joke made by the two men. However Wikipedia does provide a list of altitude records and under fixed-wing aircraft records. Orville and Wilbur Wright's first powered flight in December 1903 only flew to a height of 10 ft (3 m), but by January 1910, the French aviator Louis Paulhan set a new record of 4,603 ft (1,403 m). 

That was surpassed in June 1910 by an American pilot, Walter Brookins, who reached 4,603 ft (1,403 m) flying a Wright biplane. Two months later, at an event in Scotland, another American aviator, John Armstrong Drexel, pushed the record to 6,621 ft (2,018 m) in a Blériot monoplane. By Boxing Day at the end of that year the new altitude record was 11,474 ft (3,497 m) set in Los Angeles by Archibald Hoxsey in another Wright brothers' biplane. Tragically Hoxsey died five days later in a plane crash while trying to set a new record.

In 1913 the high altitude record stood at 18,410 ft (5,610 m) set in September 1912 in a Blériot monoplane by the French aviator Roland Garros (1888–1918).  His heroic legacy is commemorated by the annual French Open tennis tournament held at the Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. 

* * *

 

My third flying duo are high above a military encampment dotted with white tents like so many macaroons. However the two men are civilians seated in a French monoplane very similar to Blériot's monoplane. On the tail is the number 8 so it may be an imitation of a Blériot VIII which was built in 1908. It won a prize for a flight reaching an altitude of 660 ft (200 m) and a few days later a record for long distance cross country loop flight of 8.7 miles (14 km). Here is a real photo of a Blériot VIII courtesy of Wikimedia. 

 

Blériot VIII, September 19080
Source: Wikimedia

My postcard of the aeroplane and the two fellows in it certainly look French to me, but the message on the back of their postcard(printed in France, is very German. It was sent via German military post on 16 October 1914. This was not quite three months since the beginning of the Great War, which would stimulate many great and terrible innovations for aircraft and aviation technology.

Here is another short video of a similar monplane.
It is a replica of a Kvasz II built by
the Hungarian aviation pioneer
Andras Kvasz (1883-1974) in the 1910's.
Though the video doesn't show it in flight
it has closeups that show how
these early airplanes were constructed.

* * *

My last pair of aviators are definitely Imperial German soldiers who seem to be waving a white flag of surrender as they fly above a grand city. The sky behind their monoplane has some lighter and heavier-than-air traffic with a zeppelin, a biplane, and another monoplane soaring along with them. 

The single-wing aircraft they are seated in was called a Taube, the German word for dove or pigeon. It was designed in 1909 by Igo Etrich, an Austrian aviation pioneer. His first monoplane flew in 1910 and was soon licensed for  production by several manufacturers, Here is a drawing of one from 1911 which better shows the curved wings which account for its name.

 

Rumpler Taube, 1911
Source: Wikipedia

The two soldiers have a chalkboard attached to their Taube which has a message. Presumably in the decades before radio this was how aviators communicated with each other and the airfield crew. Their note reads:

Mit Donner, Hagel
und Blitz schuf
Gott die Wüste
Döberitz

~

With thunder, hail
and lightning,
God created the
Döberitz desert

Döberitz was a huge military training area west of Berlin, where in 1910, the Döberitz Airfield and Imperial Army flying school was established. It is considered the birthplace of what would later be known as the German Air Force. The two soldiers then are flying above the city of Berlin. Here is a bird-eye-view of the city courtesy of Google Earth's 3-D imagery. The large dome on the right is the Berliner Dom, the monumental German Protestant church and dynastic tomb of the House of Hohenzollern. The smaller dome on the left is the Humboldt Forum, a museum dedicated to human history, art and culture. In the foreground right is a park plaza which, I think, must be the former site of the gigantic Royal Prussian Garden Chair which was still in place when these two soldiers flew over the city.

Google view Berlin, Germany
Source: Google Earth

Their postcard was sent as an attachment to a package as there is no address or postmark, only a very long letter. Unfortunately the handwriting is too squiggly for my limited German translating skills and there is no date, but I guess the photo dates from the war years 1914-1918. 

I finish with a beautiful video of a 1909 Bleriot XI,
described as the oldest flying airplane in the United States.
In August 2023, after a complete restoration,
Chief Pilot Clay Hammond made some practice flights
in the airplane at the Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome, 
a living museum in Red Hook, New York,
near the town of Rhinebeck. 

 

I think my title of Paper Airplanes
was not too much of an exaggeration.
For more, check out
Paper Airplanes
and
Paper Airplanes, part 2

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where weather may have grounded all flights.