To celebrate the first anniversary of Tattoos In Flight, I thought it would be fitting to post the first successful powered aircraft, the 1903 Flyer built and first flown by Orville and Wilbur Wright from the dunes at Kitty Hawk, NC on December 17, 1903.  The brothers from Dayton, OH owned a bicycle shop, The Wright Cycle Company, by trade, but were consummate inventors and began experimenting with aeronautics at the turn of the century.

The brothers built and conducted glider experiments at Kitty Hawk from 1900 through 1902 and tested various designs and means of control… including turning control via the concept of wing warping.  These elements were incorporated into the 1903 Flyer along with the ingenious and light four-cylinder inline, gravity-fed engine engineered and constructed by their shop mechanic Charlie Taylor in only six-weeks.

Wilbur Wright was the first to attempt flying the aircraft on December 14th 1903, resulting in a three-second attempt where the aircraft stalled after takeoff and was slightly damaged as it hit the ground.

After the machine was repaired, Orville made the next attempt.  Against a freezing headwind gusting to 27 mph, Orville set down the takeoff rail and made the first controllable flight of a heavier-than-air craft… a 12 second flight covering 120 feet.  Two more flights that day by Wilbur and Orville respectively, covered 175 and 200 feet. The fourth flight of the day by Wilbur covered the longest distance… 852 feet over 59 seconds.  Unfortunately the aircraft was significantly damaged by a gust of wind as it was being taken back from the fourth flight and the aircraft never flew again.

The aircraft was shipped back to Dayton and was eventually restored years later by Orville before it toured to various locations in the U.S. and eventually was placed on display at a British museum – and eventually was displayed at the Smithsonian Institution as of 1948 after a long-standing conflict over the Wright claim as first in flight and a similar claim of Samuel Langley, Secretary of the Smithsonian from 1896 to 1906, who unsuccessfully attempted flight in October and December of 1903 using his own craft, the Aerodrome.  For more information on this odd controversy, follow this link.

In honor of this historic aircraft and historic flight, this beautiful black and gray inner arm tattoo was created by tattoo artist Hoffa at Ascension Tattoo in Orlando, FL.  Ironically Hoffa is also from Dayton, OH himself.

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Near the end of World War II, the Flight Test Division of the U.S. Army Air Force teamed with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to research flight in the transonic speed range — or flight past the sound barrier.  The joint partnership contracted with the Bell Aircraft Corporation of Buffalo, NY to build a test aircraft that would be used only for this research and never for mass production.  This contract yielded three XS-1 aircraft, later shortened to X-1.

The Bell X-1 was modeled after the Browning .50 caliber bullet, which was known to be stable in supersonic flight.  This seemingly simple design approach made for a clean looking aircraft, made extremely fast by the ethyl alcohol and liquid oxygen fueled rocket engine providing thrust.

The X-1 first flew in a glide on January 25, 1946 over Pinecastle AAF near Orlando, FL by Bell chief pilot Jack Woolams.  After the initial glide tests, the aircraft was taken back to Bell for preparation to conduct powered testing from Muroc Dry Lake in California… now known as Edwards Air Force Base.  Before the flights began, Jack Woolams was killed in a crash while practicing for an air race.  He was replaced by Bell pilot Chalmers “Slick” Goodlin who made 26 successful flights in both the XS-1 and X-1-1 until June 1947.

The Army Air Force became frustrated with the slow pace of the testing under Bell’s watch and took the contract to fly the X-1-2 from Bell and put it in the hands of NACA for testing. 

On October 14th, the X-1-2 #46-062 piloted by Air Force Captain Charles “Chuck” Yeager was dropped from the modified bomb bay of a Boeing B-50 Superfortress over Muroc and began flight #50 in the program.  On that flight, the aircraft became the first manned aircraft to achieve supersonic flight — reaching a recorded speed of Mach 1.06 (807.2 mph).  The aircraft, christened “Glamorous Glennis” after Yeager’s wife, successfully landed after the flight and was recorded in the history books.  The story of the test program was the subject of the hit Hollywood film “The Right Stuff”.

The Bell X-1 #46-062 now hangs in the Milestones of Flight Gallery of the National Air & Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC on permanent display.

This colorful tattooed tribute to the historic aircraft was completed by artist Ant Iannucci of Ascension Tattoo in Orlando, FL.

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