Chapter I: Pupils

All great masters have been represented by pupils who have done honour to their teacher and have achieved personal success in a large measure. Mr. Curtiss is no exception to this rule, for he has taught more than a hundred pupils.

There have been representatives of all classes and all nationalities. The list includes all trades and professions, from horse trainers to bankers. And in all these have been pupils from thirteen nationalities including Russians, Germans, French, Canadians, Scotch, Irish, English, Japanese, Indians, Cubans, Mexican, Spaniards, and Greeks.

Instruction has been given in all languages, including the sign language. Some nationalities are naturally a little harder than others to instruct, largely because of national characteristics of thought, and also for the reason that in a southern climate those native to it are often unaccustomed to the rapid action necessary at times in flying.

Negroes have not yet as a class taken to aviation, but there is one Chinaman in California, Tom Gun, who has been successful as an aviator. But conspicuous among the list of pupils is the number of Army and Navy officers of our own, as well as of foreign countries, that have graduated from the Curtiss School.

Hydroaeroplane operation has also been taught to a number of pupils both at Hammondsport, N. Y., and at San Diego, California, where the training camps are located.

The life that the pupils lead at these schools is most interesting and healthful. The students get up early, sometimes at four in the morning, when it is just light enough to see and when the air is usually calm and the best conditions for learning to fly exist. Pupils are outdoors practically all day, flying, or working on the machines when any thing breaks or goes wrong. Many pupils have engaged in exhibition flying after completing their course of instruction, and among the large number of very excellent aviators that have followed in Mr. Curtiss' wing beats (for you can hardly say foot steps) have been some of the foremost aviators in the world and men whose fame and exploits are household words to-day.

A partial list of some of these men at present active in the field is here given:

Chas. F. Willard, Hugh Robinson, Chas. K. Hamilton, J. C. Mars, C. C. Witmer, E. C. St. Henry, Lincoln Beachey, Beckwith Havens, Lieut. T. G. Ellyson, U. S. N.; Capt. P. W. Beck, U. S. A.; Lieut. J. H. Towers, U. S. N.; William Hoff, J. B. McCalley, S. C. Lewis, C. W. Shoemaker, W. B. Atwater, Al. Mayo, Al. J. Engle, J. Lansing Callan, G. E. Underwood, Irah D. Spaulding, C. F. Walsh, Carl T. Sjolander, Fred Hoover, E. C. Malick, Ripley Bowman, T. T. Maroney, C. A. Berlin, H. Park, W. M. Stark, E. H. McMillan, F. J. Terrill, Francis Wildman, F. J. Southard, Lieut. P. A. Dumford, W. B. Hemstrought, Earl Sandt, E. B. Russell, Lieut. J. E. McClaskey, W. W. Vaughn, Barney Moran, M. Kondo, J. G. Kaminski, Mohan Singh, K. Takeishi.

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Beckwith Havens C. C. Witmer Cromwell Dixon
Chas. K. Hamilton J. A. D. McCurdy Chas. F. Walsh Chas. F. Willard
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(Insert: Portrait of Beachey)

Among those in this list who have done wonderful things, it might be interesting to mention some of the marvellous feats of daring as well as a few of the achievements of Lincoln Beachey, who is credited with being the greatest exhibition aviator in the world.

At the meet in Chicago in the summer of 1911, Beachey flew more miles than any other aviator. He flew all the time and was in the air during all the flying hours in one contest or another. He did all the special tricks in the air that were known, he carried passengers, won speed races, and established a new world's altitude record at 11,642 feet. After flying as high as he could, at Chicago, with a seven gallon tank full of gasoline, Beachey came down and said: "To-morrow I'll go higher." He had a ten gallon tank fitted to his machine, filled it full up to the top, and started right up from where his machine was standing on the ground, so as not to waste a drop of gasoline, and flew up and up until it was completely exhausted and his motor thus compelled to stop, but not until he had set the world's record at 11,642 feet. He deliberately started out on this trip to climb up as long as his fuel would last. He knew his motor would stop and he would have to glide down. It was not an unintended glide but it was the longest glide on record. He brought out all the points and possibilities of his machine; distance, speed, weight-carrying, and altitude. Wilbur Wright said: "Beachey is the most wonderful flyer I ever saw and the greatest aviator of all." Calbraith P. Bodgers said upon his arrival at Los Angeles after flying across the American continent, a distance of over four thousand miles, "Beachey's daring flight down the gorge of Niagara and through the spray of the falls was a greater achievement than mine." Beachey has been remarkably free from serious accidents even though now he pitches straight down from the sky, seeming to fall straight to the earth and just catching his machine up in time to avoid striking the earth.

At Hammondsport on July 29th, 1912, Beachey was trying out a new model military type and he ascended six thousand five hundred feet in fifteen minutes, while he came down in one minute, making one of his perpendicular dives with the engine still. The whistling of the wind through the taut wires of the machine could be heard half a mile away. On this occasion one of the lady visitors to the testing grounds, who had never seen Beachey fly before, thinking that he was falling and would surely strike the ground and be dashed to pieces, fainted. Beachey said, "Flying did not come to me at first but it seemed to come all of a sudden and then it came big."[10]

Once Beachey had to land in a very small place surrounded with trees and the only way he could do it with the fast machine that he was driving was to kill its speed in the air by skimming over the trees, shutting off his motor, and gliding along to the place where he wanted to stop, and then pointing the machine up suddenly, very much as a bird comes to a stop, and then "pancaking" down, as it is called when you come down "kerflop" like a pancake.

Beachey broke a wheel by this performance and he has worried over that little breakage as much as another man would over smashing up a whole machine.

Beachey flew from New York to Philadelphia in company with Eugene Ely and Hugh Robinson in August, 1911, winning the first inter-city race to be held in the United States.

Among the skilled operators of hydroaeroplanes is Mr. Hugh Robinson who flew down the Mississippi River in the spring of 1912, carrying mail and covering the river course between Minneapolis, Minn., and Rock Island, Ill. Mr. Robinson also went to France in May of 1912, and competed in the first contests and races ever held in this new sport at Monte Carlo. Since his return to America, Mr. Robinson has been the instructor in hydroaeroplaning at Hammondsport.