Where the Wright brothers first flew - visiting Kill Devil Hills

For most of us, knowledge of history accrues from the one-dimensional flow of the written word or perhaps photographs or films made contemporaneously of events we wish to study. Important events – and the first flight of the aeroplane certainly qualifies – gain texture with each new historian’s fresh eyes.

But, if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the true grasp of history may come only from walking the ground upon where it was made. And for aeroplanes, that’s a narrow spit of sand off the coast of North Carolina: the Outer Banks, specifically Kill Devil Hills.

Such geographical immersion always yields personal understandings that historians fail to convey. For one thing, what Wilbur and Orville Wright achieved was neither the invention of the aeroplane nor the first flight of an aeroplane… and it wasn’t Kitty Hawk, but Kill Devil Hills. It’s a fine point, but they are different places – and accuracy is its own worthy cause. 

I will date myself by admitting this year marks my fourth decade of nearly yearly visits to, what we call in America, the Outer Banks. Of late, like everything else, the Banks seem to have aggregated a slang name: OBX, which finds itself affixed to bumper stickers and licence plates. 

But to most Americans, the term Outer Banks refers to one area, the 200-mile-long, fragile chain of barrier islands off the North Carolina coast. These uniquely jut into the Atlantic Ocean, grazed by the warm Gulf Stream that keeps your UK winters warm and wet, but also yields the reliable winds that drew the Wrights to the banks in the first place.

Today, Kitty Hawk and Kill Devil Hills bear no resemblance to the harsh desolation Wilbur and Orville confronted when they first arrived in 1900 to conduct glider experiments.

Like any modern beach town, the place is choked with strip development, chain restaurants and varying vintages of seaside villas. It can be a little distressing, but unlike the even more depressing beach towns such as Atlantic City or Miami Beach, 115 years post-Wright, Kitty Hawk still remains a bit out of the way and difficult to get to, so it’s rarely overrun with humanity.

And thanks to its status as a US National Park, the largest land area of the Banks remains undeveloped along the National Seashore south of Kitty Hawk. For a visitor from the UK, that alone makes it worth the effort to visit and on the drive, or flight, south to that desolation, you’ll pass the Wright Brothers National Memorial. Take a left off Highway 158 and spend some time there. Most of a day will do it.

I recommend three things… two involve walking, one involves sitting.

The walking tour can start by actually climbing Big Kill Devil Hill. With this in mind, it’s a 91ft pile of sand that’s a lot steeper than it looks and during my most recent visit in November, I noticed that people reaching the top were puffing hard at the summit. And they have the benefit of a nice, paved path, not the soft, shifting sands the Wrights trudged through more than a century ago.

Nor was anyone hauling up the hill a 112lb glider, which the Wrights were – more than 1,000 times before they even contemplated their historic, powered flight. Think about that number for a moment.

In his letters, Wilbur Wright had said a daunting challenge in solving the problem of flight was doing enough of it to survive the experience. By the time of the 1903 powered trials, the Wrights had largely solved the flight control problem. And with hundreds of flights between them, they were among the most experienced pilots in the world – they knew how to fly.

The powered Flyer would simply prove whether they could do that from level ground with the engine and propeller technology available to them. Or not.

Shifting sands

Visitors to Kill Devil Hill may have difficulty squaring how it looks today with what it was like in 1900. Pictures of the day bear no resemblance to the hill in its contemporary state.

That’s because, beginning in 1928, in order to stabilise the shifting sand to support the planned Wright Monument atop the hill, the Department of the Interior planted the hill with Bermuda grass. That stopped it moving, but it also gives it the appearance of a gentrified lawn. 

Down from Big Kill Devil, the Park Service has installed, what’s called, First Flight Boulder, which is believed to be the take-off point from which Orville made the first powered flight on 17 December 1903. That itself is also a misnomer. Wilbur actually made a flight three days earlier, on 14 December, but the machine was damaged in a hard landing and the Wrights seemed to have considered it a throwaway.

In any case, the exact take-off point is a best guess because, between the time the Wrights made the flight and the government’s memorialising it, beginning in 1928, Kill Devil moved several hundred feet to the south-west, carved by the incessant winds that routinely reach gale strength.

Orville estimated the take-off point and the location of the launch rail 25 years after the fact.

The length of the four flights that day are marked by stone monuments, but the one of most interest is Wilbur’s longest and the 852ft final flight of the 1903 Flyer.

It’s a couple of minutes walk in a mild breeze, but the Wrights were doing it in December, in an 18-20kt fresh breeze and freezing temperatures. At the end of it, they were dragging the 604lb Flyer by hand back to the starting point.

Later that day, the winds were sufficient to roll the Flyer like a kid’s kite, smashing it into useless kindling and sending the Wrights home to Dayton to begin their work in Huffman Prairie. If you visit Kill Devil in the late autumn or winter, you’ll get a taste of the harsh conditions the Wrights endured and, with no air-conditioned beachside hotel to which to retire.

All of this may – or may not – be mentioned in the sitting part of the tour, which is an excellent half-hour talk given by park rangers in the small visitor centre.

I say that because I’ve attended this talk at least a dozen times and each time it’s different, often tailored to what the ranger senses the audience may know or not know.

I’ve watched ranger Darrell Collins give the talk a half-dozen times, he’s been at the Wright Memorial since 1977. Encouragingly, when I asked how the audiences have evolved during the past decade, he told me his impression is that they’re more educated now than four decades ago, with a greater sense of curiosity.

Regardless of variation in detail, the ranger’s lecture will always get around to what the Wrights did achieve: the first documented powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft from level ground and under complete control.

Others had flown before the Wrights, including powered flight. And in the US, a controversy continues to simmer on whether Gustave Whitehead, a German immigrant engine builder living in Bridgeport, Connecticut, actually demonstrated powered flight as early as 1901, two years before the Wrights.

Based on the work of historian John Brown, the august Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft recognised Whitehead as the true pioneer in controlled, powered flight. And the evidence is too compelling to dismiss out of hand, although it doesn’t equal the documentation available on the Wrights’ work.

It’s quite likely that first-flight credit still goes to the Wrights because of their careful documentation, and especially photographs, and because in 1908, the brothers electrified France and the world with flight demonstrations unmatched by anyone else.

Whitehead was still active then, but not garnering the attention the Wrights were, plus a year later, the notorious patent fights that dogged the Wrights for years temporarily stunted competitive development.

Utterly birdlike

Who was first in flight may never be proven beyond doubt, but one thing that’s not open to challenge is that, like the scientists they in fact became, the brothers richly documented their work with diaries, notes and photographs, including the now iconic first flight image of Orville’s take-off snapped by a startled surfman, John Daniels, whose training in photography consisted of Wilbur explaining how to squeeze the shutter bulb.

That image forms the background for every US pilot certificate yet today. 

The Wrights’ legacy is documented, methodical research that became the foundation of modern aerodynamics.

Ranger Collins reminds audiences that the Wrights’ understanding of adverse yaw and their coupling of the rudder to roll input to counter it is a design principle still used today on the Boeing 787, to name just one example of a design dependent on Wright documentation.

And here’s a suggestion when you visit – and you must visit – for their interpretive talks, the rangers have aviation’s best visual aid. It’s a superbly crafted, flyable replica of the 1903 Flyer built by Ken Hyde’s Wright Experience for the 2003 Centennial.

They manipulate this freely to illustrate the talk. So when you attend, don’t sit in the main audience area, but on the rather smaller benches along the side wall of the room, looking down the Flyer’s lower wing, spanwise.

When the wing is warped to show how the Wrights developed roll control, you’ll be astonished at the structure’s incredible flexibility and how utterly birdlike it is. You can also see the rudder pivot at the same time and if there’s such a thing as an ‘Oh, I see’ moment for a pilot, this certainly must be it. It still gives me chills to see it, and I’ve seen it plenty.

Although the Wright Memorial was spruced up for the Centennial, it’s still showing its age. The visitor centre was built in 1960 and although the display room housing the Flyer is a pleasant space, the overall architecture would please the eye of a Soviet city planner.

That might not change, but during 2016, the centre is due for renovation and that’s a good thing. Regardless of nationality, for pilots, Kill Devil Hills is hallowed ground. It deserves all the tender care it can get.

Getting there can be a slight chore, for as much off the beaten path as Kitty Hawk was in 1900, it’s less so now only by a degree. No interstate highways run quite so far east as the Banks, so it’s a bit under two hours of driving from Virginia Beach, where the interstates end.

Flying in is a possibility and worth the effort to notch your logbook with FFA – First Flight Airport. First Flight is 3,000ft long with a pilot briefing facility but no services. The entire park is within walking range of the airfield. Nearby Manteo is just across Currituck Sound and it is a full-service airport that’s a 20-minute drive from the Wright Memorial.

However you get there, I urge you to, as we say in America, put this visit on your bucket list. I think you’ll find it more illuminating than merely reading about it on the pages of a magazine.

Wright Brothers National Museum

Wright Brothers Monument: Kill Devil Hill

• Paul Bertorelli was a contributor to FLYER from November 2014 to November 2017.