final feb cover - Indian Airforce

abuses, not because it had been slow to recognise
the invention, but because it had done so at all.
The New York Globe wrote in an editorial :-
“One might be inclined to assume from the
following announcement “The US Army is asking for
bids for a military airship” that the era of practical
human flight had arrived or that the government
had seriously taken up the problem of developing
this means of travel. A very brief examination of
the conditions imposed suffices, however to prove
this assumption a delusion. A machine such as is
prescribed on the Signal Corps specifications would
record the solution of all the difficulties in the way
of the heavier than air airships, and, in fact, finally
give mankind almost as complete control of the
air as it now has of the land water. Nothing in any
way approaching such a machine has even been
constructed.”
The Globe brushed aside the claims of Wright
brothers as unconfirmed rumour.
Even the American magazine of Aeronautics
in its January 1908 edition castigated the Signals
Corps for its imaginative scheme. It said “There
is not a single flying machine in the world which
could fulfil these specifications at the present
moment perhaps the Signals Corps has been too
much influenced by the hot air of theorizers in
which aeronautics unfortunately abounds.
The press was more or less correct at that time
because no lighter than air machine could have
satisfied the Army requirement. But press was also
totally unaware that two years earlier in 1905 the
Wright brothers had made more than 40 flights
in an improved model of their original biplane at
Huffman’s pasture on the outskirts of their native
Dayton, Ohio. The journalistic fraternity did not
show any interest about the happenings at Dayton
and did not give any credence to the claim of the
Wrights.
However, in response to the advertisement,
the War Department received 41 applications. The
War Department was shocked by this because they
were more or less sure that only one application
would come, that too from Wright Brothers. On
scrutiny it was found that most applications were
the brainstorm of imaginatives. All but three
applications were rejected because they did not
put up a required 10 per cent of the proposed
cost of the airplane as security deposit. A Chicago
inventor JF Scoot deposited $ 1000 and promised
delivery within 185 days. Another was a well
known experiment. August M. Herring promised
to deliver a plane within 180 days at a cost of
20,000 dollars. The Wrights bid was $ 25,000 with
delivery in 290 days.
The War Department was in a fix. Receipts
of the two unforeseen bids created a problem.
INDIAN AIR FORCE 2 0 1 2 F e b r u a r y Aerospace Safety 5