AVIATION STORY 15 |
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100th Anniversary of Powered Flight SAPilots: Bill Wittber & Harry Butler Location: South Australia Time Frame: 1910 |
A special thanks to: Nigel Daw for this article. |
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FIRST POWERED AIRCRAFT FLIGHT IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA by Nigel Daw
During 1909 Adelaide businessman, Frederick H. Jones travelled to Europe as part of his importing and exporting enterprise which also included being a manufacturer’s agent. As part of this he was visiting many airfields, where flying was taking place, to find a suitable aircraft that he could purchase and take to South Australia. He aimed to display and demonstrate the aircraft and sell it to an interested party. This was a business opportunity. Jones was impressed with the Bleriot and purchased one immediately. On 3 February 1910 the Bleriot XI (construction number 37) monoplane arrived at Port Adelaide on board the steamer ‘Schwaben’. After being transferred to the docks it was transported by horse and cart to the premises of John Martins in Kent Town, just to the east of the city. This Bleriot was of all wood construction with a fully braced wing. It was the first aircraft to utilise the type of primary flight controls that most pilots are familiar with today, that is a control column on the cockpit floor which is used for both longitudinal and lateral control, and a foot operated rudder bar for directional control. The backward and forward motion of the control column operated the elevators on the tail of the aircraft that caused the nose of the aircraft to rise and fall respectively. The side to side motion of the control column operated the wing warping system. The undercarriage incorporated shock absorption which was achieved by a pair of legs that had stiff coil tension springs. Bungee rubber cords were used on later models. Wire spoked wheels were fitted. The power was supplied by a 24hp 3-cylinder Anzani engine which drove a two bladed wooden propeller. The fuel tank was made of brass and was fitted just behind the engine. The wings were made of fabricated Ash and Spruce with two spars and ribs being braced with stranded wire cable. They were covered on both upper and lower surfaces with unbleached cotton and then doped and varnished. The fuselage was made of four Spruce longerons with vertical and horizontal Spruce members spaced down the length of the fuselage. Each bay was wire braced in all directions except for the cockpit area which was stiffened by extra timber members. The forward section of the fuselage was fabric covered. The tailplane, elevator and rudder were also timber structures and covered in fabric. After the Bleriot arrived in Adelaide Mr Jones employed Carl Wilhelm ‘Bill’ Wittber to supervise the assembly and rigging of the aircraft, running the engine and oversee flight tests. Bill Wittber had been born in Salisbury, then a small township just north of Adelaide on 7 December 1879. After finishing school aged 14, Bill continued his education at the School of Mines (later to become the Institute of Technology) and was later apprenticed to Ellis and Clark, electrical engineers. This led to a life at sea and it was during this time he started to take an interest in aviation. A third person became involved with Fred Jones and Bill Wittber, a man by the name of Frederic Cyril Custance. Custance offered his services free of charge and Jones accepted his offer. Frederic was aged 20 years who had been born in 1890 near Ongar, Essex, England and moved with his family to Australia in 1906. Prior to working on the Bleriot Custance had been working for a firm of motor engineers in Adelaide. After a period of storage in the John Martin stables at Kent Town the Bleriot was moved to Eyes and Crowle in Pirie Street, where Wittber was then employed. The Bleriot was assembled and rigged for display. It was later disassembled, transported to John Martins store in Rundle Street, reassembled and placed on display. Thousands of people visited to see this new flying machine. During this time Fred Jones was scouring Adelaide for a suitable site from which to have the Bleriot flown. In early March 1910 a paddock in Bolivar on the corner of Whites and Shepherdson Roads was deemed suitable and negotiations with the owner, Mr Albert Winzor, were successful. On 12 March 1910 the Bleriot was moved from John Martins after being crated to Bolivar where it was re-assembled. This time the aircraft was prepared for flight testing. First attempts to taxi the aircraft on Sunday morning 13 March 1910 were dashed as the weather conditions were unsuitable. However, later in the day conditions improved and Bill Wittber undertook the first taxiing trials with various throttle settings. Fred Custance was also given an opportunity to taxi the Bleriot and learn the effects of the controls. Later that day Wittber had another attempt and with 50% to 60% power the aircraft rose approximately 5 feet off the ground and travelled for about 40 yards before landing. This was reported in the newspaper ‘The Register’ of Monday 14 March 1910. It was by definition, a powered, sustained and controlled flight. There were many witnesses to this ‘hop’. Weather conditions for flying did not improve until the early morning of Thursday 17 March 1910. As this was a normal working day Bill Wittber was at work at Eyes and Crowle. Jones and Custance had arisen at 3 am to travel to Bolivar where, at dawn, they took the Bleriot out of the marquee. The engine was started with Custance at the controls. From here reports of what occurred vary greatly. ‘The Register’ newspaper the next day stated “ Mr Custance made his first attempt to raise the airship from the ground...........After covering about 18 yards the machine rose 12 feet in the air, and at this height made a circuit of the paddock thrice, a total distance of about three miles , in five minutes and 25 seconds.” The report continued, “This, it may be remarked created several records. It was the first airship flight in South Australia, the first monoplane flight in Australasia and the Australian duration record.” This would be, without doubt, an extreme case of journalistic exaggeration particularly if the journalist concerned, and there is no way of verifying this, wrote his own copy. There were no journalists present for the Custance flight and accident and so the journalist who wrote the article was relying on reports from other witnesses. In fact Jones stated to Wittber later on 17 March that, indeed, Custance did taxi around the paddock about three times before a first “very wobbly” straightforward flight of about one minute, ending with a “very rough landing”. The only people known to have been at the site on that Thursday morning to witness Custance’s flight were Jones, Albert Winzor, the owner of the property, and a Mr & Mrs Sawyer who lived nearby. Custance made a further flight on 17 March (against the wishes of Jones) in an attempt to create an Australian record, had taken off, risen steeply into the air and then crashed, causing damage to the propeller, undercarriage and wheels. Custance escaped only bruised and shaken having hit his head on the petrol tank. The damaged aircraft was returned to Adelaide and delivered to Duncan and Frasers for repairs. In May 1910 the aircraft was destroyed in a fire but the engine was recovered. The following day 18 March 1910 at Diggers Rest, 20 miles north of Melbourne, Erich Weiss, better known as the escapologist, Harry Houdini made three successful flights ranging in duration from about one minute to three and a half minutes with the last flight of the day covering some two miles. These flights were witnessed by many spectators and other acting in a more official capacity as observers. Were the Wittber and Custance flights ‘controlled’ and therefore genuine flights or were they just hops?
POSTSCRIPT:
Wittber designed and built his own six cylinder radial engine and after installation in 1915 taxi trials started, followed by some ‘hops’ into the air. These became higher and longer but before they could move into the next phase of their self taught training the Government stepped in and banned them from making any further attempts at flying. Sadly the aircraft was then disassembled and burnt. Bill Wittber died on 26 March 1970 aged 90 and he is buried in the Payneham Cemetery, an Adelaide suburb. The Wittber six cylinder engine is today preserved, and on display at the S.A. Aviation Museum Inc, Lipson Street, Port Adelaide. www.saam.org.au The Museum will be having a special day of celebration on 14 March 2010 commencing at 10am.
To celebrate the the Wittber and Custance flights the Australian Air Mail Society had commemorative airmail covers flown over the Bolivar site on 17-3-1965 and 17-3-1985. A further batch of covers will be flown on 17-3-2010.
Credits: ‘The Register’ (newspaper), ‘The Advertiser’ (newspaper), ‘Those First Australian Flights’ by Damian Lataan and Reg Laught (published 1993), ‘Flypast – A Record of Aviation in Australia’ by N. Parnell and T.Boughton (published 1988)
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Wittber continued on with flying when in 1911 he commenced the design and assembly of a Farman type pusher biplane. Construction was completed in 1913 and flying was to take place at a property owned by a Mrs Margaret Smith at Smithfield. It had been intended that a 25hp Anzani engine be installed in the aircraft but it was realized it would not supply enough power. However,
taxi trials were undertaken by Wittber and his friend, Harry Butler from Minlaton.
