If flying was as easy as cycling, then why had nearly twenty aviators been killed since the start of the year, many of them experienced men such as Léon Delagrange, the Frenchman, and Charles Rolls of England?
The Wright brothers’ exhibition team refuted Moisant’s remarks in interviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , with Walter Brookins calling him “foolish” for flying from Paris to London with such little experience. “He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck . . . an aviator must acquire a fine judgment of direction, of speed and of distance.”
Arch Hoxsey echoed Brookins, labeling Moisant’s Channel flight “miraculous luck.” As for flying being as easy as cycling, that was plain dumb: “If a man on a bicycle makes a mistake in judgment and falls, he escapes with bruises,” Hoxsey asserted, “but an error of an aviator—a pull on the wrong lever, the warping of the wrong wire—may cost his life.” Only Ralph Johnstone conceded that in the basics of both skills there might be an element of truth in Moisant’s comments, although— and here a look of thoughtful mischief spread across his face—“it is easier to learn to make the spiral descent in an airplane than to learn to loop-the-loop on a bicycle.”
Newspaper editors rubbed their hands in delight at the public spat, and the Belmont Park organizers pumped the hand of Cortlandt Field Bishop. Well done, old man, for getting that Moisant fellow over, the demand for tickets to the aviation meet was now so great they’d had to open two more box offices at their Fifth Avenue headquarters. From a revolution in Salvador to a revolution in American aviation, John Moisant was one of a kind. But what would happen, the organizing committee asked one another gleefully, when Moisant, the American revolutionary, met Grahame-White, the English gallant . . . a repeat of 1776, perhaps?
John Moisant’s brief flight around Belmont Park on the Monday evening christened the course. Not only was he the first of the competing aviators to have had a practice spin, but it was also the first time a monoplane had graced the New York skies. The New York Herald correspondent counted himself privileged, as did the workmen, who resumed their painting when the display was over, chattering excitedly to one other about the little piece of history they had just witnessed.
On Monday evening most of Moisant’s rivals were en route to New York from either Europe or St. Louis. Those on the train heading East left behind a city still flushed with aviation fever. The sixty thousand spectators who on Saturday had peeked through their fingers watching the death-defying stunts of Ralph Johnstone spent Sunday recovering before another great spectacle presented itself—the start of the International Balloon Cup race. The twenty balloonists had arrived on the rectangular aero grounds, between Newstead and Chouteau avenues, at two o’clock on Monday morning to supervise the inflation of their twenty-eight-thousand-cubic-feet balloons, and twelve hours later they had been joined by fifty thousand St. Louisians. Police authority began to creak under the sheer weight of numbers, and it was decided to close Pa-pin Street to traffic and turn it into a vantage point for bystanders. Residents in the street, and in Chouteau Avenue, were delighted and started to hawk their houses—come and watch from the comfort of our home, ten cents for a standing spot and twenty-five cents for a kitchen chair. Elsewhere, on the northern side of the field, across the way from a vacant lot, the occupants of a row of brick flats had clambered up onto the roof to watch what to some resembled a field of giant mushrooms. A better view was to be found from one of the two grandstands that had been erected—holding a total of four thousand balloon enthusiasts, who had each paid $1.50 for the privilege—on the east and west sides of the aero grounds. Yet the best spot of all was from the walkway that encircled
The Wright brothers’ exhibition team refuted Moisant’s remarks in interviews with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch , with Walter Brookins calling him “foolish” for flying from Paris to London with such little experience. “He’s lucky he didn’t break his neck . . . an aviator must acquire a fine judgment of direction, of speed and of distance.”
Arch Hoxsey echoed Brookins, labeling Moisant’s Channel flight “miraculous luck.” As for flying being as easy as cycling, that was plain dumb: “If a man on a bicycle makes a mistake in judgment and falls, he escapes with bruises,” Hoxsey asserted, “but an error of an aviator—a pull on the wrong lever, the warping of the wrong wire—may cost his life.” Only Ralph Johnstone conceded that in the basics of both skills there might be an element of truth in Moisant’s comments, although— and here a look of thoughtful mischief spread across his face—“it is easier to learn to make the spiral descent in an airplane than to learn to loop-the-loop on a bicycle.”
Newspaper editors rubbed their hands in delight at the public spat, and the Belmont Park organizers pumped the hand of Cortlandt Field Bishop. Well done, old man, for getting that Moisant fellow over, the demand for tickets to the aviation meet was now so great they’d had to open two more box offices at their Fifth Avenue headquarters. From a revolution in Salvador to a revolution in American aviation, John Moisant was one of a kind. But what would happen, the organizing committee asked one another gleefully, when Moisant, the American revolutionary, met Grahame-White, the English gallant . . . a repeat of 1776, perhaps?
John Moisant’s brief flight around Belmont Park on the Monday evening christened the course. Not only was he the first of the competing aviators to have had a practice spin, but it was also the first time a monoplane had graced the New York skies. The New York Herald correspondent counted himself privileged, as did the workmen, who resumed their painting when the display was over, chattering excitedly to one other about the little piece of history they had just witnessed.
On Monday evening most of Moisant’s rivals were en route to New York from either Europe or St. Louis. Those on the train heading East left behind a city still flushed with aviation fever. The sixty thousand spectators who on Saturday had peeked through their fingers watching the death-defying stunts of Ralph Johnstone spent Sunday recovering before another great spectacle presented itself—the start of the International Balloon Cup race. The twenty balloonists had arrived on the rectangular aero grounds, between Newstead and Chouteau avenues, at two o’clock on Monday morning to supervise the inflation of their twenty-eight-thousand-cubic-feet balloons, and twelve hours later they had been joined by fifty thousand St. Louisians. Police authority began to creak under the sheer weight of numbers, and it was decided to close Pa-pin Street to traffic and turn it into a vantage point for bystanders. Residents in the street, and in Chouteau Avenue, were delighted and started to hawk their houses—come and watch from the comfort of our home, ten cents for a standing spot and twenty-five cents for a kitchen chair. Elsewhere, on the northern side of the field, across the way from a vacant lot, the occupants of a row of brick flats had clambered up onto the roof to watch what to some resembled a field of giant mushrooms. A better view was to be found from one of the two grandstands that had been erected—holding a total of four thousand balloon enthusiasts, who had each paid $1.50 for the privilege—on the east and west sides of the aero grounds. Yet the best spot of all was from the walkway that encircled
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