Reims Air Meet

https://www.centennialofflight.net/e.../Reims/EX2.htm

From August 22 to August 29, 1909, 22 of the world's leading aviators met at a
racetrack on the Betheny Plain outside Reims, France, to compete in the first
organized international air meet. Officially known as Le Grande Semaine
D'Aviation de la Champagne (The Champagne Region's Great Aviation Week), the
Reims Air Meet featured many prestigious contests, including those for the best
flights of distance, altitude, and speed. Lucrative cash prizes and impressive
trophies enticed the competitors to set new records in nearly every category. As
the first competition of its kind, the meet attracted the attention of numerous
political and military leaders as well as the public at large. Spectators who
watched the various contests throughout the week experienced a wide range of
emotions from sheer exuberance when their heroes won, to utter horror when their
favorites crashed. In short, the Reims Air Show almost exclusively established
aerial competitions as a leading form of entertainment in the early 20th
century.

Local French vintners and Reims city officials founded the Reims Air Meet in the
spring of 1909 when they agreed to raise prize money and sponsor the air show.
In July, one month before the meet, French aviator Louis Bleriot had become the
first person to fly across the English Channel, and thanks to the newspaper
coverage he received, public interest in aviation was running high. Because of
Bleriot's feat, the organizers of the Reims meet were expecting a large turnout
at their event. To accommodate the anticipated crowds, they transformed Betheny
into a massive aerodrome (the former term for airport) and a mini city. They
built barber and beauty shops, telephone and telegraph offices, and a huge
grandstand complete with a 600-seat restaurant that overlooked the airfield. To
keep people entertained between flights, they hired stilt-walkers and tightrope
artists to perform.

Twenty-two aviators came to Reims to compete. All of them, save two, were
Frenchmen. Some of the better-known French pilots included Bleriot, Hubert
Latham (a rival of Bleriot who had also had been competing to be the first
person to fly across the English Channel), Henri Farman, and Eugene Lefebvre.
George Cockburn, a Scot, and Glenn Curtiss, an American, were the only foreign
competitors. Although most of the pilots were experienced, there were also a few
rookies. One was Monsieur Ruchonnet, who had flown his first airplane only two
days before the meet. Another was a youngster named Etienne Bunau-Varilla, who
had also been flying only a very short time; his plane was a recent high school
graduation gift from his father.

Several aviators emerged as crowd favorites during the week at Reims. Farman
thrilled his fellow citizens by winning the distance contest, the richest cash
prize of the meet at 50,000 francs or approximately $10,000. He captured the
event by covering 180 kilometers (112 miles) in a plane of his own design in 3
hours, 4 minutes, and 56 seconds. Then, in a different competition, he won the
Prix des Passengers for carrying two spectators a total of six miles in ten
minutes. All told, Farman collected 63,000 francs, or more than $12,000, in
prizes during the week and became the meet's biggest money winner. Latham and
Lefebvre also commanded the attention and respect of the crowd. Latham, who was
already on people's minds because of his recent crash while trying to cross the
English Channel, won the altitude prize by guiding his plane to a height of 155
meters or 508.5 feet. Lefebvre, on the other hand, put on a daring display of
aerial acrobatics and quickly gained a reputation as a daredevil. For many
spectators, such feats often deserved more than mere applause and cheers. When
Latham won the altitude prize, two women rushed the airfield, jumped onto him,
and frantically smothered him with kisses. At another point, after one of
Farman's record setting displays, the crowd tore down the grandstand's handrails
so that they could greet Farman and tow his plane back to his hanger.

The Gordon Bennett Cup Race, or speed contest as it was commonly known, was the
most important event of the Reims Air Meet, or at least the one that everyone
wanted to see. Despite its comparatively meager prize money of 25,000 francs or
approximately $5,000, most spectators considered it the premier event of the
week because of their growing interest in speed. American James Gordon Bennett,
the famous publisher of The New York Herald newspaper and a longtime fan and
sponsor of various speed contests, lent his name to the race by putting up the
prize money and offering a trophy. Bleriot, Europe's most celebrated aviator,
was favored to win, but as Glenn Curtiss, the lone American and a celebrated
pilot in his own right, would make clear, the Frenchman was going to have to
fight for the cup.

Early in the summer of 1909, Curtiss, determined to put together a plane that
could beat Bleriot in the speed race, began working day and night on a new
engine. He knew the Frenchman was building a special monoplane for the
competition with an eight-cylinder, 80-horsepower (60-kilowatt) motor. Curtiss,
on the other hand, was designing a biplane with a 50-horsepower (37-kilowatt),
eight-cylinder engine; essentially, he was going to be using a new motor in a
stripped down version of his Golden Flyer, a plane with which he had recently
won the Scientific American Trophy. Although Bleriot would have the more
powerful engine, Curtiss still believed that he stood a fighting chance.

By Saturday, August 28, the day of the speed race, the field of competitors had
narrowed considerably due to several crashes. At one point during the week,
there had been at least a dozen disabled or wrecked planes on the field.
Curtiss, fearing just such a disaster, had refused to enter his plane, called
the Reims Racer, in any other contests besides the Gordon Bennett Cup. All told,
because of the high attrition rate, only five pilots stood ready to race for the
cup--Curtiss, Bleriot, Latham, Lefebvre, and Cockburn. Curtiss was the first to
fly the two laps around the 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) course. He averaged 46.5
miles per hour (75 kilometers per hour) and established the benchmark time of 15
minutes, 50 seconds. Then Latham, Lefebvre and Cockburn each tried to beat his
mark, but they could not. It was up to Bleriot, the last person to fly. On his
first lap, Bleriot led Curtiss by four seconds and was averaging 47.75 miles per
hour (almost 77 kilometers per hour). But on his second lap, he slowed
considerably, and when he crossed the finish line, Curtiss's time was still the
fastest by six seconds. At first the French crowd was stunned by Bleriot's loss,
but they eventually started cheering for Curtiss and proclaimed him the new
"Champion Aviator of the World." As anticipated, the speed race had been the
highlight of the week.

Between 300,000 and 500,000 spectators witnessed the races and contests during
the week. Of the 38 planes originally registered to compete, only23 went aloft,
and of those, 15 were biplanes and eight were monoplanes. In all, the pilots
completed 87 flights during the competition. For most of the people who attended
the event, the Reims Air Meet showed that aviation competitions were a
tremendously exciting form of entertainment. As one spectator, David Lloyd
George, the future prime minister of Great Britain, noted, the meet also proved
that "flying machines are no longer toys and dreams…they are an established
fact." For those who had any doubts about the future of aviation, the Reims Air
Show not only legitimized the importance and significance of flight, but also
set the standard by which people would measure all future air meets.

--David H. Onkst