Wright Flyer III

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Wright Flyer III in flight over Huffman Prairie.

The Wright Flyer III was the third powered aircraft built by the Wright Brothers.

Orville Wright first flew the original Flyer III on 23 June 1905. Flyer III had a new airframe, but used the propulsion system from the Flyer II, and was essentially the same design and same performance as Flyers I and II.

When rebuilding the Flyer III after a severe crash on 14 July 1905, the Wrights made radical changes to the design. They almost doubled the size of elevator and rudder and moved them about twice the distance from the wings. They added two fixed vertical vanes (called "blinkers") between the elevators, and gave the wings a very slight dihedral. They disconnected the rudder of re-built Flyer III from the wing warp control, and as in all future aircraft, placed it on a separate control handle.

On 5 October 1905, Wilbur flew 24 miles (38.9 km) in 39 minutes 23 seconds^[1], longer than the total duration of all the flights of 1903 and 1904. Four days later, they wrote to the United States Secretary of War, offering to sell the world's first practical fixed-wing aircraft.

Disassembled on 7 November 1905, they refurbished it as the 1908 prototype flown at Kitty Hawk from 6 to 14 May 1908. These May 1908 flights in the re-configured Flyer III served as a means for Wilbur & Orville to test the new controls and also the passenger carrying abilities of the aircraft. On May 14, 1908 Wilbur was flying above the dunes at Kitty Hawk when he pulled a wrong lever and crashed into a sand dune. Only the front elevator was damaged but the brothers had to move on to newer aircraft. Flyer III was left in the hangar there at Kitty Hawk unrepaired. In 1911 the disassembled aeroplane then went to a warehouse in Massachusetts where it remained for almost 40 years until Orville requested its return in 1946. The aircraft was restored from 1947 to 1950 with the assistance of Orville Wright, and it is now displayed in the Wright Brothers Aviation Center at Carillon Historical Park in Dayton, Ohio. The restored 1905 Wright Flyer III is the only fixed-wing aircraft to be designated a National Historic Landmark.