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ONE of the most romantic and picturesque of the aviation pioneers was Samuel Franklin Cody. Unlike so many makers of air history, he had had no engineering or scientific training, and his mechanical knowledge was comparatively negligible when he first became interested in aeronautics.
Cody was born at Texas, in 1861. Many stories are told of his early years, and he himself claimed that he toured with the famous “Wild West” troupe owned by the original Colonel Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill. Whether this is true or not, it is certain that Samuel Franklin Cody was with a “Wild West” troupe as a cowboy, and that when Buffalo Bill died, he assumed the “rank” of Colonel after his famous namesake.
It was as a Wild West showman that Samuel Franklin Cody came to England at the age of thirty-four. Later, however, he wrote popular melodramas in which he and his family acted. While he was on tour with his melodramas he became interested in kite-flying, and thought of the idea of using a man-lifting kite for military purposes.
So successful were his first box-kite experiments, made in 1905, that the War Office appointed him as an instructor at Farnborough with the Balloon Section of the Royal Engineers (the forerunners of the Royal Flying Corps). A height of 1,600 feet was attained by a Cody kite in 1905, and in the same year a sapper in the Royal Engineers was enabled to remain in the air for one hour at an altitude of 2,600 feet. The British Government eventually awarded Cody £5,000 for his box-kite experiments.
While he was at Farnborough Cody was associated with Colonel Capper and Colonel Templar (two men who rendered great service to British aviation) in the designing and building of the first British military airship, Nulli Secundus. But Cody’s most valuable work at Farnborough was with the machine which became known as the British Army biplane. The design of this aeroplane is sometimes attributed to Cody, and is sometimes known as Cody’s first machine. This is not strictly true; Cody developed it, persevered with it and modified it from a design already in existence, but so much of his work and ideas did go into it that the completed machine can be regarded as his own. He was certainly the first man to make it fly successfully.
During 1908 he made several “hops” with this machine, but they could scarcely be called flights. It was not until February 1909 that he made a flight of any appreciable distance. At Laffan’s Plain, Aldershot, he flew a distance of 400 yards at a height of 12 feet and at a speed of 10-12 miles an hour. On that same day, a momentous one for British aviation, he attempted a second flight. The first flight had been made with the wind, but on his second attempt Cody faced the wind, which was blowing at twelve miles an hour. The machine left the ground and Cody decided to try to turn it. At that time little was known about turning an aeroplane, but Cody turned his aeroplane through an angle of about ninety degrees before it crashed.
After the crash Cody spent several weeks of trials and experiments, and on May 14 he flew the biplane 1,200 yards from Laffan’s Plain to Danger Hill. This flight created new British records for duration and for distance.
In the afternoon of that day the Prince of Wales (later King George V) asked for a demonstration, but Cody could not repeat his success. In trying to avoid some troops, he crashed into an embankment and damaged the tail of his machine. Once more Cody retired from active flying for a period while he repaired his biplane. When these repairs were completed he made a circular flight of two miles. He carried out further adjustments to the machine, and in September 1909 he set up a world record with a cross-country flight of forty miles in one hour. During the flight he reached an altitude of 600 feet.
His British Army biplane now having proved itself and convinced even its severest critics, Cody took it to the aviation meeting at Doncaster, Yorkshire, in October 1909.
His British Army biplane now having proved itself and convinced even its severest critics, Cody took it to the aviation meeting at Doncaster, Yorkshire, in October 1909.
Here he completed his naturalization as a British subject in time to try to win the Daily Mail prize of £1,000 for the first British pilot to fly a circular mile on an all-British aeroplane. While he was taxy-ing over the ground he ran into a patch of sand and the machine overturned. Cody was unhurt.
Because of its peculiar appearance the British Army biplane was known as the “Cathedral”’ Although Cody made many changes from the original design, they did not affect the main dimensions. The “Cathedral” was the largest and heaviest machine of its day. It had a span of about 40 feet with a gap of 8 feet between the upper and lower wing surfaces.
Several engines were fitted to the “Cathedral”, including a 60 horse-power. E.N.V. (which was the first engine to be fitted), a 50 horse-power Green, a 50 horsepower Antoinette, a 100 and 120 horse-power Austro-Daimler, and a 60 horse-power Green.
Cody built a second machine, which made an inauspicious beginning at Lanark, where Scotland’s first aviation meeting was held in August 1910.
Before this, on June 7, Cody had qualified for the Royal Aero Club’s pilot certificate No. 9. At Lanark, Cody’s new machine, which weighed about one and a quarter tons, was underpowered and he could scarcely make it leave the ground. A month later, however, after he had fitted a 60 horse-power Green engine, he made several successful flights.
It was on this machine that he accomplished two of the most outstanding performances of his career. A British Empire Michelin Cup had been presented for the longest distance to be flown in a closed circuit by a British pilot in a British aircraft during 1910.
Cody was soon among the leaders with a magnificent flight of 94½ miles in two hours twenty-hour minutes. This created new British records for distance and duration. But Cody was obliged to put up even better performances than this before the year was out. At the end of December, only a few days before the competition closed for that particular year, he flew, in bad weather, 115 miles in two hours fifty minutes before he crashed. No damage was done either to Cody or to his aeroplane, and he decided to make a further attempt. His chance appeared to have gone, however, for other competitors were making extraordinarily good flights. At Camber, near Rye, in Sussex, Alec Ogilvie had flown 139¾ miles in three hours fifty-five minutes. It seemed certain that this superb performance would win the Cup for Ogilvie, but the last day of the year, and therefore the last day of the competition, saw a spectacular and dramatic finish.
Cody continued to work on aircraft using his own funds. On 7 August 1913, he was test flying his latest design, the Cody Floatplane, when it broke up at 200 feet (61 m) and he and his passenger, the cricketer William Evans, were killed at Ball Hill, Laffans Plain, Cove Common near Farnborough. The two men, not strapped in, were thrown out of the aircraft and the Royal Aero Club accident investigation concluded that the accident was due to "inherent structural weakness", and suggested that the two might have survived the crash if they had been strapped in. Cody's body was buried with full military honours in the Aldershot Military Cemetery; the funeral procession drew an estimated crowd of 100,000.
Reference https://www.wondersofworldaviation.com/cody.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Franklin_Cody