Harry P. Moore, a journalist, talked by phone with one of the Life Savers and he was told that the Wright brothers' machine, piloted by Orville, "after it glided down a hill on a wooden track, it went up"
One of the Life Savers, it is not clear if he was John T. Daniels, told by phone Harry P. Moore, on Dec. 17, 1903, that the plane went up after going down a hill on a wooden track. So it is clear the plane was aided by gravity to leave the ground, the airplane being launched using an incline.
However, despite talking by phone with one of the witnesses, finally Harry Moore ended up by writing an article titled: "Flying machine soars 3 miles in teeth of high wind over sand hills and waves at Kitty Hawk on Carolina coast" that appeared on the Virginian-Pilot on the December 18, 1903 and evidently was a clear lie.
One thing is sure, the 1933 letter of John T. Daniels and the 1951 declarations of Harry P. Moore, both, placed the Wrights' plane on a hill before its first take off on Dec. 17, 1903.
"Harry P. Moore, a 19-year old freelance cub reporter, was sitting in a Norfolk restaurant when he overheard a man from the Outer Banks say that “two crazy loons” were in Kitty Hawk, attempting to fly. The man—whom Moore would later describe as garrulous—told Moore that he was a member of the U.S. Life-Saving Service and had come to Norfolk to buy a barrel of oysters for the inventors: “They wanted to get some Lynnhaven Oysters before they die, and I came [here] to get them,” he explained. At the time, Moore was trying to get a full time job with the Virginian-Pilot. He had written a number of stories about the Life-Saving Service along the Outer Banks, and enjoyed good relations with many of the men who worked for the U.S. government agency, which grew out of private and local humanitarian efforts to save the lives of shipwrecked mariners and passengers. The Life-Saving Service began in 1848 and was merged into the U.S. Coast Guard in 1915.
Following up on the Lynnhaven oyster tip, Moore made several visits to Kitty Hawk in the ensuing months. William “Will” O. Dough and John T. Daniels, both attached to the Kitty Hawk Life-Saving Station, introduced Moore to the Wright brothers as their friend. The Wrights trusted the men from the Life-Saving Service, and though they were intent on secrecy, they did not suspect he was a newsman. Moore actually observed several glider flights and was able to write a description of the Wright Flyer from observing it in its hangar. He was also able to get a commitment from Dough and Daniels, who agreed “to keep him advised about developments, and if the Wrights did succeed in flying they were to telegraph me at Norfolk,” Moore told the Charlotte Observer in 1951.
<i>The Life-Saving Service men kept their word. Moore said that he got a telegraph “less than twenty minutes after the first flight was made.” The telegrapher at the Norfolk weather bureau, Charles C. Grant, delivered the message in person to Moore at his home in Norfolk <b>at about 11:4
Last edited by simplex1; 29th Jun 2014 at 02:30.