Hubert Latham - Aviation Career - Attempts To Win Daily Mail Channel-crossing Prize

Attempts To Win Daily Mail Channel-crossing Prize

In May 1909, three months after Latham joined the company, he at last realized his potential and flew for 37.5 minutes at a speed of 45 mph at a height of just over 30 m (98 ft). A week later he set the European non-stop flight record at 1 hour and 7 minutes which seriously challenged the Wrights' world record. During this flight he took his hands off the steering wheel, took a cigarette out of his silver case and smoked it in his ivory holder, thus creating a new record. This delighted Levavasseur because it showcased the aeroplane's stability when being flown with hands off the controls. Then on June 6, 1909, Latham won the Prix Ambroise Goupy for flying a straight-line course of six kilometers in 4 minutes, 13 seconds. These flights convinced Levavasseur that Latham was clearly his best pilot and he was named the company's premier pilot. Furthermore, based on the length of the flights Latham was conducting, Levavasseur was satisfied that his Antoinette IV monoplane was sufficiently reliable for a 45 minute-to-1 hour continuous flight and therefore Latham could attempt to fly across the English Channel to win a £1,000 (US$5,000 1910) prize offered by the Daily Mail.

On 9 July 1909, while encamped at Sangatte, several miles west of Calais on the French coast of the English Channel, Latham officially informed the Daily Mail that he intended to cross the Channel by air and claim their prize. He was forced to renew his intention several times as his attempt was continually delayed by bad weather. Within the next four days, Comte Charles de Lambert, a Franco-Russian aviator, also notified the Daily Mail of his intention to compete for the prize and he established his camp at Wissant, several miles west of Sangatte, bringing two French-built Wright Flyers (Nos. 2 and 18) with him.

On 19 July Latham took off from Cap Blanc-Nez, very near Sangatte, but after only 8 miles (13 km) his Antoinette IV suffered engine failure and Latham had to ditch in the Channel, thereby performing the world's first landing of an aircraft on the sea. The undamaged fuselage remained afloat, so he lit a cigarette and awaited rescue by the French torpedo-destroyer Harpon that was following. After recovery of the aircraft, the engine was examined and a stray piece of wire was found inside the engine. Levavasseur stated that the misfire was caused by this wire.

In his 1958 book Flying Witness Graham Wallace recounts that, when surrounded by the crowd that greeted Latham on the Calais quayside on 19 July, Levavasseur was asked by the Daily Mail’s reporter Harry Harper if the failure had caused him to be discouraged. The answer was:

“Not in the very least. We have proved that the Channel can be flown. A little accident to a motor, what is that? Accidents happen to bicycles, to horses, even to bath-chairs...We have a machine that can go on land, in the air, and in the water. It runs, it flies, it swims. C'est un triomphe!”".

Because the salvage operation on Latham's first Antoinette resulted in severe damage to the aircraft, Levavasseur was forced to arrange for a second plane to be shipped from the factory in Puteaux, a Paris suburb, and it arrived on July 21. It was their newest model, the Antoinette VII, and it had never been tested in flight, although Latham did get a chance to fly it once, briefly, while he waited for the foul weather to abate.

A day later, Louis Blériot set up camp just under 2 miles (3.2 km) away from Latham at Les Baraques and announced his intention to go for the prize in his Blériot XI monoplane, and the two contestants had to wait for better weather. Meanwhile, de Lambert damaged one of his Flyers in a test flight shortly after Blériot's arrival and decided to withdraw from the competition.

At about 3 a.m. the morning of 25 July 1909 Blériot's team noticed a break in the weather, awakened him, prepared the aircraft, and waited for dawn to make the attempt if the favourable conditions still held. Levavasseur and the rest of Latham's team, however, slept the night through and failed to notice the opportunity, a lapse which was rigorously criticised by Latham’s supporters. Blériot took off precisely at dawn (4.41am) to make the first successful crossing of the English Channel by aeroplane.

Harry Harper, the Daily Mail reporter who was witness to the event, wrote that Levavasseur woke up just in time to see Blériot's aeroplane leaving the French coast and he rushed to wake Latham and his crew to see if it could be possible to catch Blériot or overtake him should the latter not succeed in crossing the Channel. By the time Latham's monoplane was in position atop the cliffs at Cap Blanc-Nez, a gusty wind had risen, accompanied by heavy rains, so that "any attempt at a take-off would have been nothing less than suicidal."

Two days later, on 27 July, Latham made a second attempt to cross the Channel. He was within minutes of arriving in the vicinity of Dover when engine failure again forced him into the sea. This time he could not control the angle of descent as well as he had in his first attempt and when he hit the water he seriously damaged the aircraft and suffered severe lacerations to his forehead. Although no definitive cause of engine failure for this second attempt was found, two possibilities were put forward. One is that the innovative fuel-injection system became clogged due to unfiltered fuel. Aviation pioneer Gabriel Voisin, who used Antoinette engines in his own planes, posited another possibility which he argued was also the cause of Latham's first failure: "The Antoinette V-8 furnished a significant fraction less of its power after running more than 15 minutes. It was this problem that provoked Latham's fall into the sea."

Latham wanted to make yet another attempt but as British pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White wrote:

"It is a tribute to Latham's courage that, immediately he was well enough to fly again, he should want to make a third attempt to cross the Channel. But the directors of the Antoinette Company, having already spent a large sum of money upon the project, and having lost two machines, were not inclined to take the risk of a third venture, particularly as the great Reims flying meeting was now imminent and they desired to send all their available machines there."