Pearse did not fly first, says researcher

Press, 30 December 1985, Page 7

Pearse did not fly first, says researcher

PA Wellington Richard Pearse, whom many New Zealanders believe beat the American Wright brothers into the air, may never have even achieved powered flight, according to the latest published research. The Temuka farmer also probably did not begin trying to build an aircraft until at least three months after Orville and Wilbur Wright had made their first flight at Kittyhawk. A former National Airways Corporation (N.A.C.) general manager, Mr Doug Patterson, published the results of his research in a paper presented to the Chartered Institute of Transport in Mount Maunganui and reproduced in its journal, the A Transportant.” Mr Patterson, awarded the M.B.E. for military service and the C.B.E. for services to aviation, said he has been interested in Pearse for years, and the often-repeated claim that he beat the Wright brothers in achieving powered flight by almost two years. The Wright brothers’ first successful powered flight was on December 17, 1903. Mr Patterson said Pearse never claimed to have been first and freely conceded that the Wright brothers deserved this recognition. But the claim persisted that Pearse flew as early as 1902. “As the years go by without any dissenting voice these claims seem to gain more credence, even to the extent that they are now becoming accepted as fact.” Quoting extensively from newspaper articles and letters written by Pearse himself, Mr Patterson said Pearse eventually gave up attempts at controlled powered flights in 1909, having never achieved his goal. But he paid tribute to the attempts Pearse made at flying, achieved using airframes and engines he designed and built himself without formal engineering training or a sophisticated workshop.

Mr Patterson said Pearse’s flying attempts first gained attention from

the aeronautical world after he died in 1953. Executors found a weird-looking machine, assumed to be an aeroplane, in a shed at the back of his property in Woolston, Christchurch. Shifted to the Canterbury Aero Club, the machine aroused the curiosity of the chief engineer for Tasman Empire Airways, Ltd (later renamed Air New Zealand), Mr George Bolt. Mr Bolt went to Temuka and Timaru, interviewed people who had known Pearse, and presented a report to the Royal Aeronautical Society quoting 15 people who said that Pearse’s plane flew. “... all accounts agreed that Pearse’s aeroplane took off under its own power, from an unformed grass roadway, that it rose into the air and immediately became unstable, landing on the top of a gorse hedge some 15 feet high,” said Mr Patterson. “Although most of those interviewed could not positively state the year in which this flight took place, some stated that it occurred in 1903 or maybe 1904.” Mr Patterson said it appeared that Pearse did attempt sustained, controlled flight between 1904 and 1905, and probably carried out modifications to his machine as a result. Mr Bolt concluded that the earliest Pearse could have flown any trial flights was March, 1904. “In any event, irrespective of the date, these first attempts at flight did not meet the established criteria for powered, manned, controlled flight and must be discounted.” Mr Patterson said the accepted criterion was that a piloted machine had to take off under its own power, make powered, controlled and sustained flight, and land on ground as high as that from which it took off. In 1978, a new paper was presented to the Royal Aeronautical Society by Mr Graham Bell, saying that Pearse flew as early as 1902, quoting four new witnesses, and a whole new test flight.

But Mr Patterson said this paper relied on the memory of people recalling events 75 years earlier, and only one of the witnesses positively asserted that Pearse flew in 1902. As well, none of the witnesses Mr Bolt spoke to 25 years earlier had mentioned a 1902 flight. “The 1902 flight was supposed to have taken off over a 30ft high embankment of the Opihi River and to have followed a gradually descending flight path along the riverbed for about six furlongs (about I.2km), eventually crash-landing near a pine plantation at a point some 25ft lower than the take-off point.” Mr Patterson said the flight did take place, but there was no convincing evidence that it was in 1902, and it was probably a later experiment. Anyway, it did not qualify as a powered flight, being more a powerassisted glide. He said it could not be disputed that Pearse attempted powered, controlled flight, and it was a pity that he did not start his experiments using gliders, as the Wright brothers had, to give him experience in control. But Mr Patterson said the real answer to whether Pearse flew before the Americans was in a letter the farmer wrote to local newspapers. In May, 1915, he wrote in the Dunedin “Evening Star”: “... I was still of the opinion that aerial navigation was possible and I started out to solve the problem about March, 1904... I worked at the problem for about s¥z years...”

Pearse wrote that he built just one plane and several engines and after trials, found that he would have to make such extensive changes that he would almost have to build a new plane. “At this time, as aerial navigation was already an accomplished fact, I decided to give up the struggle as it was useless to continue against men with factories at their backs.”

A later letter repeated

the early 1904 start date of experiments, this time saying that the month was about February. “My aeroplane was of enormous size... at the trial it would start to rise off the ground when a speed of 20 m.p.h. was attained. This speed was insufficient to work the rudders, so on account of its huge size and low speed it was uncontrollable and would spin broadside directly it left the ground... “... I had successful aerial navigation in my grasp if I had had the patience to design a small plane that would be more manageable.” Mr Patterson said those were not the words of a man who flew in 1902. He also quoted articles from the “Temuka Leader” and “Otago Witness” of 1909 about Pearse and his continuing efforts to fly.

“Some of those who advance the claim that Pearse flew between 1902 and 1904 reject the statement that Pearse himself made in these letters on the ground that his memory must have been faulty,” Mr Patterson said. But Pearse was just 38 when he wrote the letters, describing events that took place just a few years earlier.

“Yet these same people are willing to accept the vague recollections of nowelderly bystanders who were trying to recall an occurrence of 50 or 60 years earlier when they were children of perhaps seven or eight years of age. “It was impossible to reconcile the sincere statements of witnesses with_ Pearse’s own statements' that he did not begin to try to solve the problems of flight until early 1904,” he said. Mr Patterson ended his Ewith a quotation from s Pearse wrote in both 1915 and 1928 in which he said: “Pre-eminence will undoubtedly be given to the Wright brothers of America when the history of the aeroplane is written as they were the first to make successful flights with a motordriven aeroplane.”