This Day in Science History (Why Leonardo’s Flight Experiment Failed)

January 3, 1496—The restless curiosity of Leonardo da Vinci took wing literally, as the Renaissance painter tested a flying machine of his own device, a precursor of today’s helicopter. Unfortunately, the experiment failed, as he was unable to overcome the limitations of his time.

In a blog post from six years ago on Leonardo as a “Renaissance Man,” I discussed how science represented only one facet of his many interests: painting, sculpting, botany, architecture, urban planning, public spectacle and pageantry, and music.

But Leonardo’s aviation experiments, particularly on this occasion, deserve more in-depth analysis of how they foundered—and why his failure to disseminate his ideas slowed scientific progress for the next four centuries.

It took Leonardo a few more years before he realized that human beings did not have the appropriate proportion of muscles to weight that enabled flight of the birds that long fascinated him (more than 35,000 words and 500 sketches dealing with flying machines, the nature of air, and bird flight). At that point he turned his attention to gliders.

But besides this initial failure of understanding, Leonardo was handicapped by the lack of lightweight material like aluminum or strong propulsion systems like engines that later made man-made flight possible.

Science history is filled with examples of how technology trigger new ways of thinking that in turn make new inventions possible. Leonardo didn’t have trouble with concepts or imagining new realities. But the lack of necessary technology meant that his flying machine would be incapable of momentary flight, let alone the sustained kind.

The title of the podcast “The Brilliant, Groundbreaking, and Wildly Overrated Leonardo da Vinci" concisely summarizes the contrary negative view of Leonardo’s scientific achievement. To be sure, Sam Kean makes a couple of valid points: that Leonardo couldn’t concentrate enough to bring projects to fruition, and that by working in isolation he was unable to benefit from research by others that would either spark his creativity or correct his hypotheses.

However, Kean doesn’t take into account a few factors about Leonardo’s intellect and environment that may have affected how he worked.

First, why couldn’t the artist concentrate, particularly when the inability to do so severely disappointed patrons? I wondered if this might have been because he was manifesting adult ADHD, and sure enough that was strongly suggested in a 2019 study by King's College London researcher Professor Marco Catani.

The lack of collaboration requires even more context. At least as far as his painting was concerned, Leonardo did collaborate, through a common artistic practice of the Renaissance—employing young assistants who, by carrying out his instructions, could learn the craft themselves.

But when it came to science, he may have been afraid to let others know his thoughts. It was less a matter of paranoia that someone else might steal his ideas than a more justifiable fear that unconventional scientific conclusions could contradict Roman Catholic teaching and lead to heresy charges.

Consider, for instance, Copernicus (unwilling to publish his theory of a sun-centered universe until he was on the brink of death in 1543) or Galileo (who, a century after Leonardo, did attract the unfortunate attention of the Inquisition with his own astronomical studies).

Finally, Leonardo's opportunities to work with other scientists were few to far between. The first scientific society didn't start until Rome's Accademia dei Lincei (Lincean Academy) in 1601, two centuries after his speculations on flight.

In any case, posterity had no opportunity to benefit from his notes (in which the left-handed artist used "mirror writing," most likely either to prevent smudged notes or to force concentration).

Leonardo's 28,000 surviving pages, in notebooks and codices, were scattered after his death in 1519. After his papers were collated and decoded, they would not be published until  well into the 1800s, by which time most of the important early work in aerodynamics had been published.

Quote of the Day (Ernest K. Gann, on ‘The Emergencies You Train For’)

“The emergencies you train for almost never happen. It’s the one you can’t train for that kills you.”—American aviator, author, sailor, and conservationist Ernest K. Gann (1910-1991), The Black Watch: The Men Who Fly America's Secret Spy Planes (1989)

This Day in Aviation History (Mitchell Aerial Bombings Advance Air Power Case)

Sept. 5, 1923—The demonstrations weren’t as dramatic as hoped for and top army brass downplayed their impact. But Brigadier General Billy Mitchell was still grimly satisfied when aerial bombing tests devastated two battleships, New Jersey and Virginia, off the coast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, proving the unique value of aerial warfare for future conflicts.

The year 1923 wasn’t the one the derailed Mitchell’s career and ensured lasting historical interest in him—that would come two years later, when he would be court-martialed on grounds of insubordination.

But 1923 set him seething about his pet cause—a unified air force—and how his ambitions and counsels were increasingly disregarded by what he saw as a backward top brass unappreciative of his efforts.

In August 1923, Mitchell, then assistant chief of the Army Air Service, demonstrated to the public “the size and strength of the air fleet” by having 18 bomber planes fly from Maine down the East Coast, executing potential wartime maneuvers.

In the fall, he would be sent on an inspection tour of the Pacific, leading to his prophetic report that defenses in the region—including at Pearl Harbor—would be vulnerable to a surprise air attack.

But in between, in September, Mitchell’s call for a bombing test against two battleships was granted, though not with the rigor he desired. The New Jersey and Virginia were stripped out and with minimal watertight integrity, hardly like Mitchell’s wish for the “sturdiest ships to be scrapped with steam up and magazines filled.”

In due course, Virginia sank and New Jersey was severely damaged. Siding with the Navy, Army Chief of Staff John Pershing issued a statement that, because the vessels were “obsolete,” the tests should not be considered “conclusive evidence that similar bombs would sink modern types of battleships.”

But the tests—coming two years after the bombing of the captured German battleship Ostfriesland, by the First Provisional Air Brigade under Mitchell's command—garnered considerable press coverage.

He felt encouraged to press his case for a “Department of National Defense…with a staff common to all the services” and with “subsecretaries for the Army, Navy and the Air Force.” It would take more than two decades, until after WWII, for that reform to be adopted.

If Mitchell’s superiors in the Army and War Department hoped Pershing’s statement would effectively muzzle the ambitious airman, they should have known better. Mitchell was never the type to accept being told what he couldn’t do.

The 25-year Amy veteran’s flight service alone testified to his refusal to be cowed into submission. As WWI dragged on in Europe, he prepared for the U.S. entry into the conflict by paying for his own lessons at a civilian flying school, waving off suggestions that he held too high a rank (at that time, major) and was too old (37) to undergo flight training. 

Mitchell came out of the war with a brigadier general’s ranking, public adulation as a hero and leader in a fledgling military unit, and the firm belief that he was best qualified to lead this new element of American arms. But he had to make do with a position as deputy of the air service because of his tactlessness and willingness to use connections from his father’s time as a U.S. Senator.

When even the term for that position wasn’t renewed, Mitchell had to accept a transfer away from the DC spotlight and out to San Antonio, while reverting to his permanent rank of colonel.

A pair of accidents in 1925 involving the sinking of the airship Shenandoah and an unsuccessful flight from the U.S. to Hawaii led Mitchell to make his fateful statement that they had resulted from “the incompetency, criminal negligence, and almost treasonable administration of the national defense by the navy and war departments.”

Late that year, Mitchell was found guilty at his court-martial for his remarks. Rather than accept his sentence, a five-year suspension, he quit the army early in 1926 and sought to promote his views as a civilian, with steadily declining success, until his death in 1936.

One of the most far-sighted but polarizing officers in the history of the U.S. Army, Mitchell also serves as an excellent case study in how Americans prefer their heroes without contradictions or flaws. 

Would a less abrasive, less headstrong leader have pushed his vision for the air force further along? On the other hand, would a less brilliant theorist have foreseen the eventual shape of the U.S. Air Force or a reorganized Defense Department? We will never know.

Quote of the Day (Saint-Exupery, Offering One of James Dean’s Favorite Quotes)

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince 

This past weekend, I heard historian David McCullough cite this quote in a lecture broadcast on C-Span. It is a marvelous refutation of the materialist philosophy that dominated so much of the late 19th and 20th centuries—and which still bedevils us, in one form or another, today. 

 A few years ago, a PBS “American Masters” documentary, “James Dean: Sense Memories,” ended with a haunting recollection that the hugely influential Rebel Without a Cause actor loved this modern fable. In fact, only 900 feet from the site of his fatal car accident on Highway 46 East in California, this quotation is carved on a plaque erected by a fan in memory of Dean. 

The creator of one of the best-loved books of the last century, Antoine de Saint-Exupery was also one of the most heroic figures of WWII, fighting for the Resistance as a reconnaissance pilot—someone who had even pulled strings to get into the fighting when it appeared that his age and weight would sideline him. His 1944 disappearance on a mission long ranked as one of the most enduring mysteries of the aeronautical age. Speculation raged that he’d lost control of the plane, committed suicide, or been shot down. 

Last year, courtesy of a French diver, wreckage of his plane was recovered, seemingly confirming the last hunch—and bringing added guilt to a former Luftwaffe pilot who believed that he’d shot down the aviator author he’d idolized.

This Day in Aviation History (Quentin Roosevelt, T.R.’s Son, Killed in Action)

July 14, 1918—Lt. Quentin Roosevelt, an impish boy grown into a daredevil pilot, was killed in action while facing off against a Germany squadron, plunging his father, former President Theodore Roosevelt, into a grief from which he never recovered.

Many visitors to Roosevelt Field Mall, that palace of consumer spending on Long Island, likely know that it is named after Roosevelt Field, the former airport and military airfield from which Charles Lindbergh set forth on his epic nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic. If they think of the field name’s derivation, they’re likely to trace it to Franklin (or even Eleanor) Roosevelt, or maybe that favorite Long Island son and squire of Oyster Bay’s Sagamore Hill, Theodore.

But actually, the name came from none of these famous people. Instead, it came from Quentin, Theodore’s youngest child, and a war hero in his own right.

Few Presidential children have captured the affection of the American public like little Quentin Roosevelt did. Around 35 years ago, in my early teens, I explored the collected works of T.R., but few of his books gave me a better sense of the President as a person than Theodore Roosevelt’s Letters to His Children. If pressed, T.R. would admit that his favorite child—and, with his asthma, his love of reading, his large head, and his astonishing energy, the one most like himself—was Quentin.

Setting a precedent (as he often did), the President sent Quentin to a D.C. public school in an admirable attempt to make the youngster realize that he could not get through life by trading on the name of his powerful father.

An unexpected repercussion, however, was that Quentin joined forces with another Terror of Tiny Town, Charles Taft, son of the Secretary of War and hand-picked successor to the President, as leading members of the “White House Gang.” Charlie played Huck Finn to Quentin’s scheme-devising Tom Sawyer. (All the devilry was exorcised out of Charlie early, as he went on to become mayor of Cincinnati and a founder of the World Council of Churches.)

The White House Gang—and especially ringleader Quentin—gave the D.C. press corps reams of copy, T.R. endless belly laughs, and Quentin’s sensible, beleaguered mother, Edith, considerable heart palpitations with the following exploits:

* nearly toppling a 350-lb. bust of Martin Van Buren (maybe it was the one thing bigger in the city than Charlie’s dad?);
* running a wagon over a full-length portrait of a figure beloved by the temperance movement, former First Lady “Lemonade Lucy” Hayes;
* throwing spitballs at a White House portrait of Andrew Jackson, with three on his forehead (“like an Arabian dancer,” explained Quentin) and one on each earlobe;
* reenacting the battle of San Juan Hill, with Quentin, on one memorable (and frightening) occasion using his father’s actual sword—one he’d been warned to go nowhere near—to take Charlie “prisoner,” accidentally nicking his friend in the cheek;
* walking on stilts in a White House flower garden
* taking a pony into the White House elevator up to the second floor, where older brother Theodore Jr. was sick (the mere sight of the animal would make his sibling better, the boy reasoned); and
* lying with a pair of chairs for the head and feet, with nothing between but books from which peaked long knitting needles (the person who dared to lay on this—Quentin, of course, because nobody else would think to try it—automatically became leader of the gang).

After his White House years, Quentin seemed ready to follow the traditional family path of male Roosevelts—an education at Harvard, where he showed, like his father, an enthusiasm for writing—when World War I intervened. Theodore’s plea to Woodrow Wilson to lead troops in battle was a nonstarter, because of the former President’s age, his physical condition (worsened markedly by his near-fatal expedition down the “River of Doubt” in Brazil in 1914) and the boost it would give the former President if he launched yet another run for the White House in 1920.

But the Roosevelt sons joined. It took the greatest effort for Quentin to enter the armed forces, because another trait he shared with his father—poor eyesight—required that he memorize the eye chart at his physical examination. Unlike his brothers, Quentin joined an entirely new arm of the military—the Army Air Corps—figuring that his mechanical skills (once, he presented a friend with a gift of a motorcycle he had completely rebuilt himself) would come in handy there.

Instead, he was set to work as a flight instructor, a position in which the young man simultaneously demonstrated his skill and his puckish sense of humor. Having dispatched his students into the sky, he would fly up silently behind them, observe their maneuvers, and descend, his critique all ready, before they could land.

As the boy had grown older, the former President feared that his youngest might have been a trifle soft (something having to do with bunching up pillows to ward off blows from his bigger brothers doing pillow fights), and the three senior Roosevelt boys evidently gave a few hints about why he wasn’t with them at the front lines. Before long, he—and they—had gotten their wish—and they were soon sorry that they had.

Even during his baptism by fire on July 5, young Roosevelt narrowly escaped death. When his engine malfunctioned, he came so close to a German fighter that he could see the red stripes around the fuselage. Miraculously, the German plane ignored him. Later the same day, his gun jammed, but his squadron mates shot down a German plane. He merely laughed off pleas from fellow pilots and commanding officers—even from his normally risk-taking father—to be more careful.

On July 10, Quentin’s squadron returned to its base with him nowhere in view—until suddenly, his plane came out of the sky and they saw the young man grinning broadly, having claimed his first German hit. At home, hearing the news, the hero of San Juan Hill crowed that “the last of the lion’s brood had been blooded.”

Four days later—Bastille Day in France—Quentin’s luck ran out. He and his squadron faced off against seven German Fokkers led by Hermann Goering, the future leader of the Luftwaffe in WWII. Suddenly, three more German planes zeroed in on the Americans from behind. Quentin immediately turned around and engaged them alone. The maneuver saved the rest of his squadron, but proved fatal to the President’s son, whose plane spiraled to earth.

It has been claimed that the German pilots identified the body as that of the President’s son through a love letter from his fiancée, Flora Payne Whitney, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. They marked the spot of the crash with the wheels and propellers of his plane, along with a sign reading, “Lieutenant Roosevelt, buried by the Germans.”

His father was sitting on his front porch at Sagamore Hill when reporters arrived to break the news. The ex-President begged their pardon as he went in to break the news to his wife.

For weeks thereafter, Theodore Roosevelt would take long woods in the woods, only to emerge puffy-eyed from weeping. Like writer Rudyard Kipling, another figure whose visually challenged son had died in the service of a cause the father had backed strenuously, T.R. was haunted by his child’s death. He wrote a friend that “to feel that one has inspired a boy to conduct that has resulted in his death has a pretty serious side for a father.”

"You must always remember that the President is about six," British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice said about T.R. Keep that in mind when you re-read the President’s comment to his friend and observe, in particular, the somber tone. Most people agree that some spark went out of the old political and military warrior after his youngest son’s death. His own passing came no more than six months later.