Historical:

100 Years of Powered Flight in South Africa: The Beginning

The windy city of East London was an unlikely place for the first powered flight in South Africa. It says much for Border’s commitment to aviation, which still continues today.

For a large section of the South African public, the year 2010 means the Soccer World Cup. The subject is debated at great length on a daily basis in the newspapers, on the radio and television. Visitors, both local and overseas, will travel along the length and breadth of South Africa in their thousands. Many of these will travel by air.

How many will stop to think how air travel, today taken for granted, first started in this country. Who was the first to fly in South Africa? When and where did that first flight take place?

Most people have some knowledge of the world’s first controlled, powered flight. In the year 2003, the centenary celebration of this historic event was widely celebrated, with various replicas being built and flown, new books being written, newspaper and magazine articles appearing, and a variety of radio and TV programmes on this historic event being aired.

However, 100 years ago, when the actual flight took place, there was little publicity. The historic first flight at Kitty Hawk by Orville Wright on 17 December 1903 went almost un-noticed by the world. There were many other subsequent claims for this historic event but the Wrights remain the clear victors, especially as their aircraft was controllable in all three axes, (though wing warping, instead of ailerons was used for lateral control).

Parallel development in Europe remained fraught with problems of how to control the aircraft in the air and also to provide sufficient power to get it there. When the Wright brothers visited Europe in 1908, it was obvious to the many local aviation experimenters of the time just how far these aviation professionals were ahead of the pack.