Radiolab - Loop the Loop

Episode Date: September 20, 2011

For most of human history, flight was an impossible dream. In this short, the dizzying rise and fall of a pilot whose aeronautic feats changed aviation forever and turned chancy stunts into acrobatic mastery.

Wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab. Sharks! From W. N.Y.

C. See? Yes. And NPR. Okay. See it out. Say it out. Good.

Hey, I'm Chad Aboomerad. And I'm Robert Kroller. This is Radio Lab. The podcast. Lake and V.T. Thought it was a... Oh, I'll start. Today on the podcast, we start off just for kicks in New York City.

Lincoln Beach, he thought it was a dream. Harlem with, let's see. I'm Paige Capote. One. Trinise Jones. My name is Catherine Martine and I go to school and see us 200. Three girls. Doing a little jump rope chant.

Lincoln Beach, he thought it was a drink to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. He thought he got to heaven, but he went to. Lincoln Beach, he thought it was a dream. So this is a story actually about the guy. at the center of this chant. The guy who's being jump-roped about. Names Lincoln Beachy, and he's...

Someone I heard about from a friend of mine. Hello. My name is Sam Kean, and I'm a writer. And then we met this guy. Hey, hey. My name is Frank Marrero. And together, they told us a story of the most famous man

you've never heard of. Lincoln Beach. What can you tell us about Lincoln Beachie the early years? He was, you know, he was born here in San Francisco. Kind of a short kid, sort of lonely, kind of chubby, emotional. You know, he wasn't exactly a popular kid, not someone you'd peg as a hero. But he was fearless. For instance, when he was about 10, this would be 1897, he was really into bicycles.

And apparently he would launch himself off Fillmore Hill, which is, you know, if you've seen the streets of San Francisco and seen cars flying through the air, that's those kind of hills without breaks. Because what he really wanted to do, even as a little kid, is he wanted to fly. Yeah. And when Lincoln was 18 years old, he met one of the pioneers of the dirigible. And he got this young guy, Lincoln Beachy, to be his derigible pilot. What is a dirigible? It's a big floating sack of hot air. That's a basic idea. Okay.

Sim says you could steer this thing, sort of, because it was kind of an early blimp. Yeah. But for Beechy, it just wasn't enough. He wanted to fly in a plane. planes were the future. Keep in mind, this was early 1900s. Less than 10 years after the Wright brothers flew their first flight. Planes were pretty primitive.

Basically like a flying bicycle. Even so, people were getting really excited about aviation, so they were going to air shows. They had every kind of flying machine that did and didn't work. And Beachy, he tracked down the guy who put together most of the really big air shows. He says, hey, you know, I'm Lincoln Beachy. You know, I'm like, you know, really popular and cool and everything. and I'll be glad to fly for you.

And he said, no, I don't think so. We don't need another pilot. But Beachy says, how about do you need a good mechanic? And so he got on as a mechanic. I have heard stories that he would sleep in a tent near the plane factory, and he would actually get up at dawn and sort of sneak into these planes so he could fly them before other people were around. And his big break came at a show in L.A.

When one of the big time show pilots goes up gets injured, and the organizer's like, uh-oh. Who are we going to get to show the rest of the planes? And Beechi says, oh, I'll do it. So they sent poor Beechi up in this plane, and he got up to about 3,000 feet, and the motor stopped. Stop?

Stop, as in no going. So there he is 3,000 feet in the air. The plane naturally starts to drop. Down, down. And it's not just dropping. It's spinning. Because when you stall, always one wing stall, first and that throws you into a spin.

No one has ever gotten out of this. In 1910, one in three flights ended in disaster because nobody had figured out how to get out of the deadly spiral. Because whenever this happened, the pilot would try to do sensible things like turn the plane the opposite direction of the spiral.

Makes it worse. Or try to pull up. Makes it way worse. But Lincoln Beachy in a split second decides to do something totally odd. He realized what he was going to have to do is dive into it. In other words, turn into the spin and down. It's kind of like running down a mountain rocky path and tripping, and instead of putting

your hands out, you put your hands behind your back and smile. You do not want to do what you think. You don't want to do that, of course. He came right of it. Wait, he came right out of it. I mean he landed the plane? Yeah. When you dive into the spin, when you do the absolute worst thing you can think of,

Then all the controls come back. So suddenly the plane just stopped spinning? And he was able to land? He just pulled, he just curls out of it, pulls out, and it lands and floats it down. And he said, I suddenly could feel the airplane. As though it was part of his body. And from that moment forward, aviation was never the same. He went bananas.

When you go see an aerobatic show and you see them do all these fancy thises and thats, He invented them, the figure eight, the vertical drop, the dip of death. He was the first person to point his plane straight down and achieve terminal velocity. At the time, medical science said if you achieve terminal velocity, you would die from fear. He would dive out of the sky from thousands of feet, spinning at the ground, and at the last second, pull up and pick up a handkerchief with his winged. No. No way. Oh, yes. He invented aerobatics.

Pick up a handkerchief with his wingt? From where? The ground? That's crap. There's no way. There's no way he did that. Well, we never know for sure because these things are wrapped within legends within legends. Clearly. But a lot of people saw wonderful things happen. Everybody unrecognized that this was nascent. This was new.

The population in the United States was about 90 million then. 17 million people saw him that one year alone. He was a pretty big. deal. He had a girlfriend in every major American city. I talked to people who watched him by diamond engagement rings by the dozens. He always had one in his vest pocket.

Thomas Edison praised him. Carl Sandberg wrote a poem about him. Railroads changed their schedules to follow him around the country. What? Orville Wright called him the most wonderful aviator anyone has ever seen. People are gaga. And most gaga of all

are pilots. So many people dying, imitating him, the city of San Diego considered doing an injunction, a legal injunction to bar him from flying. But for Beechi, nothing could stop him, for a while at least. Nothing could stop him until he mastered this one particular trick, the trick of all tricks. Loop the loop. Yeah. What is that?

Basically, it's like a corkscrew maneuver. Like on a roller coaster? Yeah, exactly like a roller coaster. Where you go level, then you go upside down, you come back going the same way. difficult thing to do. Humans aren't evolved to fly. It's very easy to lose your equilibrium to get screwed up on what's up, what's down. Plus, if you turn your plane upside down on these old planes, the motor would go off. Why would the motor go off? Because they hadn't figured out fluid mechanics of pumping the gas up into it. It all fell. It was by gravity. Still, Beach, he thinks, I'm going to do

this thing. Can't stop me. But one day he's on a train. He's going to speak at the Olympic Club. and Charlie Walsh's wife Now Charlie Walsh is one of his dear friends He had just died two days before Trying to do a beeche As dozens did Meaning trying to Do a trick that Beechi did

It's called doing a beechy And so Charlie Walsh's wife sees him Changing trains And she crashes against him And you killed Charlie He's in the baggage car in a coffin It really got to him And it started him thinking

About all the people who had died trying to imitate him. At one point, he said he felt like he had murdered some of these people. That's how hard he took this. And at that point, he decided he couldn't go on with it. He decided he had to retire. So he arrives at the Olympic Club, and as everyone's cheering, steps up to the podium.

Comes up and says, you could not make me enter a plane again at the point of a revolver. I'm done. That's really what he said? That's really what he said. Wow. But he added a kind of parting thought. I am tormented with the design.

to loop the loop in the air. I know I can do it, but I know no one else can do it. And I know that if I ever go up into the air again, I will pull off this loop the loop, and then many men will be taken by death in trying to do the same thing, because I have done it. So he retires

for three months. That's not exactly quitting. Here's the thing. During those three months, the unthinkable happens. Somebody else does the loop to loop for the first time. Some Frenchman. He couldn't stand that someone else had loop the loop before him,

and he decided he was going to be the best looper in the world. And it took him a few months of practice. But he did it. He eventually outdid the Frenchman, and he would start pulling four, five, six loops in a row. Again and again, and again. When he finally did the loop-to-loop, I want to read you what he wrote. The silent reaper of souls and I shook hands that day.

Thousands of times we have engaged in a race among the clouds, plunging headlong into breathless flight, diving and circling with awful speed through ethereal space. And many times when the dazzling sunlight has blinded my eyes and sudden darkness has numbed all my senses, I have imagined him close at my heels. On such occasions I have defied him, but in so doing have exhumed.

experienced fright, which I cannot explain. Today, the old fellow and I are pals. Suffer me for a second while I wax philosophical. Do it. Something happened in the psyche of humanity. You've got to realize, for 100,000 years, millions upon millions of people have wanted to fly. And Frank believes that when people saw Beachy loop the loop so many times, so effortlessly,

it was a turning point. If you could do that, you were free in the air. We were no longer just managing to fly now. We own the sky. 1915, the World's Fair is going to be held that year in San Francisco, California, which is Beachy's hometown. Now, at the time, he was working on a monoplane, a single-wing airplane. It was a brand new thing. It hadn't been tested. But the fair officials had seen it, and they said, oh, would you show, would you fly us your new one?

He said, sure. So? March 14. Beachy takes this thing up for its very first flight. Some people say they're up to a quarter million people at the expo and most of them were watching him. So he goes up above Alcatraz and 3,000 feet above Alcatraz and starts diving. And that structural, metallurgical smarts hadn't been developed enough yet on single wing airplanes and they both of his wings cracked back.

Someone said it sounded like a ship mass just. snapping, cracking right in half. He fell 3,000 feet. They estimated him going at 250 miles an hour and hit the water right at the foot of Fillmore Hill. When a doctor looked at him later, he actually only had a broken leg from the impact. But what got him was he was strapped in pretty tightly,

and no matter how hard he struggled, he could not get out of the straps. Plain had him wrapped in so tight. It just drug him down to the bottom, and he drowned in the bottom of San Francisco Bay. After that show... For 24 hours straight... You couldn't make a phone call in San Francisco. Because so many people were calling in and out with news and rumors about what had happened to Lincoln Beachy.

So he took down the entire San Francisco phone system. So why has he been erased from the common historical memory? I mean, you hear about flying aces from World War I, Eddie Rickenbacher, And you hear about Charles Lindbergh, of course, and you hear about Amelia Earhart. Yeah. But you don't hear about Lincoln Beachy. Well, after the war, we had new heroes. And he slipped into obscurity.

Except for one thing. It's a jump rope chant. One, two, three, four. Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream. That, you know, little kids would say. The machine broke down, and down he fell. It went, Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell.

Instead of going to heaven, he went to... Lincoln Beach, he thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down, and down he fell. He thought you got to heaven, but he went to. Lincoln Beach, he thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down he fell. to heaven, but he went to Lincoln Beach. He thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine.

The machine broke down and down. He thought he'd go to heaven, but he went to. Lincoln Beach, she thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down and down. He thought he'd go to heaven, but he went to Lincoln Beach. Thanks to Sam Kean, author of The Dispiring Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the periodic table of elements. And thanks to Frank Moreno.

Marrero, my book is Lincoln Beachy, the man who owned the sky. And thanks to Nick Capodici for being our Lincoln Beachy. And lastly, we want to thank again our jump ropers at CS200 here in Manhattan and this talented group of singers at the LaGuardia School of the Arts. My name is Emma Morcroft.

Kelly F.m. Julia Egan. Mario Nazareno. Ruby Frum. And Ruby wrote and arranged what you're hearing. Lincoln Beachy thought it was a dream to go up to heaven in a flying machine. The machine broke down.

And down he fell. He thought he'd go to heaven, but he went to. Oh, and thank you to Robert Apostle at LaGuardia and Brenda Addison at CS200 for the hookups. And if you are at all tantalized by the idea of a loop. Well, we have a whole hour-long segment coming up next in our next podcast, all about loops. Loopy math, loopy biology, loopy neurology. Loopy jokes. Coming your way.

I'm Chad I boom-rod. I'm Robert Kovitch. Thanks for listening. Message. Hey, I'm just going to read for the credits. This is Dallas from Dallas. That's really my name, and that's really where I'm from. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation,

enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www. Excuse me, more information about Sloan at www.s.org. And this is me mentioning that I'm a radio lab listener. Bye. End of message.