The First Flight
Image credit: Library of Congress

The 1903 Flyer after its last flight
Image credit: Library of Congress

What happened to the first airplane?

The original 1903 Flyer had a very short flying career—five attempts at flight, four of them successful. Following the triumphant flights of December 17, 1903, the Flyer was completely destroyed by a gust of wind. Though the Wright brothers usually destroyed or abandoned their aircraft, they kept the wrecked Flyer, crating it up and carrying it back to Ohio.

The Flyer was uncrated thirteen years later, and rebuilt. The broken and missing pieces were replaced and only partially documented. The machine which had existed in 1903 was never again complete. Since the Wrights made no drawings of the Flyer, its exact design has remained a mystery.

The Flyer has had a long second career as a curiosity and museum piece. At the center of a fued between the Orville Wright and the Smithsonian Institution, it spent a quarter century exiled in England. It came back to the United Stated in 1948, and has been on display ever since. This October, it will form the centerpiece of an exhibit The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age at the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.

For a history of the Flyer and its long career as a symbol of the Wright brothers, visit In Depth: The 1903 Flyer, part I.