Bill Wittber's 40-yards 1910 hop in monoplane at paddock north of Adelaide claimed as Australia's first flight
Bill Wittber and his Australian-first engine built for his plane to replace Fred Jones' Bleriot XI monoplane (inset) lost in a fire in 1910.
Images courtesy South Australian Aviation Museum, Port Adelaide
The claimed first aeroplane flight in Australia was a 40-yards hop in a Bleriot XI monoplane in a Bolivar paddock, north of South Australia's capital Adelaide, on Sunday, March 13, 1910.
The initial attempts to taxi the Bleriot XI monoplane, brought to Adelaide by businessman Fred Jones, in the paddock, were stopped by bad weather. Later, engineer Carl Wilhelm “Bill” Wittber, who'd assembled the plane for Jones, did the first taxiing trials with various throttle settings.
When Wittber tried 50%- 60% power, the aircraft rose about five feet and travelled for about 40 yards before landing. This Wittber hop was seen by a large crowd and was reported in The South Australian Register as a powered, sustained and controlled flight.
On March 17 at Bolivar, volunteer pilot Fred Custance was at the controls for another flight attempt, as Jones, farmer Albert Winzor and two neighbours watched.
The Register’s (unverified) report was that: “After covering about 18 yards, the machine rose 12 feet in the air, and at this height made a circuit of the paddock thrice, a total distance of about three miles, in five minutes and 25 seconds.
Jones’s own version was that Custance did taxi around the paddock about three times before a first “very wobbly” straightforward flight of about one minute, ending with a “very rough landing”. Against Jones’s wishes, Custance made another attempt to create an Australian record – and crashed the plane.
The damaged aircraft was returned to Adelaide and delivered to Duncan & Fraser for repairs. In May 1910, a fire destroyed the plane but the engine was recovered.
Wittber persevered. From 1911, he designed and built his own plane, even adding his own six-cylinder radial engine – another Australian first.
