Mabel Beck was worried about the 1903 Flyer. When World War II broke out and London was bombed, Mabel was alarmed that the Flyer might be destroyed. Orville sat down and explained the strategy of the German Luftwaffe. He said it was simple. The French had surrendered and the British would surely follow suit. But first the British must be taught a lesson. For the first time in modern warfare, a populace was being bombed from the skies. Incendiary bombs fell from the open cargo holds of German bombers. This was novel. The airplane made civilian populations an easy target. Before, the best an army could do was to lob shells into a city. Now hell could rain down from the skies, and there was only one place to escape: underground.

The London subway system, the Tube, was filled with people cowering from aeronautical terror. The British were stoic and Winston Churchill had said they would never surrender, but this was nothing anyone had experienced before. The bombs killed people in their sleep and didn't discriminate between old people, middle-aged people, children, dogs, or cats. These were dumb bombs, iron tanks of high explosives that rained down with no precision. You couldn't miss. The German pilots looked down, and all they saw were the buildings of London. What an advantage—and only the British Royal Air Force (RAF) was there to stop them.

The army moved the 1903 Flyer one hundred miles out of London, into underground storage near the town of Corsham. The Luftwaffe was bombing every night. The pilots, high above in the night sky, used radar to hone in on London and let their bombs go. They used their rudders and their ailerons and throttled up their engines and their elevator flaps. The Germans didn't have any idea that below them and deep underground was the reason they were able to fly through the night and drop five-hundred-pound bombs on the city. They used the very controls that were encased in the crates marked 1903 WRIGHT FLYER.

It had been thirty-seven years since Orville had lifted off for the first twelve seconds and then came back to Earth. Thirty-seven years since Wilbur flew for 59 seconds and then landed back on the sand. If this Flyer had not existed, would the planes be trying to destroy it from above?

Mabel had inquired as to what precautions were taken to protect the Flyer. People had gone down below to check on the wooden crates. They were soldiers, government officials, and museum officials. They wanted to make sure the 1903 Flyer was fine. It had been moved, and would stay where it was until the Germans gave up their bombing attack on Britain. It was hard to say when that would be. They didn't dare think it would end. That would be too optimistic. But, at the same time, they could not risk a piece of world history by moving it. Even if that piece of history was now trying to blow everything to kingdom come. No. They would wait until the war ended. They would wait until that piece of history could go back to America.

Ms. Beck did not feel good about the British assurances, but there was nothing she could do. All her life, men had tried to tell her what to do, and Ms. Beck would rap them across the knuckles every chance she got. Orville had quietly altered his will and stipulated that “the 1903 airplane should remain in London after his death unless the will was amended by a subsequent letter from him indicating a change of heart.”1 All the betting money was on Mabel Beck as the woman most likely to possess such a letter if it had ever been written.