“Nobody who has not experienced it for himself can realize it. It is a realization of a dream so many persons have had of floating in the air. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace.”

—Wilbur Wright 1905

1940

Near the Village of Corsham, England

They moved the Flyer one hundred miles out of London and put it in an underground storage facility near the village of Corsham. The Luftwaffe was bombing every night now. The pilots high above in the night sky, using radar to hone in on London, were letting their bombs go. They used their rudders and their ailerons and throttled up their engines and their elevator flaps and didn't have any idea that below them and deep underground was the reason they were able to fly through the night and drop 500-pound bombs on a city. They used the very controls that were encased in the crates marked 1903 WRIGHT FLYER.

The shockwaves passed and maybe dust puffed off the wings. It had been thirty-seven years since Orville had lifted off for the first twelve seconds of flight and then had come back to Earth. Thirty-seven years since Wilbur flew for almost a minute and then landed back on the sand. As the bombs fell on London, it was too risky to try to bring the plane across the ocean again. Besides, Orville Wright didn't want the Flyer to come back to America. Yet.