Most of the time they were not successful, and some of the designs are among the most misguided in the early history of flight. On one occasion, Blériot and Gabriel Voisin took one of their designs to the Bagatelle, a field in the Bois de Boulogne park in the middle of Paris. The aircraft had a tubular tail and looked like a beer barrel with wings. The aircraft was never tested since it fell apart while it was taxiing to the starting line. this was probably fortunate since it spared Blériot the pain of a crash. But on the same field that afternoon, November 12, 1906, the spectators who had gathered to watch Blériot still managed to witness history in the making, as Alberto Santos-Dumont flew his 14-bis on its historic first flight in Europe, to the  cheers and huzzahs of nearly everyone in the crowd. (Of all the luck!) With nearly all his fortune squandered.

Blériot’s aircraft being attended to by his frantic skeleton crew.

Blériot used a last-minute loan to enter the competition for Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail prize to the first to cross the Channel. It was, he realized, his last chance. Blériot faced stiff competition—men and planes that brought a great deal to the race. One pilot was the popular young aviator Hubert Latham, a sophisticated Frenchman of English ancestry, suave, debonair, and already a record holder for endurance flying.

His airplane was an Antoinette IV, an elegant tractor monoplane (in fact, with both engine and propeller in front) with an effective wing-warping system of control (though Latham was more comfortable with the ailerons with which the Antoinette was usually fitted), and with the Antoinette engine as the power plant. The plane and the engine were the work of a burly red-bearded engineer, Leon Levavasseur. The engine was a water-cooled V-8, meticulously crafted and able to produce 50 horsepower with a power-to-weight ratio of 1 to 4. It was already being widely used by European aviators. It had one fault, however: it had a tendency to cut out.

The other competitor was Count Charles de Lambert the first European trained to fly by the Wrights, who brought two Wright-built airplanes to Sangette, down the coast from Calais and the starting point for the competition. The Wright planes were considered in a class by themselves, the best in the world, but during a test run, de Lambert crashed one of the planes and decided to drop out of the race rather than risk the other plane.

Everything about Latham’s effort was first class—the ground crew, the hangars, the landing site—in marked contrast to Blériot. Blériot’s plane, the Blériot XI, was smaller and less powerful than the Latham craft, used an untested wing-warping system for control, and was barely fully constructed, with no instruments of any kind. To make matters worse, Blériot had been badly burned in a recent racing accident and could barely walk, let alone fly a plane as rickety as the Blériot XI. Worst of all, the engine was a homemade product of a coarse Italian motorcyclist named Alessandro Anzani. It was crude and sputtered hot oil and smoke on the pilot (something the injured Blériot did not need), but it nearly never faltered.

Blériot calculated that its meagre 25 horsepower would be enough if the engine would run for the half-hour he needed. On July 19, Latham took off from Sangette and headed toward Dover. Seven and a half miles out, the engine failed and Latham landed on the sea, smoking a cigarette while he waited to be rescued. On land he shrugged off the failure and declared that he would try again and that he would succeed. The Latham camp did not give Blériot much of a chance, and with de Lambert out of the race, believed they had the field to themselves. The Channel weather remained blustery for the next five days, but on the evening of July 24, the evening was calm and the next day promised to be clear.

Latham went to bed and left instructions that if the weather was good, he was to be awakened at 3:30 A.M. (The flight had to take place in daylight; the Daily Mail was not interested in a night flight, when no photographs could be taken.) But 3:30 came and went, and no one woke Latham up. As the dawn neared, it became obvious that the weather was going to be clear. A car was sent to Calais for Blériot; he had to be coaxed into going (as he was probably fighting off an infection from the burn injury). He finally roused himself, went to the hangar and, after seeing his wife onto a destroyer escort, donned his ridiculous aviator cap and boarded his plane.

Blériot cut the engine and thumped into the field, crushing the landing gear and the propeller. It was only a thirty-seven-minute flight, and in many ways Wilbur Wright had been correct: it did not prove much. But Blériot had done it; he had beaten Latham and had been the first to cross the English Channel.

another shot of the bent 'plane

The effect Blériot’s achievement had on his own fortunes were immense. Orders for his Blériot airplane came pouring in and he was honoured everywhere with parades, banquets, and medals. The effect of the flight on the British was considerable as well. It drove home the point that Britain was vulnerable to attack from the air and that the English Channel would not provide the buffer it had in the past.