On December 14 and 15, replicas of the Lilienthal biplane and the 1902 Wright glider flew side-by-side over the sand dunes of Jockey’s Ridge State Park in Nags Head, North Carolina. The flights happened thanks to a remarkable joint effort among the Otto Lilienthal Museum, the German Aerospace Center, and Kitty Hawk Kites.
Otto Lilienthal began his first test flights in 1891 on an artificial hill that he built near Berlin, Germany. He patented more than 25 aeronautical designs, including numerous monoplanes, biplanes, and even ornithopters. More than a century later, the Otto Lilienthal Museum and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) came together to build a replica of the Normalsegelapparat, the normal glider, Lilienthal’s final biplane design. The replica underwent extensive tests to ensure its stability and maneuverability in one of the world’s largest and most advanced wind tunnels, the German-Dutch Wind Tunnel in Emmeloord, Holland. In late July of 2016, Professor Markus Raffel, department head of the Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology at the DLR, traveled to California with the replica glider to perform the first free flights.
The Wright brothers, who pioneered aviation in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, described Lilienthal as “without a doubt our greatest predecessor.” In 1900, Orville and Wilbur Wright began building their Wright glider prototypes using their homemade wind tunnel in Dayton, Ohio. Their third free-flight glider was brought to Kill Devil Hills in 1902 and successfully flew more than 700 times. The Wright glider was the test bed for the brothers’ development of full three-axis control, and was crucial to the world-changing success of their 1903 Flyer. In 2003, the Wright Experience built the first functioning replica of the 1902 Wright Glider for the Discovery of Flight Foundation to celebrate the 100th anniversary of powered flight. The Wright Experience, the Discovery of Flight Foundation, and Kitty Hawk Kites Flight School came together in 2011 to share the legacy of the Wright Brothers with the world by creating the opportunity to fly the replica 1902 Wright Glider at Jockey’s Ridge State Park. Kitty Hawk Kites still offers this one-of-a-kind experience to become one of the few in the world to ever fly this glider just as the Wright brothers did.
The Lilienthal glider was flown by Andrew Beem of Windsports Hang Gliding in Los Angeles, and the 1902 Wright glider was flown by instructors from Kitty Hawk Kites Flight School. The flights were also supported by presentations by Raffel, and by Paul Glenshaw, who was a filmmaker, artist, author, educator, and former executive director of the Discovery of Flight Foundation.