The Red Wing's rough day on Keuka Lake

The group left Hammondsport after the morning train arrived and boarded the tug Springstead. They traveled about eight miles down Keuka Lake, looking for ice solid enough for another flight.

Glenn Curtiss described the trip in a letter to Mabel Hubbard Bell dated March 19, 1908. Along the broken ice he noticed gulls, wild ducks, and wild geese. Then the snow turned to rain.

The aircraft had flown from the lake's ice before. In testimony given years later, Alexander Graham Bell recalled a successful flight near Hammondsport on March 12, with F. W. Baldwin as aviator. Officially called Drome No. 1, Selfridge's Red Wing, the machine had sledge runners for its frozen runway.

On the later attempt, rain soaked its cloth covering. Curtiss estimated that the water added roughly fifty pounds. He thought much of the weight had collected behind the center of gravity and might have contributed to the accident. That was his explanation soon after the event, not a cause established by instruments.

Before the flight, a person Curtiss called “Casey” tossed a coin with Thomas Selfridge and took the aviator's seat. The letter does not explain the nickname. Bell's later testimony named F. W. Baldwin as the aviator during the destructive flight; the letter alone does not establish that identification.

Curtiss put the wind at about twelve miles per hour. By his estimates, the Red Wing left the ice within fifty feet, traveled about 125 feet, and rose roughly twenty feet. Wind tilted it, and it came down sideways at an angle. The left half was demolished. The aviator was unhurt.

The accounts disagree on the date. Curtiss's March 19 letter calls the attempt “yesterday.” Bell's 1915 deposition dates the destruction to March 17. Both statements survive, and neither is silently substituted for the other here.

Curtiss wrote that the wreck had taught the group a great deal. Bell later described a specific lesson: the Aerial Experiment Association had put too much faith in the machine's supposed automatic stability. After the accident, the members concentrated on active lateral control.

The letter keeps the day's practical details close at hand: finding usable ice, moving the machine by tug, estimating what the rain had done to its weight. Bell's testimony adds the later account of what the group learned. Together they let us follow the experiment while keeping the differences between the records in view.

Source note

Curtiss's journey, weather, weight estimate, coin toss, flight estimates, damage account, and immediate lesson appear on page 1 of the Library of Congress Letter from Glenn H. Curtiss to Mabel Hubbard Bell, March 19, 1908. The March 12 flight, Lake Keuka setting, Red Wing description, March 17 accident date, identification of F. W. Baldwin, and lateral-stability interpretation appear on transcript pages 203-206 (PDF pages 7-8) of Bell's Library of Congress Deposition, January 15, 1915. This account preserves the differing date statements and reproduces no manuscript image, exhibit, photograph, handwriting, or extended passage.