EAA Wright Flyer Retired

EAA's 1903 Wright Flyer was installed as the centerpiece of the "Heroes of the Sky" exhibit at The Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan, on Friday morning, March 19. Edsel Ford II of Ford Motor Company presented museum president Steve Hamp with the same airworthiness certificate that EAA President Tom Poberezny transferred to Ford at the national Centennial of Flight celebration last December in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

"We've come a long way in aviation, and some of the most important steps are on display here," Ford said. "But the most important step of all, the very first step in powered flight, is being added to this wonderful museum today. This is a true reproduction of the Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer that successfully recreated history twice at Kitty Hawk, where the Wrights flew 100 years ago.

The airplane's installment here fulfills Henry Ford's dream, which he expressed in a 1943 letter to Orville Wright: "We are still hoping that one day the plane with which you originated this great new course of history will come home to the United States. I think you know how warmly and reverently we would welcome it to a shrine at Dearborn..."

"Finally and, perhaps, appropriately, the original Flyer came to rest in our nation's museum, the Smithsonian," Ford explained. "Sometimes you don't get what you wish for in life. Sometimes you get something better."

The original airplane was damaged in a flood, crashed twice, and was repaired, so it was not what it was on December 17, 1903. EAA's Wright Flyer is a far more accurate representation of the original plans than is the repaired and modified one that hangs at the Smithsonian.

"Coming to this museum is like coming home," said Amanda Wright Lane, great grandniece of the Wright brothers and a featured presenter throughout EAA's Countdown to Kitty Hawk national tour in 2003. "Three family treasures are now here." The Henry Ford's Greenfield Village has the Wright family home and the Wright Cycle Shop, which were meticulously moved from Dayton, Ohio to Michigan.

"The walls at #7 Hawthorne St. and the Wright Cycle Shop are also home to an invention that profoundly changed our world," she added.

With EAA's 1903 Wright Flyer, Ford's trilogy tribute to the Wrights is now complete.

FMI: www.eaa.org