• Manned-flight and Kaua’i
Manned-flight and Kaua’i
Today is the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk on the coast of North Carolina. The brothers’ short machine-powered soar over the sand dunes there is credited with being the beginning of manned-flight.
Ten years later airplanes began to take off from the grassy and sandy fields of Kaua’i. Barnstormer Tom Gunn provided a thrill for all with his rides over Koloa, and served as a view of a future time when the average person would be able to fly to O’ahu and beyond.
Charlie Fern, the “Mr. Garden Island” who edited and published The Garden Island from the 1920s into the mid-1960s, made a grand arrival by flying over from Kaua’i on what is likely the first trans-Kaua’i Channel air flight. Fern was a military pilot prior to coming to Hawai’i, and the ability to fly surely led to his long life on Kaua’i.
In 1925 the first major news story to come out of Kaua’i in the 20th century spread across the world via the Associated Press when Commander John Rodgers and his seaplane crew made their way to Nawiliwili Harbor. Charlie Fern stayed overnight to tell the story of the first airplane to make it midway across the Pacific, an event that preceded by years Lindberg’s famous trans-Atlantic flight from New York to Paris.
The first trans-Pacific flight, flown by Australian pilots with American pilots along for the ride, fueled up at Barking Sands at Mana for a leg from Kaua’i to Fiji in 1928.
In 1929 G.N. Wilcox, a Kaua’i missionary’s son raised in the days when whalers still anchored off his home at Wai’oli, was aboard the first Inter-Island Air flight from Honolulu to Burns Field outside of Hanapepe town. The flight marked the beginning of regularly-scheduled interisland flights between Honolulu and the Neighbor Islands and made the world of Hawai’i a bit smaller in scale for its people.
By the early 1960s space flight was a reality, and Kaua’i once again played a role in this major advancement in manned flight. At Koke’e a NASA tracking station was built to serve as a command center for globe-circling Mercury and Gemini space flights. Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, pioneer American astronaut Gus Grissom and other members of the space flight crews traveled to Kaua’i to assist their fellow space pilots as they circled the earth in their compact space capsules.
Today ground-based pilots of solar planes launched from the Pacific Missile Range Facility are setting world altitude records for their class of aircraft and providing new scientific expertise in predicting the future of crops, as well as in developing defensive unmanned military weapons capable of taking out ground-launched missiles.
While Kaua’i County’s population is considerably lower than that of O’ahu, Maui County or Hawai’i County, we stand as the island in Hawai’i where pioneering aviation events have been focused. This Kaua’i trait goes back to the days of Captain Cook, who discovered the Hawaiian Islands for the western world when he anchored off the coast of Waimea in 1778.
In helping to nurture manned flight, Kaua’i is one of the locations across the globe being highlighted today during this marking of the Wright Brothers’ centennial of flight. The Island should be proud of our past achievements in this area and that these events have led to the building of a world where flight technology now allows us to easily cross the Kaua’i Channel, the Pacific ocean and beyond aboard jets to destinations that once took months and years to reach, broadening our horizons and allowing us to live much fuller lives.
