Brazilian Laurel

Young countries need heroes. Last July a Brazilian general busy crushing a revolution was given pause when one of the rebels, Alberto Santos-Dumont, 59, Brazil's foremost air pioneer, died of arteriosclerosis in the enemy camp, Sao Paulo. The General hurriedly sent word to his federal troops to cease firing for a day, his planes to cease bombing. That day federal planes dropped on the great airman's home proclamations hailing his work, deploring his political affiliations.

By last week Alberto Santos-Dumont, the rebel, was forgotten. The revolution was over and all Brazil went to work to apotheosize Alberto Santos-Dumont, the air hero, in good South American style. In Rio de Janeiro's ancient metropolitan Cathedral, hung with black velvet and flickering with candlelight, the body lay in a huge sarcophagus. In the murk of the nave, 2,000 Brazilians per hour filed slowly past day & night. The day of the funeral was a national holiday. Laurel leaves were strewn solidly on the Avenida Rio Branca for 720 ft., the distance of the hero's first flight. Artillery sounded the body into the grave, a five-minute Brazil-wide silence followed. Sea & land planes flew over in squadrons. At the grave was a great monument topped by a winged figure built by the dead man. All airplane manufacturers were asked to plaque Santos-Dumont's likeness on all new planes. The Brazilian Aero League asked pilots the world over to wear crepe on their wing insignia for one year, keep silence for five minutes during the burial.

U. S. pilots observed no silence. To put crepe on an airplane's wing is against all aviation superstition. Whether or not insular, U. S. airmen never regarded Santos-Dumont as a figure in U. S. aviation. Orville Wright was one of the few who ever met him.

Brazil had been long apotheosizing Alberto Santos-Dumont. First called "Father of Aviation," he presently became throughout South America "first man to fly," despite his own deprecation of the title. "First man to fly" was Frenchman Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, who went up in a captive fire-balloon in October 1783. "First man to fly in a powered heavier-than-air craft" was, as every schoolboy knows, Orville Wright along the beach at Kitty Hawk, N. C. in 1903. Alberto Santos-Dumont first got off the ground with a box-kite type of powered machine in France three years later, rose 20 ft., went 720 ft. in 21 sec. His machine added nothing to plane construction but his cheerful survival of many a crash encouraged European air daring.

Fearless son of a rich Brazil coffee-planter and engineer, he inherited and indulged a mechanical bent. At 10 he drove a Baldwin locomotive in his father's private railway. That year he saw a balloon ascension at a Sao Paulo fair. Sent to Paris at 18 to finish his education, he had his first balloon ascent at 24 with Machuron, designer of Explorer Salomon Auguste Andree's famed balloon. Straightway he began fiddling with lighter-than-air craft, built ten airships of which No 6 won the 100,000-franc Deutsche prize for the first flight around the Eiffel Tower. His airships solved one by one the problems of shrinking & expanding gas, buckling, lateral balance. Then he moved on to heavier-than-air machines. He never hesitated to risk his life on any of his contraptions, crashed all over France with impunity until 1909 when he was badly hurt, decided he had played out his luck. A pre-WTar Paris sight was his baby blimp moored to the balcony of his house whence he stepped into its tiny gondola, sailed down the street. Long a resident of France and a Francophile, he was accused during the War of espionage by the French Government which later apologized and decorated him for Wartime air work. In his last years he evolved a 33-lb. machine to help people walk more quickly & effortlessly, climb mountains with ease.

Having lived chiefly in France since 1890, he sailed at last in December 1928, for Brazil. His return was an heroic but tragic event. The official plane Alberto Santos-Dumont flew forth to greet the hero apropos, fell into a tailspin, drowned all 14 greeters. Alberto Santos-Dumont never recovered from the shock.

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