Unfamous Aviation Seconds

As far as aviation milestones are concerned, it's pretty much the same deal. Chuck Yeager was first to bust the sound barrier (aka Mach 1), but who was second? And what was the second supersonic plane? Chances are you don't know---we didn't. Even more than that, it's often really hard to find out who those unfamous seconds were. So, here, we salute those who came in second in the race to immortality.

What was the first plane to fly? Duh. The Wright Flyer, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on Dec. 17, 1903. And to be honest, the second plane to fly was kind of a rerun. The Wright Flyer II first took flight in 1904 in Huffman Prairie, near Dayton, Ohio. It was just months after the brothers' first successful foray into the wild blue in Kitty Hawk. The new plane, made mostly of pine instead of spruce, wasn't much of an improvement, though its more powerful engine was a welcome addition. Still, with 200 pounds of extra weight and a less-efficient wing, the Flyer II made clear that the Wrights were still learning the most basic elements of aerodynamics and materials in their quest for a great flying airplane. The first successful plane not built by the Wrights is a much harder call to make. There are arguments that the New Zealander Richard Pearse flew second. Some say his flights preceded the Wrights. And experimenters in France and Denmark made short hops. But without much debate, the second successful airplane (if not the first really successful one) was Alberto Santos-Dumont's 14-bis, which first flew in September of 1906. The plane was an oddly configured mishmash of shapes and angles, but it flew pretty well. It could, in fact, take off on its own gear and fly for what were then considered great distances.

You probably know the answer to this one; the first to fly was Orville Wright. The second to take to the air was his brother and the co-inventor of the airplane, Wilbur Wright. Wilbur would've been the first to the air, on Dec. 14, 1903, but on that first flight attempt, he stalled the plane and crashed it. After repairs, the brothers tried their luck again on Dec. 17, and this time it was Orville's turn. His 120-foot-long hop is the most famous flight ever. Soon thereafter, it was Wilbur's turn again, and he made the record-setting longest flight, of 175 feet, though that record only stood for an hour or so.

We tried but couldn't find out who that unfamous second pilot was. One would think that as celebrated as Louis Blériot became for accomplishing the feat of being the first to fly the English Channel, the second person to do so would be at least a little famous for being second to accomplish it. But if that achievement is noted anywhere in the records, we've been unable to track it down. This speaks to the emphasis that we place on being first and the speed at which we lose interest in the feat once someone has accomplished it.

This one gets to the heart of why records can be so hard to wrap one's head around. What is the record? What are the requirements and limitations and restrictions? Technically, Charles Lindbergh wasn't the first to cross the Atlantic. Not even close. Before he made his famous crossing in 1927, which mesmerized the world, around 80 others had made the crossing by air, some of them admittedly in groups of aviators and/or in multiple aircraft. He was the first to fly solo and nonstop in a fixed-wing aircraft across the Atlantic, which he did on May 12, 1927. The second person to accomplish that same feat was none other than Amelia Earhart, who pulled it off on May 20, 1932.

If you believe the official tale that Chuck Yeager was the first to break the speed of sound, which is very likely but not certain, then who came next? Yeager did. Again and again and again. The second person to achieve supersonic flight was James Thomas Fitzgerald Jr., who was also flying the X-1. You've likely never heard of him. Fitzgerald was killed in a landing accident of a T-33, a relatively tame jet trainer.

In terms of aircraft, the second plane to go supersonic was the Douglas Skyrocket. While the Skyrocket, initially conceived as a rocket/jet engine hybrid, was second to go supersonic, it was the first to hit Mach 2, which it did with famed experimental test pilot Scott Crossfield at the controls during a flight in 1953. The plane was also intended at some point to go hypersonic, but the Air Force decided to focus on another plane, the X-15, which ultimately became the fastest atmospheric, powered aircraft ever.

Again, this is a tough one, but for more complicated reasons than the English Channel crossing record is. That's at least in part due to how the definition of circumnavigating the globe has changed. The problem is, it's not easy to define what it is to circumnavigate the globe. Would doing one turn about a point around the True North Pole count as a circumnavigation? Clearly not. But how far from the equator would the flight have to be in order to qualify? Plus, it's not clear how much help one can get. Further complicating the process is that there seems to be a need for a time limit. Plus, the political realities of the process are very real. The list of countries whose airspace one needs to pass through and/or land in to get around the globe is not long, and over the years many have been openly hostile to foreigners. So, who was second to circumnavigate the globe after Wiley Post, the American pilot who took a little over a week to accomplish the feat? Well, it could be Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith---that is, if he wasn't first to do it, as many discount Post's record because he didn't cross the equator at some point along the way.

The first person in space was Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who was aboard Vostok 1 when it entered space on April 12, 1961. We fully expected the second in space to be some Soviet Cosmonaut we had never heard of before, but, unlike many unfamous seconds, the second person is space was as famous as the first. He was Alan Shepard, whose fame was helped more than a little by being the first American in space at a time when America was working hard to win back the glory from a Soviet space program that had gotten into space first. Shepard's flight came less than a month after Gagarin's famous first.

This one is probably the easiest. After Neil Armstrong took his one small step, Buzz Aldrin was the next out of the Lunar Module, less than 10 minutes after Armstrong.

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