Monday, April 29, 2024

Roderick D. Davidson and the Confederate Air Force

   Disclaimer: yes, there was an organization called the Confederate Air Force, founded in Texas in 1961. They later changed their name to the Commemorative Air Force. This post has nothing to do with them, but instead covers R.D. Davidson’s plan to build a heavier-than-air craft in 1864. 

Possible 1840s illustration of the Artisavis. 

   The idea of slipping “the surly bonds of Earth and” dancing “the skies on laughter-silvered wings” has been a dream of many for centuries. The conversation could go all the way back to the Greeks and Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. When two French brothers developed a hot-air balloon and flew in it in 1783, the overactive mind of more than a few inventors and dreamers turned toward not only balloons, but heavier-than-air craft that could greatly enhance transportation, and war.[1]

   Roderick D. Davison had a plan. He was going to build an “Artisavis” or “Bird of Air.” The “Artisavis” was, as described by one Confederate soldier, “an artificial bird to go by steam through the air that can carry a man to guide it and a number of shells which can drop on the Yankees as he passes over them which will soon kill and scare them all away.”[2] By late 1863, the Federals knew of his plan. The Army and Navy Gazette, as reprinted in a Kentucky newspapers, described the operation even further. A fleet of a thousand of these machines would be stationed five miles from the enemy’s lines. They were launched, each carrying “a fifty-pound explosive shell, to be dropped from a safe elevation upon the enemy! The Birds are then to return for the purpose of re-loading.”[3] Davison, who worked in the Quartermaster General’s Office in Richmond, believed he could drop 150,000 shells in the course of twelve hours with his fleet of 1,000 “Artisavis.”[4]

   This was not Davidson’s first idea regarding flight. In 1840, he had published Disclosure of the Discovery and Invention, and a Description of the Plan of Construction and Mode of Operation of the Aerostat: Or, A New Mode of Aerostation. The contraption that Davidson proposed was a “Flapping-wing machine” that was patterned after the American eagle.[5]

   Davidson’s new proposal needed funding, and he approached the Confederate government. After being turned down, Davidson went to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia. He began giving lectures and raising funds. An estimated $2,000 was needed to build the first “Artisavis.” By March-April 1865, he had raised $1,500.[6] One newspaper reported that the “Artisavis” was designed “to fly after the yankees and fire off something that is expected to demolish them in a most frightful manner.”[7] A non-flying prototype was constructed in a lumberyard in Petersburg, at the corner of 7th and Main. A strong wind one night wrecked the model.[8]

   Some believed in Davidson’s invention. One soldier in Benning’s brigade wrote that “I was very anxious to see that man stampede the Yankee army.” Another Confederate wrote that there was an “intense excitement and joyous hopes pervading the army that the flying byrd would exterminate every Yankee in front of Petersburg.” Others were not so impressed. A member of DuBose’s brigade, after the brigade had contributed $127 to the project, considered the sum “pretty liberal patronage for a humbug.”[9]

   What became of Davidson? That is a great question. Sources cannot even agree on his first name. Some have Roderick, while others have Richard.[10] He possibly was born in Virginia in 1806 and died in the same place in an almshouse in December 1885 of Bright’s Disease.[11] Whatever became of him, it was certainly a humbling end compared to his lofty aspirations.



[1] “High Flight” by John Gillespie Magee.

[2] Power, Lee’s Miserables, 265.

[3] The Courier-Journal, January 27, 1864.

[4] The Macon Telegraph, February 6, 1864.

[5] Pizor, “The Great Steam Duck,” Technology and Culture, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 86-89.

[6] Powell, Lee’s Miserables, 265.

[7] The Daily Confederate, March 22, 1865.

[8] Hess, In the Trenches of Petersburg, 242.

[9] Hess, In the Trenches of Petersburg, 242.

[10] Hacker,  Astride Two Worlds.

[11] Virginia, U.S. Death Registers, 1853-1911.

1 comment:

  1. Also,
    Dr Robert Finley Hunt [Athens, GA]
    Plans for flying machines submitted to the Bureau contribute an interesting episode to the history of aviation. In July 1863, Dr. R. F. Hunt, of Richmond, presented plans for a steam-powered plane to Colonel Gilmer. Gilmer had Rives and Charles G. Talcott, chief engineer and superintendent of the Richmond and Danville Railroad, examine the plans and report. The “commissioners” considered Hunt’s scheme and sent him the following opinion:
    In our judgment therefore, the project submitted by you – i.e., the successful application of steam to a flying apparatus, capable of lifting and supporting the necessary machinery is visionary, and we are therefore clearly of the opinion that the Government should not authorize any experiments –
    If this famous problem is ever solved, it will, in all probability be by other than steam machinery.
    Rives and Talcott believed Hunt had made serious errors in his physics calculations, had underrated weight of his engine by 50 percent, and had exaggerated its power.
    James L. Nichols, “Confederate Engineer Odd Jobs,” The military Engineer, No, 351, January-February 1961, p. 13-14.

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