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.
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| 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.
