Leonard Warden Bonney
Encyclopedia
Wright brothers
The Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur , were two Americans credited with inventing and building the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight, on December 17, 1903...
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Biography
He was born in Wellington, OhioWellington, Ohio
Wellington is a village in Lorain County, Ohio, United States. The population was 4,511 at the 2000 census.-History:Wellington was settled in 1818 by Ephraim Wilcox, Charles Sweet, William T. Welling, John Clifford, and Joseph Wilson from the states of Massachusetts and New York...
in 1884, possibly as Warden Leonard Bonney. He attended Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
. In 1910 and 1911, he flew for the Wright Exhibition Team
Wright Exhibition Team
The Wright Exhibition Team was a group of early aviators trained by the Wright brothers at Wright Flying School in Montgomery, Alabama in March 1910.-History:The group was formed in 1910 at the suggestion of Augustus Roy Knabenshue....
and was the 47th licensed pilot. In 1912 he worked for the Sloan Airplane Company, and in 1913 he was a test pilot for the Amas Airplane Company, in Washington, DC and by 1918 he was the general manager for the company. In 1914 and 1915 he was a military aviator for the Mexican government under General Carranza. During World War I he became an Army instructor at Garden City, New York
Garden City, New York
Garden City is a village in the town of Hempstead in central Nassau County, New York, in the United States. It was founded by multi-millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart in 1869, and is located on Long Island, to the east of New York City, from mid-town Manhattan, and just south of the town of...
, and a naval instructor at Smith's Point, New York
Smith Point County Park
Smith Point County Park is a park located fronting on the Atlantic Ocean on the east end of Fire Island, New York, United States, in central Long Island by Shirley. It is the largest park owned by Suffolk County, New York....
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In 1925 Bonney married Flora MacDonald. The same year he started designing and constructing in Garden City, New York
Garden City, New York
Garden City is a village in the town of Hempstead in central Nassau County, New York, in the United States. It was founded by multi-millionaire Alexander Turney Stewart in 1869, and is located on Long Island, to the east of New York City, from mid-town Manhattan, and just south of the town of...
a novel plane with duraluminum folding gull-like wings, and a side-by-side cockpit. He called the plane the Bonney Gull.
A 1928 issue of Time magazine described the unusual aircraft:
It was fat in body with graceful curving wings. Bonney followed the bird principle, abandoned the aileronAileronAilerons are hinged flight control surfaces attached to the trailing edge of the wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. The ailerons are used to control the aircraft in roll, which results in a change in heading due to the tilting of the lift vector...
, or balancing contrivance which airplane designers have always considered an essential feature of stability in the air. His plane had new features: an expanding and contracting tail, like a blackbird's, for varying loads; variable camberCamber (aerodynamics)Camber, in aeronautics and aeronautical engineering, is the asymmetry between the top and the bottom surfaces of an aerofoil. An aerofoil that is not cambered is called a symmetric aerofoil...
in the wings, so that they could flatten out like a gull's when flying level; a varying angle of incidenceAngle of incidenceAngle of incidence is a measure of deviation of something from "straight on", for example:* in the approach of a ray to a surface, or* the angle at which the wing or horizontal tail of an airplane is installed on the fuselage, measured relative to the axis of the fuselage.-Optics:In geometric...
to its wings, so that they could turn sideways into the wind on landing...
Bonney was killed May 4, 1928 during the maiden flight of the Bonney Gull when the aircraft nosedived into the ground, seconds after taking off from Curtiss Field, Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
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External links
Further reading
- New York Times; May 5, 1928, Saturday; Curtiss Field, Long Island, May 4, 1928. Leonard W. Bonney, pioneer aviator who learned to fly under Orville Wright in 1910, was fatally injured this afternoon in the first flight he had ever made with his Gull.