Today we’re taking a look at a plane whose story would better suit a satirical comedy
rather than an actual page of history, but fate is a cruel and often sarcastic mistress,
and what follows is indeed a true story: a story of lies, money, more lies, and badly
built planes with wings that fall off at random.
I am of course talking about the infamous Christmas Bullet.
It got its name from the…interesting man who designed it, Dr William Whitney Christmas.
Born in 1865 in North Carolina, he was either one of the greatest conmen of his generation,
or he was one thoroughly misplaced daydreamer.
Despite having no background in aeronautical engineering, or engineering in general for
that matter, he arrived on the scene in the late 1900s, claiming to have designed, built,
and flown his own aircraft in 1908, which would have made him one of America’s pioneering
aviators.
There was just one problem, this supposed plane didn’t exist.
Some sources seem to conflict on the reason for said planes absence, one story goes that
Christmas claimed he burned the aircraft and its design drawings to prevent his ideas from
being stolen, another source claims that the aircraft was destroyed in a flying accident.
Either way, it no longer existed, which meant people could only take Christmas at his word
that he was indeed a qualified aviator.
Apparently, the good Doctor was rather convincing with his tales, as he was able to found the
Christmas Aeroplane Company in 1909 with the help of some investors.
Supposedly that same year he designed and built a biplane that he nicknamed the Red
Bird, this was apparently flown in 1909 but there seems to be questionable, if any, evidence
to support this.
According to him though it was a success, and he was able to give up his career in medicine
to pursue aviation full-time.
Over the next few years, the company changed hands, and investors, multiple times, and
along the way it dodged the occasional lawsuit for deception or even patent infringement.
Things could have gotten messy, but the outbreak of the First World War provided Christmas
with new opportunities to develop and sell his supposedly revolutionary designs.
In 1915 he wrote an article for the New York Times where he claimed to have developed a
new bomber which he dubbed the “battle-cruiser”.
Manned by a crew of six, it was meant to be the heaviest aircraft ever built, and powered
by a 1600 hp engine – which for the time was immensely powerful.
The European allies were apparently so impressed that they had already ordered eleven examples
of the Battle Cruiser by the time of his article printing.
The was just one small, inescapable error in this article: the plane didn’t actually
exist, and I imagine there would have been some incredulous remarks in British and French
aviation circles when a copy of this article finally reached their officers.
Realising that backing up his claims, and actually developing a feasible heavy bomber,
was probably beyond him, Christmas set his sights on a more modest goal: and that was
to build a fast, single seat, biplane, which sounded normal enough…until he began trying
to convince his management – and the Army- that his plane was the perfect tool for a
daring mission to kidnap Kaiser Wilhelm II…I wish I was making this up.
Incredibly, despite having no physical evidence of previous aircraft designs, or any formal
qualifications outside of medicine – and even here some think that might be, uh, somewhat
inflated – Christmas managed to enlist the required help to build his Kaiser kidnapping
contraption.
Firstly, he managed to find a brokerage to invest in his project, secondly, he convinced
the near-bankrupt Continental Aircraft company to build the plane, and thirdly he managed
to convince a Senator to approach the army about securing a powerful engine – which
was a difficult thing to come by during wartime.
For the project to have even made it this far all parties concerned must have been colourblind,
otherwise they could not have missed the sheer quantity of red flags that were presented
with such an endeavour.
Christmas never put his full aircraft specification to paper, but it was so bizarre that it almost
made the workers at Continental Aircraft pull out from the deal, had they not been so desperate
for money.
It was built as an unequal span biplane; however its wings had no struts, nor any wire bracing
to hold them together.
With his “superior” knowledge on aircraft design, Christmas believed that the wings
should be flexible and that they should flap like a bird’s.
The main method of control would be wing-warping, something designed and patented by the Wright
brothers, and indeed a somewhat common sight amongst early aircraft designs, but how this
was expected to work on such unconventional wings was anybody’s guess.
The materials used to construct the plane were not always the types found on aircraft
at the time, and Vincent Burnelli, the Chief Engineer at Continental Aircraft, made multiple
public statements to the fact that he was only involved with the design of the fuselage.
Privately he had grave concerns about the design, the tail surfaces were too small,
the materials used were sub-par, and the wings were so heavy that they had to be winched
in place during construction.
But Christmas ignored his pleas and Burnelli eventually resigned from Continental over
his concerns about the safety of the design in geleral.
By the time everything was finished, the war was over, and as such the Kaiser was no longer
the most ideal target for a political kidnapping, but that did not deter Dr Christmas.
During the later stages of construction, the aircraft had been given the nickname of Bullet…for
whatever reason, and it was given an engine in the form of a US Army Liberty 6.
The army had agreed to fitting the engine to Christmas’s design, but only on the provision
that it be used for ground testing, and that army officials had to be present for the first
flight.
Of course, these words fell on totally deaf ears and Christmas immediately began searching
for a test pilot.
Strangely enough, many were reluctant to get into a plane that had a fuselage built from
hardwood and steel, but had wings that looked about as strong as a piece of damp cardboard,
and it was not until the end of the year that Christmas finally found a gullible enough
pilot to shoe-horn into his plane.
Cuthbert Mills – a pilot with the Air Mail service – took the Christmas Bullet up for
its first – and only – flight.
After climbing for some time, the wings – which were designed to flap like those of a bird
– decided instead to simply break off from the Bullet, and the plane plummeted to the
ground taking Cuthbert Mills to his death.
This accident did not deter Christmas in the slightest, in fact he covered up the whole
thing, and claimed that Mills had successfully completed the test flight.
He immediately began work on a second Christmas Bullet, however he had to source a different
engine as he had not even bothered to tell the Army that a) the plane had failed, or
b) their engine had been destroyed during said failure.
In March 1919, Christmas put the second Bullet on display at the New York Air Show, where
he had the audacity to advertise it as the safest, easiest controlled plane in the world.
It was this safe, easy to control plane, that flew later on in that year, and much like
the first its wings promptly snapped off from the fuselage, and the resulting crash once
again killed another pilot.
After this, there was no more interest from the US army in Christmas’s design surprisingly,
but he also faced no consequences for his duplicitous actions.
Not only that, but he continued to push for the development of his revolutionary design,
even attempting to go before congress and claiming that he was being swamped by orders
from Europe for the bullet, and that his plane was capable of 200mph and more.
Perhaps the most ridiculous part of this story was that he actually got paid by the army,
who had previously agreed to buy his so-called flexible wing design.
In 1923 Christmas sent the army a bill for $100,000 dollars, and the army paid it.
He passed away in 1960, a relatively wealthy man, and the Christmas Bullet would go down
as one of the most ludicrous aircraft in history.