page_title: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines
section_title: Aircraft
hierarchical_section_title: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines / Aircraft
caption_attribution_description: English: Alberto Santos Dumont flying the Demoiselle over Paris
context_page_description: Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines; Or, How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes is a 1965 British period comedy film featuring an international ensemble cast including Stuart Whitman, Sarah Miles, Robert Morley, Terry-Thomas, James Fox, Red Skelton, Benny Hill, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Gert Fröbe and Alberto Sordi. The film, revolving around the craze of early aviation, was directed and co-written by Ken Annakin, with a musical score by Ron Goodwin.
  Based on a screenplay entitled Flying Crazy, the fictional account is set in 1910, when Lord Rawnsley, an English press magnate, offers £10,000 to the winner of the Daily Post air race from London to Paris, to prove that Britain is "number one in the air".
context_section_description: The film includes reproductions of 1910-era aircraft, including a triplane, monoplanes, biplanes and also Horatio Phillips's 20-winged multiplane from 1904. Wheeler insisted on authentic materials but allowed the use of modern engines and modifications necessary to ensure safety. Of 20 types built in 1964 at £5,000 each, six could fly, flown by six stunt pilots and maintained by 14 mechanics. The race take-off scene where seven aircraft are in the air at once included a composite addition of one aircraft. Flying conditions were monitored carefully, with aerial scenes filmed before 10 am or in early evening when the air was least turbulent, as the replicas, true to the originals, were flimsy, and control, especially in the lateral plane, tended to be marginal. When weather conditions were poor, interiors or other incidental sequences were shot instead. Wheeler eventually served not only as the technical adviser but also as the aerial supervisor throughout the production, and, later wrote a comprehensive background account of the film and the replicas that were constructed to portray period aircraft.
  The following competitors were listed:
  Richard Mays: Antoinette IV (Aircraft number 8: flying replica)
  Sir Percy Ware-Armitage: Avro Triplane IV (Aircraft number 12: flying replica)
  Orvil Newton: Bristol Boxkite, nicknamed "The Phoenix Flyer" and inaccurately referred to as a Curtiss (Aircraft number 7: flying replica)
  Lieutenant Parsons: Picat Dubreuil nicknamed "HMS Victory" (Aircraft number 4)
  Harry Popperwell: Dixon Nipper "Little Fiddler" (Aircraft number 5)
  Colonel Manfred von Holstein and Captain Rumpelstoss: Eardley Billing Tractor Biplane (Aircraft number 11: flying replica)
  Mr Wallace: Edwards Rhomboidal (Aircraft number 14)
  Charles Wade: (Aircraft number unknown)
  Mr Yamamoto: Japanese Eardley Billing Tractor Biplane (Aircraft number 1: duplicate flying replica)
  Count Emilio Ponticelli: Philips Multiplane, Passat Ornithopter, Lee-Richards Annular Biplane and Vickers 22 Monoplane (Aircraft number 2: flying replica)
  Henri Monteux: (Aircraft number unknown)
  Pierre Dubois: Santos-Dumont Demoiselle (Aircraft number 9: flying replica)
  Mr Mac Dougall: Blackburn Monoplane nicknamed "Wake up Scotland" (Aircraft number 6: original vintage aircraft)
  Harry Walton (no number assigned).
  While each aircraft was an accurate reproduction, some "impersonated" other types. For instance, The Phoenix Flyer was a Bristol Boxkite built by F.G. Miles Engineering Co. at Ford, Sussex, representing a Curtiss biplane of 1910 vintage. Annakin had apparently expressed a desire to have a Wright Flyer in the film. The Bristol (a British derivative of the French 1909 Farman biplane) was chosen instead, because it shared a common general layout with a Wright or Curtiss pusher biplane of the era, and had an excellent reputation for tractability. For the impersonation, the replica had "The Phoenix Flyer" painted on its outer rudder surfaces and was also called a "Gruber-Newton Flyer" adding the name of its primary backer to the nomenclature; although the American pilot character, Orvil Newton inaccurately describes his aircraft to Patricia Rawnsley as a "Curtiss with an Anzani engine."
  F. G. Miles, chiefly responsible for its design and manufacture, built the replica Bristol Boxkite with the original standard twin rudder installation and powered the replica with a Rolls-Royce-manufactured version of the 65 hp Continental A65. In the course of testing, Wheeler had a third rudder inserted between the other two (some original Boxkites also had this fitting) to improve directional control, and substituted a more powerful 90 hp Rolls-Royce C90 that still barely delivered the power of the original 50 hp Gnome rotary at the power settings used for the Boxkite. The replica achieved a 45 mph top speed. The Boxkite was tractable, however, and the scene in the film when the aircraft loses a pair of main wheels just after take off but lands smoothly, was repeated 20 times for the cameras. In the penultimate flying scene, a stuntman was carried in the Boxkite's und
caption: Santos-Dumont flying his Demoiselle in Paris, 1907
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