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shot by Latham during an expedition to the Sudan in 1905. Big game had been Latham’s first love upon graduating from Oxford University in 1904, but in 1908 he witnessed one of Wilbur Wright’s flights at Le Mans and, like Claude Grahame-White, fell in love with the airplane. He bought shares in Gastembide & Mengin, a struggling company set up by a French mechanical engineer called Leon Levavasseur, who had constructed a lightweight monoplane that had crashed in every trial. Latham cut a deal with Levavasseur: “I will try the machine for you and continue flying with it, no matter how often I smash it. If I am killed, all the better—but you must repair it for me.”
    The crashes were frequent in the first few weeks of the partnership, but Latham survived each one, crawling out from under the wreckage with one hand already reaching for his cigarette case. Steadily, Levavasseur ironed out the flaws in his airplane (christened the Antoinette in honor of the wife of Monsieur Gastembide) until, in June 1909, Latham flew fifty miles without a hitch. The following month he’d left France in an attempt to win the $5,000 prize on offer for the first man to fly across the English Channel. Thousands cheered his departure and thousands waited for his arrival, but it was not to be. Six miles off the French coast the airplane’s fifty-horse power engine coughed like a consumptive and died. Latham made a perfect landing on a flat sea, and as the wooden machine bobbed gently up and down, he lit a cigarette and waited for his rescue.

    Latham was one of several aviators whose photograph appeared in the New York Sun on Sunday alongside an article that listed the names of the twenty-six fliers slated to appear at the meet. The paper also gave details of the money on offer: “The cash prizes amount to $72,300 [approximately $1,152,500 today]. The aviators will also receive a percentage of the gate receipts. One special prize of $10,000 is offered for a flight from Belmont Park to the Statue of Liberty and back. Another prize of $5,000 will be awarded to the aviator who reaches or exceeds an altitude of 10,000 feet. Other prizes will be given for duration, distance, speed, cross-country flights and passenger carrying.”
    But the New York Herald , which was owned by Gordon Bennett, * was keen to point out that the Belmont Park event would be more than just a “Show,” a few days of inconsequential entertainment given over to playboys and stuntmen. Much more was at stake, proclaimed the paper in an article headlined NATIONS BATTLE FOR AIR CHAMPIONSHIP:
    “So great is the interest in the secrets that are expected to be revealed that army officers, not only of this government, but of France, England and Germany, will be students of what takes place there. The first practical use of the flying machine being for military purposes, this demonstration of types designed by the greatest constructors in the world will add something like a final word on their relative values.”
    The contingent of American army officers planning to attend at Belmont Park wished they could share the Herald ’s bullishness, but they had encountered too many shortsighted, penny-pinching bureaucrats of late to hold out much hope for the “final word.”
    In February 1910 the New York Times had run an article about the visit to the White House of a delegation of American aviation specialists, including Cortlandt Field Bishop, president of the Aero Club, and Brigadier General James Allen, chief signal officer of the army. Their goal was to persuade President Taft to increase the spending on airplanes and dirigibles, and the paper stood squarely behind them, even going so far as to print the respective aerial strengths of the major powers in the hope of shaming the government into action: “Germany has now in military service 14 dirigibles of six different models and 5 airplanes; France has 7 dirigibles and 29 airplanes; Italy 3 dirigibles and 7 airplanes; Russia 3