jul 25, 1909 - Blériot XI

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Louis Blériot’s unremarkable appearance masked a fine technical mind and a boldly adventurous, even courageous, personality. His Model XI is remembered for having made the first flight across the English Channel, on July 25, 1909—a feat of bravery, skill, and technology. And it had profound strategic implications: Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper proclaimed “England is no longer an island,” and indeed it wasn’t: In less than a decade, German Zeppelins and bombers would appear in its skies, marking the first Battle of Britain. But beyond all this, the Model XI established the tractor “engine in front” monoplane tradition, together with the classic tail-dragger landing gear. Larger, more powerful derivatives of the Blériot were the world’s first successful air exports, and among the first military reconnaissance and bombing airplanes to fly in actual combat. The Blériot signaled that European aviation, moribund after the death of German glider pioneer Otto Lilienthal in 1896, was back—and that the early era of unchallenged supremacy by the Wrights and Glenn Curtiss was at an end. ~ Air and Space Magazine