Building the MythThe Ultimate Lie
In 1975, NASA produced From Kites to Wings, a 4-minute 31-second documentary. (btm-02) This film is of particular significance. When Rogallo claimed he invented the modern hang glider shown in the NASA film, he knew he was lying and deceiving the world. Eleven years earlier, Rogallo had been alerted that John Dickenson was flying a modern hang glider of Dickenson’s own design. He was sent a newspaper clipping, with photos, of Dickenson’s glider flying at the Jacaranda Festival in Grafton. After contacting Dickenson, Dickenson sent him 12 pages of plans and instructions. They described minutely the very glider that Rogallo now claimed as his own.
By 1975, NASA should have been aware of John Dickenson’s crucial role in the invention of the modern hang glider. If they were not, they were incompetent. If they did, they lied and deceived the world just like Rogallo did. They certainly knew that the Rogallos inventions came to nothing. They had to know that Rogallo had not invented the rigid-framed bi-conical parawings. They supported the myth that the modern hang glider was Rogallo’s and NASA’s legacy, as they had nothing to show for the millions of dollars spent in the 1960s on their parawing and parasail research.
The film was widely circulated. Ken de Russy reports: “This is one of several films I showed throughout all of the 1970s at a free weekly ground class. We must have watched it hundreds of times. It likely served as a primary source of what influenced us and formed our view. As an older man, Rogallo seemed so modest and serious. He HAD to be honest in his accounting. I can understand the scriptwriter/narrator for their fabricated ‘artistic license’, but Rogallo, with his lips, is making a definitive claim here. Listening to those words that spoke to me for so long, realising that he knew full well who invented the wing that he was flying… It really offended me that he baldly lied to us with his sweet, innocent face, and humbly took credit for the device that changed the world.”
The documentary starts with a modern hang glider taking off from a ridge and landing on a beach. It looks like Torrey pines, California. Then, Rogallo is shown hooking in and ground-skimming down Jockey Ridge dune in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A few of his flights are shown from different angles. It also shows other gliders flying.
Voiceover – “Today, sports enthusiasts around the world call it hang gliding. This is the man who is responsible for co-inventing the specially designed wing that is making hang gliding a rapidly growing sport: sixty-three-year-old Francis M. Rogallo, now retired from NASA Langley Research Centre in Langley, Virginia. He and his wife Gertrude, who co-invented the wing, live in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Rogallo enjoys flying a couple of times a week from what has been called the highest sand dune on the East Coast, Jockey Ridge.”
Francis Rogallo – I’m coming down. Go up… and land.
Voiceover – “And what is it like to hang glide?”
Francis Rogallo – With a hang glider, as with other aircraft, you have freedom of up and down, direction as well as the others, and getting your feet off the ground and being lifted by the air is a new experience.
Voiceover – “For Rogallo, the renewed interest as represented in hang gliding takes a particular significance. The big kite represents more than two decades of research, much of it on his own time. In 1963, he and his wife Gertrude received one of the highest cash awards ever given for an invention.”
Francis Rogallo – The invention was not an accident at all, it was a purposeful search for a kind of wing that would be less expensive, more rugged, more practical than the conventional kind of wing. And we studied everything along that line that had already been, like boat sails, windmills, parachutes and air flying wings, before coming up with this design.
The last minute of the documentary displays different parawings and parasails before the final shot shows a modern hang glider at Torrey pines.
Voiceover “Experimenting with small gliders and kites, their good performing completely flexible wings finally evolved in 1948. Ten years later, NASA was searching for devices that could be used to bring astronauts and their spacecraft to a safe landing on Earth. Early versions had many names: paragliders, parawings, gliding parachutes, and flexible wings. The basic design seen in all these can be seen in most hang gliders flying today. Intensive testing ranged all the way from a small wind tunnel model to a full-scale flight test, complete with man and spacecraft attached. While the Rogallo Wing, as it is known by many, has limited applications, Rogallo himself is optimistic that the new interest generated by some 20,000 fliers worldwide will produce other uses in the future.”