Peter and the Loop

27 August 1914

Today, when you look at the Nieuport monoplane that Pyotr Nesterov flew upside down to perform history’s first aerial loop on August 27, 1913 (September 9, New Style), it looks like a toy. By now we are used to huge airplanes with rows and rows of seats and long aisles down which flight attendants roll carts of refreshments. Jaded by hermetically sealed and sturdy machines where you can eat, sleep, listen to music and watch movies, it is hard for us to grasp the idea that such a feat was performed using a flimsy-looking, unbelievably tiny contraption with an open-air cockpit. How could that be? It looks like nothing more than an amusement park ride!

But it’s true. One hundred years ago people were flying such contraptions. By today’s standards, these flights were extremely slow and short. When Pyotr Nesterov flew from Kiev to Gatchina (a town outside St. Petersburg), the trip was hailed as an incredible feat. Indeed, if you think about it, in the early twentieth century, every time pilots climbed into tiny airplanes and soared into the sky, they were performing an act of amazing bravery, doing something most people on Earth had never dreamed of. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that in the early days of aviation, pilots across the globe were seen as heroes, as the rock stars of their day, as daredevils. They ascended into the air, zoomed over the earth like birds, and made people proud of what the human race could achieve through reason, ingenuity, and courage.

Even among this courageous breed, Pyotr Nesterov stood out as someone who was constantly pushing boundaries. The young officer was always experimenting, tinkering with his airplane’s design, trying to find new ways of flying. The Russian term for the feat he performed is “мертвая петля,” dead loop, an obvious hint at its danger, as well, perhaps, at the fact that, before the age of fuel-injection, the engine would stall — go dead — when the plane deviated from the horizontal orientation for which it was designed. The maneuver was indeed considered deadly, but it was the general belief in its impossibility that compelled Nesterov to try it. For him, the word “impossible” was an irresistible challenge.

He spent a long time contemplating different ways of performing this feat and making various theoretical calculations. In the end, he came to the conclusion that planes do not care whether they’re right side up or upside down: the air pressure is constant and the plane’s velocity would keep the machine suspended. Nesterov was also sure that centrifugal force would keep the pilot pinned to his seat and prevent him from falling out of the cockpit. The “dead loop” became his obsession.

A publication of the flight school Nesterov attended printed the following rhyme:

Ненавидящий банальность,

Полупризнанный герой,

Бьёт он на оригинальность,

Своею мёртвою петлёй

Hating banality

The half-recognized hero

Is always striving for originality

With his dead loop

Why was Nesterov referred to as a “half-recognized hero”? Was it that half of his fellow students believed in his idea and the others thought he was mad? Or perhaps the point was that he had gained recognition at his school, but not beyond it? In any event, Nesterov himself understood immediately that the lines referred to him and he penned a response:

Коль написано: петля

То, конечно, это я.

Но ручаюсь вам, друзья,

На петлю осмелюсь я.

Одного хочу лишь я,

Свою петлю осуществляя:

Чтобы эта «мертвая петля»

Была бы в воздухе живая.

Не мир хочу я удивить,

Не для забавы иль задора,

А вас хочу лишь убедить,

Что в воздухе везде опора…

Seeing “loop” in poetry,

I at once knew: they mean me.

But I pledge to you, my friends,

That the loop I shall contend.

In the flying of said feat

For the task to be complete:

May the “dead loop” please not die,

But soar living through the sky.

I seek not the world to awe,

Nor enormous crowds to draw.

I just want to show you all

How the air prevents a fall.

It is hard to believe that Nesterov’s daring attempt was actually motivated by a desire to show his friends “how the air prevents a fall,” or, in a slightly more literal translation, how “the air will support you anywhere.” It seems clear that young Nesterov was driven more by an innate, youthful fervor than a desire to demonstrate scientific principle.

Just one year after the appearance of this dialogue in verse, the young pilot’s dream came true. In August 1913, in his hometown of Kiev, Pyotr Nesterov performed a giant back flip with his plane (a Nieuport IV monoplane) — a dead loop. He made sure that the feat was duly recorded for the record books. This record wound up coming in handy when French aviator Adolphe Pégoud performed the loop shortly thereafter and a dispute arose over who had completed it first.*

The new sport of aerobatics was born. At the time, the sport seemed to serve no purpose beyond feeding certain daredevils’ insatiable appetite for adrenalin.

Then, one year later, came World War I.

Of course, at the time, aviation had almost none of the military significance it has today. At first, planes were only used for reconnaissance, and if a pilot was armed at all, it would have been with a revolver. Even the idea of equipping planes with machine guns took a while to catch on. It also was some time before aircraft began to be used to drop bombs.

Meanwhile, the irrepressible Nesterov, who, of course, distinguished himself at the front from the war’s very first days, was itching to improve Russian aviation’s contribution to the war effort. He installed knives on the tail of his flying machine in order to slash at enemy planes and engaged in high-altitude duels with Austrian aces. But this was not enough, and he tried to convince his fellow pilots that aviators could do more to influence the outcome of battles than merely study the terrain below. They could, for example, use their plane to ram enemy planes and, he believed, live to tell the tale.

Alas, Nesterov did not do a good job of demonstrating the safety of this technique. He chased down an Austrian ace who had been a nuisance to Russian troops for several days and rammed his plane. The young Russian hero died in the effort, tossed from his falling plane. This was before the days of parachutes, to say nothing of ejection systems.

So ended the 27-year life of Pyotr Nesterov. He did not live to see planes become tools of deadly destruction, cities laid waste during World War II, atom bombs dropped from airplanes on Japanese cities, or napalm bombardments. In short, he did not survive to witness the horrors that military aviation has brought to humanity. He also never saw the huge passenger liners that carry thousands of people from one end of the earth to the other, nor did he learn of the many benefits airplanes have brought, transporting people and freight, dusting crops, and putting out fires.

For Nesterov, the airplane was but a thrilling amusement, something that allowed him to test his own mettle and fulfill a centuries-old dream of mankind: to ascend into the heavens.

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* Legend has it that, for his extraordinary feat, Nesterov received the reward of 10 days house arrest, for “endangering government property.” Yet when Pégoud flew his loop, the punishment was rescinded. Nesterov was promoted to staff captain and awarded a medal.