Hubert Latham

Arthur Charles Hubert Latham

Flying school Antoinette's rudimentary 'flight simulator' at Châlons. This method of flight training was mimicked quite accurately in the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines In early 1909, the Antoinette company worked with the French Army at Camp Châlons near Mourmelon-le-Grand to establish the first military aircraft trials, a flight school and a workshop. The school, run by Levavasseur's brother-in-law Charles Wachter, included the Antoinette Trainer a rudimentary flight simulator that comprised a half-barrel mounted on a universal joint, with flight controls, pulleys, and stub-wings (poles) to allow the trainee to maintain balance while instructors applied external forces.

American sojourn While attending the Baltimore Air Show in the United States in November 1910, Latham took part in special demonstrations for spectators drawn from US government and army representatives to display the capabilities of aircraft for waging war on land and at sea. During one simulated bomb-dropping exercise using bags of flour instead of high explosives, he was rated as scoring a bullseye by dropping one down the funnel of a battleship.

In Los Angeles in December 1910, while Latham was participating in an aviation meet, he was asked by one of the wealthier citizens of the city if he would consider coming to his estate to try to shoot wild duck in the air from his aeroplane. Latham agreed and shot two with a borrowed shotgun and thus became the first person to hunt wild fowl from an aeroplane. Again, Levavasseur had reason to be pleased over yet another demonstration of his aircraft's stability. Latham had one of the ducks stuffed and it is still displayed at the Château de Maillebois. However, in one anonymous contemporary newspaper article which appeared in 1914, it was claimed that the adjutant-commandant of a French Colonial Army fort located just outside Fort Archambault, who retrieved his body after his death, had found that Latham had sustained a single head wound and saw no marks on or around Latham's body consistent with a rampaging buffalo. The writer claimed that the commandant believed, based on the physical evidence and on the conflicting reports of the porters under questioning, that it was possible Latham had been murdered by one or more of his porters, perhaps in order to steal his rifles, but was unable to prove it. on top of Cap Blanc-Nez between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer.