In 1908, Wilbur Wright took an airplane that he and his brother Orville constructed to Le Mans, France, for demonstrations before the European aviation community proved the feasibility of the airplane.
Schneider could see the future of flight, even as the airplanes of his time were underpowered and fragile machines crafted by hand.
When Schneider was severely injured in a hydroplane boating accident in 1910, his flying career came to an abrupt end. Though his body was broken, his fortune was intact, and he was determined to remain a benefactor for the burgeoning aviation community.
Schneider was certain that the future of air travel and commerce lay with seaplanes. With so much of the earth’s surface consisting of water and concerned with the lack of dedicated flying fields for land-based airplanes, Schneider believed that seaplanes would become more reliable, have longer ranges, and carry greater payloads than their land-based cousins in the air.
On December 5, 1912, at a meeting and banquet of the Aéro-Club de France in Paris, Jacques Schneider announced the creation of the Schneider Trophy for seaplane races
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Besides the static replicas of the Deperdussin, Curtiss, Macchi, and S.6B racers, Thorpe Park was also home to an airworthy replica of Supermarine S.5, RAF serial number N220, the winner of the 1927 races held in Venice, Italy, a replica of a Vickers Viking amphibious flying boat, and numerous airworthy and static replicas of WWI fighter aircraft.
The WWI aircraft consisted of two Airco DH.2s, one Albatros D.Va, one Bristol M.1C, two Fokker Dr.I triplanes, three Fokker D.VIIs, one Hansa-Brandenburg W.29 two-seat floatplane, two Sopwith Camels, one Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter, one Sopwith Triplane, one Sopwith Baby, and one Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5a.
Many of these depicted the aircraft flown by famous aces of the First World War, such as Manfred von Richthofen, Arthur Roy Brown (the Canadian ace officially credited by the RAF of shooting down von Richthofen), Raymond Collishaw, Hermann Göring, Ernst Udet, and others. when Thorpe Park re-evaluated the space the exhibits occupied and decided it would be better instead for them to remove the WWI aerodrome in place of new rides and attractions for a younger audience.
By the mid to late 1980s, the aircraft were sold off, and the Deperdussin, the Curtiss R3C-2, the Macchi M.39, and the Supermarine S.6B, were bought by the founder of the Chino Planes Of Fame museum, who intended these and other aircraft to be displayed in a new museum in Reno, dedicated to air racing.
