A strong, unpleasant wind was blowing, but that didn’t stop nearly seven thousand residents of Subotica from gathering that Sunday, October 16, 1910, at the City Hippodrome, in the suburbs of Subotica.
All eyes were fixed on a young, thin man and his machine in the middle of the grassy field, tensely awaiting a miracle to unfold before them—one that would go down in history and mark Subotica as one of the cities keeping pace with the technical achievements of the new century.
This is how the Subotica monthly Neven reported the event:
“Everyone knows that one son of a Bunjevac mother has long been occupied with the idea of flying. He has manually built a flying machine, and for several months has been making attempts. Now he has succeeded in taking off, flying several kilometers through the air in one go. On October 16th, he plans to present himself publicly to the citizens of Subotica. Ivan Sarić flew on October 16th at an altitude of 30 meters for about 3 km.”
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The report was documented with two photographs, but unfortunately, newspapers from that period recorded no further details of the event—except that the crowd shouted “Živio!”—leaving future researchers the task of piecing together this great event from fragments.
What is undeniable, however, is that on that windy morning exactly 100 years ago, on the soil of what is today Serbia, a man for the first time lifted off the ground with the help of a flying machine and began to fulfill Icarus’s dream.
Ivan Sarić’s flight is considered the beginning of Serbian aviation.
Ivan Sarić (1876–1966) was ahead of his time in many ways—and quite literally ahead of his contemporaries. His passion was speed: though employed as a civil servant, Sarić first dedicated himself to cycling, then to motorcycle racing, followed by automobile competitions. In every sport, he won medals at competitions across the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to which Subotica then belonged, and beyond.
A car rally took him to Paris in 1909—six years after the Wright brothers’ first flight and one week before the first flight across the English Channel. There, he absorbed the excitement of this new era.
Upon returning to Subotica, Ivan Sarić locked himself in the basement of his house on Braće Radić Street and, using whatever materials were at hand—wood, plywood, fabric, piano wires, according to some sources—built his first airplane.
This first flying machine was damaged after its initial “test flight,” during later landings, so Sarić went on to construct another plane, known as “Sarić-2.” After a few successful attempts, Ivan Sarić gave up on flying after several years. Perhaps it was the technical demands and construction complexity, or the many problems that accompanied the launches of his two airplanes, that led him to return to motorcycling. Still, all his later ventures remained in the shadow of the success of his first flight.
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Source: Politika; Foto: Wikimedia Creative Commons