Wasn't there a bloke called Coanda who made the first rocket-powered flight in France some time before the Wrights? He discovered soemthing now called the Coanda (or wall-attachment) effect, whereby a moving fluid (in his case, the rocket exhaust) attaches itself to and adjacent flat surface (in his case, the aircraft fuselage). He made a successful take-off and a successful flight, but ... well, there's enough there for you to work it out!

Steve