Gustave Whitehead is back in the news. Whitehead (1874-1927), a native of Leutershausen, Bavaria, who immigrated to the United States, probably in 1894, claimed to have made a sustained powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine on August 14, 1901, two years before the Wright brothers. He further claimed that he had made additional flights of two and seven miles in January 1902. The standard arguments in favor of Whitehead’s flight claims were first put forward in a book published in 1937, and have been restated many times, most recently in a controversial website that persuaded the editor of aviation reference annual, Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft to support the claims. The evidence in the Whitehead case includes questionable news articles, much testimony both for and against the claims, and a supposed photograph of Whitehead’s Number 22 machine in the air, which, if it ever existed, has not been seen since 1906. Supporters of the claims have been arguing in favor of Whitehead for many years, while the critics, like me, have been vigorously refuting their evidence. I believe that the time has come to move beyond the confusing mass of contradictory detail, rising out of the trees to gain a view of the forest and reach a rational conclusion. Why do I reject the Whitehead claims? Consider this sequence of events.
Why was Whitehead no longer flying Numbers 21, 22, or a more developed version of the configuration in which he claimed to have enjoyed such success? Why did Whitehead abandon a configuration that he claimed had enabled him to make flights of up to seven miles, in favor of returning to a design that was now eight years old and obsolete? Why did Whitehead not call the attention of the readers of the Scientific American to his claim to have flown a very different powered machine over considerable distances less than two years before?
Over the next decade, as aviators in American and Europe took to the sky following the pattern established by the Wright brothers, Whitehead would continue to build aircraft for other enthusiasts. Not one of those powered machines ever left the ground. My conclusion--either Whitehead had somehow forgotten the secrets of flight, or he had never flown a powered machine at all.
In its issue of December 26, 1903, just three months after Scientific American had reported Whitehead’s experiments with an obsolete hang glider, the journal noted that the brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright had made some “successful experiments” with a powered flying machine operating under the complete control of a pilot. Unlike Whitehead, who had kept virtually no record his experiments, the Wrights had documented their work in detailed, notebooks, letters, and photographs, including what is arguably the most famous photograph ever taken.
I rest my case. Tom Crouch is a senior curator in the Aeronautics Department at the National Air and Space Museum.
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