Warbird Information Exchange

We got a great write up in the local area paper, the CT Post
http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/Aviation-bible-Whitehead-first-to-fly-4348050.php#photo-4316178

Fox News picked up the story...
http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/03/13/first-in-flight-wright-brothers-flew-2-years-after-gustav-whitehead/

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Andrew King
Air Museum Director with no Museum to Direct
Open to Suggestions

Read the whole thing and still not convinced, I guess I need more than "evidence that a photo existed". Certainly an interesting story though, like a lot of the inventors from that era, some great characters-



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http://www.biplanerides1.com/

Not buying it, Gustave supposedly flew several times over several yrs and no one among the claimed witnesses captured it on film? Then when the Wrights flew he completely abandoned his own flying?

Baldeagle / brucev

It's okay with not believing this claim. We understand its really not an easy feat to try and overturn a hundred years of information being taught and told, over and over and over again in school rooms and museums. You know what they say: "You can lead a horse to water..." We know there will always be advocates in the Wright Brothers camp, and we'll never convince those people otherwise. As I've said before, the Wrights' legacy cannot be forgotten or tarnished. To me these cumulative efforts are merely trying to alter it. The photo seems to certainly have existed. By looking at the link on this site,

http://www.gustave-whitehead.com/history/detailed-photo-analysis/

It is in my humble (and biased opinion) that there's substantial evidence that's been brought forth. It is believed that the photo possibly still exists in the Smithsonian's archives, though I don't know if this is in fact true. However, if the photo does exist in a folder somewhere, it sure seems like they'd be the last group to acknowledge it's existence, no? Apparently Gustave was somewhat secretive and did not want someone to capture a failure on film, henceforth the lack of photographic documentation possibly. Gustave did not finish flying after 1903. I believe the reason he wasn't known as well afterwards was because he became highly sought after for his light-weight engines. He also never had a design that was successful as his No.21 model.


Again, we know we're not going to be changing everybody's minds left and right automatically. Especially considering almost everyone alive right now has been taught that the Wright's flew first since they could walk. Whitehead has always been known as "one of the early ones" that didn't make it. And nothing more. We like our history to be clean-cut and easy. Not something that will force us to rewrite all the history books and muddle it up. The fact is is that John Brown has helped immensely in validating quite alot of Whitehead's story and bringing to light many new insights. He's dispelled quite a number of rumors that have held water over the years, now succumbing to more and more evidence. While we here in the Whitehead camp look at this as an overall victory, the journey doesn't stop here. We will continue to research and discover new facets about Whitehead's life and hopefully one day find proof that is so absurdly undeniable, that the highest authorities will have no choice but to acknowledge him. Now this isn't to undermine the other early aviation pioneers like Alberto Santos Dumont. We know there we're many early aviators and really they all aided in propelling forth an industry we all love and take part in today.

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Keep Em' Flying,
Christopher Soltis
Dedicated to the preservation and education of The Sikorsky Memorial Airport

CASC Blog Page: http://ctair-space.blogspot.com/
Warbird Wear: https://www.redbubble.com/people/warbirdwear/shop

Chicks Dig Warbirds.......right?

It is important to understand that there are a number of people, from perhaps a half-dozen countries altogether, with quite possibly legitimate claims to having made short flights prior to December 1903. The evidence on Whitehead is decidedly mixed. Some who worked closely with him stated that he never got into the air at all while others decades later made claims to have witnessed substantive flights. The one 1901 newspaper that is commonly cited reads as a fairly whimsical piece written by a journalism who was not himself a witness to any flights; the illustration included with this article is of witches.

Whitehead made a variety of designs and his work was well publicized at the time, in Scientific American for example, and he ranks as one of several early American experimenters. Langley had one of his staffmembers visit the model 21, for which most of the claims are made, who determined it to be too flimsy for flight; the aircraft also has two engines (one for the props and another for the wheels) and lacked the efficient propellers than enabled the Wright Flyer to (barely) get into the air. One analysis that I have read concerned a parade that the model 21 was apparently in, during which the plane made several short hops, with the later claim that the entire length of the parade route constituted a single long "flight". Whether this be true or not can be argued, in part because everything about Whitehead can be argued in the absence of more substantive and consistent information.

Again, that someone got off the ground prior to the Wrights does not make that person "the father of flight." If so then there were many fathers as that was achieved by a variety of people well before Whitehead. But there is no evidence that any of these "flew" as the Wrights did, with control of height and location. The Wright design ideas were copied and developed by others to produce subsequent aircraft. The Wright's aircraft are the direct parents of all modern aircraft of any description. Whitehead was the father of several aircraft of his own construction which led to no subsequent aircraft, except perhaps a few approximate copies of his originals, built on the basis of blurry photographs and no blueprints.

My reading of the Whitehead claims is much like a modern conspiracy theory. Anything that might be favorable to Whitehead is accepted without skepticism and often exaggerated, while contrary evidence is ignored or dismissed. Whitehead advocates claim that the Wrights visited Whitehead and stole his ideas, without any evidence. Various claims are made of flights, without any physical documentation whatsoever, with dates and details unrecorded. The Wright Brothers documented everything, including where they were of any given day, and the details of their experiments, calculations and observations are all well known.

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Kevin McCartney

I'm not a horse, and as Kevin has nicely explained, there is a big difference between evidence and proof. And the Whitehead argument loses a lot of its weight when the presenter starts by admitting bias-

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http://www.biplanerides1.com/

Having read a little bit on this subject, I fail to understand why humankind is so bent on revising history. If Whitehead had flown prior to the Wright Brothers, surely he would've made the case in 1903. A few photos of him doing it at the time, could've proven his case. I find it beyond belief, that he wouldn't have thought enough of his acheivement to simply shrug his shoulders and step aside.
Just my unasked for 2 cents on the subject.

Me, I am going to file this with the, as new B-32's on the moon....and the lunar landing was done in a sound stage.

As someone else has pointed out; you don't have to have a photo to prove an event. Following the the logic that if there was no photo then it didn't happen then the American Revolution never happened, the War of 1812; The Lewis and Clark Expedition, Custers Last Stand;ect, ect.

Remember not everyone back in the day carried around a camera on their Smart phone. And some people really don't care what other people think. They do it for their own gratification.

In this case it seems that there is a photo, at least that is how I took the "I found the photo" statement in the article. It also seems he did claim to have made the flight. Just because the Wright's "yelled louder" doesn't make his claim less valid.

Lastly the Wright's had always made the claim to the first "heavier than air flight". Not the first "heavier than air, with a practical aircraft and more efficient propeller and directional control.". No the claim was for the first aircraft to take the the air under it's own power. Even one of Whiteheads detractors on this board made the statement that lots of people "got in the air" before the Wrights.

You know I'm not calling you a horse! lol. I agree, if this is an evidence vs proof contest, then Wright's win hands down. It's obvious they were better score keepers. But evidence still shouldn't be discredited. No?

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Keep Em' Flying,
Christopher Soltis
Dedicated to the preservation and education of The Sikorsky Memorial Airport

CASC Blog Page: http://ctair-space.blogspot.com/
Warbird Wear: https://www.redbubble.com/people/warbirdwear/shop

Chicks Dig Warbirds.......right?

But for Whitehead, the evidence is very inconsistent. While Whitehead may well have "hopped" - though even that is uncertain - there is little good evidence and plenty of contrary evidence that Whitehead particulated in controlled flights. The Whitehead advocates are very selective of the evidence that they use, and expand on with speculation.

From what I seen, and I have followed this for many years, it is the Whitehead advocates that "discredit" the evidence. Serious research is done with an unbiased mind, and unfortunately Whitehead has become the Roswell of aviation history. The Whitehead advocates approach their subject with the conclusions foreordained and whatever they might see is spun to support that conclusion.

Meanwhile, Whitehead himself as far as I know never explicitely stated that he had "flown." In the early news articles (1901, 1902) I see the journalists getting carried away when Whitehead talked about what he hoped to achieve. He lived into the late 1920s; the drive to crown him as "father of flight" did not really start until after he had dies.

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Kevin McCartney

(Disclaimer - I have not read the entire history of Whitehead)

I am not sure I buy this story completely, because if Whitehead flew once why didn't he keep flying and improve upon his flying machine?

Always good to see Kevin weigh in when there is a serious historical discussion. I have nothing to add to his analysis but a +1.

But I would deconstruct the idea of "a" father of flight. Technological innovation is like geneology. Go back a few generations and you have a lot more fathers than you might think. An estimated 35 million people (12% of Americans) are descended from one of the 24 men who sailed on the Mayflower and who left descendants. An estimated majority, some think more than 80% or possibly all, of people of European descent are directly descended from King Charlemagne; it's said to have been proven of at least 14 former U.S. presidents.

Aviation is like that. Langley, Curtiss, Santos-Dumont, yes even Whitehead contributed genes to the pool of those who were working in aviation and knew of developments. Only if someone worked in secret with his doings unknown to the community until technology had well overtaken it -- the technological equivalent of leaving no descendants -- did one not make a contribution to the pool. Flight has many fathers and reportedly even a mother or two. For the student of technology it can be much more interesting to trace the contribution of each father than to decide who was "the" father.

So yes, Kevin is right that every modern airplane is descended from the Wrights' but that doesn't mean it isn't also descended from several others of the era, even if those others did not happen to be the first to achieve what we define in a highly qualified and somewhat arbitrary way as the first "flight".

August

Exhibit A - first flight of the DC-3.

Nice conversation and very enjoyable by way of mature and reasonable posts by all. Nice to see on WIX. The 'evidence' vs 'proof' debate certainly holds weight here in all it's form. Evidence that is indefinite, vague, or improbable will be given less weight than evidence that is direct and unrefuted. I'm sure we all can agree on that. The lack, or supposed lack, of photographic evidence/proof coupled with the knowledge of "little good evidence and plenty of contrary evidence" will always hinder anyone's ideas or chances of proclaiming Whitehead as a contender for the title of "father of aviation", but as I stated in a previous post, there is certainly enough evidence to consider Whitehead as a legitimate contributor to the evolution of aviation. I've always been a firm believer of 'sharing the wealth' ... it took more folks than the Wright Brothers to get us to where we are today in the aviation world. (BTW my pilots license has room for a few more images)

Luckily neither one of those early designs had retractable landing gear or we would be debating who (or whom) painted their gear doors green first ...

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“With bottomless pockets...anything is possible”

I've often wondered if these early attempts at powered flight weren't well documented because most people simply didn't care. By the early 1900s, the Montgolfier brothers' first balloon flight was past its 100th anniversary, and Otto Lilienthal had been flying heavier -than-air gliders through the late 1800s. By the early 1900s, if anyone wanted to go flying they already had some good options.

To the average man on the street, sticking a wheezy engine to one of these things and fumbling along for a hundred feet or so might not have seemed like such a big deal. Of course it was, but I can forgive the early 1900s person for not realizing it at the time.

I think the emotional attachment some people feel toward the Wright brothers' story is based on the idea that they were the first to fly. In reality, "First in Flight" licence plates should only be issued in France (Montgolfier brothers).

Similarly, Lindbergh is often credited with the first Transatlantic crossing by air, which overlooks efforts made by a group of Curtiss NC-4s, and a certain Vickers Vimy later on...