Gustave Whitehead and the First-Flight Controversy

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‘What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth.’ -Dennis Diderot, philosopher (1713-1784)

Old myths die hard. For example: the Wright brothers were co-equals in aviation innovation, right? Wrong. Author John Evangelist Walsh ably proved in his biography of the Wrights, One Day at Kittyhawk (1975), that Wilbur was the leader, Orville the follower-Wilbur the genius, his younger brother the junior assistant.

How did the notion that they were ‘coequals’ emerge as fact? Wilbur died in 1912. Orville, by controlling the Wright archives, influenced history. In the official biography, authorized by Orville 30 years after Wilbur’s death, the brothers came out as coequals, with Orville more often than not playing the larger role.

Another question: Who made the world’s first powered airplane flight? The Wright brothers, of course, on December 17, 1903. Or perhaps not. Some historians believe that on August 14, 1901, at Fairfield, Conn., Gustave Whitehead achieved powered flight-two years and four months before the Wrights’ first flight.

Which leads to a further question: Who was Gustave Whitehead? Many voice the view that Whitehead’s work as an aviation pioneer has yet to receive a full and objective study.

A longtime leader of the efforts to learn the truth about Gustave Whitehead is Major William J. O’Dwyer, U.S. Air Force Reserve (ret.), of Fairfield, Conn. He was a World War II flight instructor and later a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Command. In postwar years, O’Dwyer became a building contractor in Fairfield, a job that, in 1963, led to his involvement in the Whitehead saga. In the attic of a house owned by the mother of Lt. Col. Thomas Armitage, a fellow member of the 9315th Air Force Reserve Squadron, of Stratford, Conn., O’Dwyer ran across photographs of Whitehead’s 1908-1910 aerial experiments. The photos were in family albums of Armitage’s late uncle, Arthur K.L. Watson, who had helped finance Whitehead’s work in those years. The pictures bore the title ‘Whitehead’s effort’ and nothing more.

‘As pilots,’ said O’Dwyer recently, ‘we sensed that the pictures had historical significance and should be in a museum. So we took them to Harvey Lippincott, founder, and at the time president, of the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association (CAHA) in Hartford. Soon we learned that Whitehead’s claimed flights of 1901 and 1902 had allegedly taken place in our hometowns of Fairfield, Bridgeport and Stratford. We’d stumbled on a mystery from which we couldn’t walk away.’

Today, 30 years later and having spent a’small fortune’ on his detective work, O’Dwyer is convinced that those historians who have labeled Whitehead an empty dreamer or an outright charlatan are way off base. ‘It’s strange,’ he said, ‘that those opinions evolved without extensive research, official inquiry or probe.’

Research showed that Whitehead’s 1901 airplane-a high-wing monoplane with an enclosed fuselage and two propellers up front-was closer to today’s lightplane configurations than any built by his contemporaries. His U.S. aviation ‘firsts’ numbered more than 20. They included, to name but a few, aluminum in engines and propellers, wheels for takeoff and landing, ground-adjustable propeller pitch, individual control of propellers (to aid in directional control), folding wings for towing on roads (resulting in what was possibly the world’s first roadable airplane), silk for wing covering, and concrete for a runway. He built more than 30 aircraft engines and sold them to customers as far west as California. An earlier student of Whitehead’s life and career was the late Stella Randolph of Garrett Park, Md., author of two books, Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead (1937) and Before the Wrights Flew (1966). Despite details, documentation and photos of Whitehead’s airplanes, gliders and engines, the books were denounced by leading aeronautic agencies, including the Smithsonian Institution and the American Institute of Aeronautics. They described Randolph as ‘unqualified’ and her books as ‘unreliable.’

Tags: Aircraft, Aviation History, Flight Technology, Historical Discoveries

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