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Scientific American, June 08, 1901
Boston Transcript, August 19, 1901
New York Herald, August 19, 1901
American Inventor letters to the editor penned by Whitehead and
editorial responses April, 1902
The Aeronautic World, May, 1903
Scientific American, September 19, 1903
Aviation History, March 1996
Air Enthusiast 35, January 1988
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December 17th, 1903 was a monumental day in history. Orville and
Wilbur Wright performed the first manned powered flight in an
aircraft they had built of wood and cloth. Or perhaps not. Some
historians believe that on August 14th, 1901, at Fairfield. Conn.,
Gustave Whitehead achieved powered flight. Major William j. O'Dwyer,
US Air Force Reserve (ret.). Has devoted three decades of research
and is convinced that indeed history has been "tampered with".
Gustave Whitehead was born Gustave Alvin Weisskopf on January
1st, 1874, in Leuterhausen, Bavaria, Germany. Growing up in the
era of Otto Lilienthal, the German glider pioneer, young Weisskopf
became obsessed with the idea of flying. Later, he met and corresponded
with Lilienthal, learning something of the rudiments of flight.
At age 12 he was orphaned, so the young Weisskopf worked his way
to Brazil as a seaman. He spent four years at sea and showed great
mechanical aptitude. A gift well suited for the sea. But his heart
was always in the sky. He studied the flight of the sea birds.
He also survived four shipwrecks, the last of which put him ashore
in 1894 on the Gulf Coast near the Florida Panhandle. Young Weisskopf
headed northward, taking work when he could get it and reached
Boston in 1897. He got a job with the Boston Aeronautical Society.
He built a biplane with flapping midwings, it failed to fly.
Next stop was New York City, he met Louise Tuba, they were married
in Buffalo, then moved to Baltimore and changed their name to
Whitehead. They then moved to Pittsburgh, this is when he began
his efforts at powered flight. In 1899, after finding work as
a coal miner, he built a two man aircraft powered by a steam engine.
It all came to a rather abrupt end when Whitehead and his stoker,
Louis Darvarich, crashed into a three story building. Darvarich
suffered life long scarring from the steam burns.
Whitehead was not hurt. Their is no real evidence if the craft
was airborne at the time or on the ground. Whitehead was not popular
with his neighbors, he was often making allot of noise with his
engines. So they moved again to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Whitehead
resumed his work in 1900 in his basement on the west end of Bridgeport.
The neighborhood teenagers were captivated by all this and thus
became his unpaid helpers. Whitehead gained knowledge a little
at a time. He built a series of gliders and airplanes and made
improvements to each one as each one progressed. In the spring
of 1901 he finished "Airplane No. 21" in which on August 14th,
he claimed to have made his first successful powered flight in
Fairfield. An article stating to the fact, in the Bridgeport Sunday
Herald said the flight covered a half mile and included a change
in direction to avoid a stand of chestnut trees, plus a safe landing
without damage to the aircraft. A variety of evidence, including
photos taken in 1901 of Airplane No #21 shows an aerodynamically
correct monoplane with such wing features as dihedral angle, camber
and angle of incidence. It is very possible that this flight took
place and has been kept under raps all these years. In 1985 a
group of Germans built a replica of "airplane No. 21" to test
out the possibility of the earlier flight. The aircraft was as
close as they could possibly get with what information they had
to work with, to the actual aircraft. On December 29th, 1986 ,
Andrew Kosch made 20 flights, reaching a maximum distance of 330
feet.
Maybe one day they will be changing the History Books.
Source: Aviation History, March 1996
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