Historians Urge Connecticut to Reconsider First in Flight Claim

FLYING Staff

Thursday, May 14, 2015 at 09:57 PM ET

Verified

** Gustave Whitehead**

Key Takeaways:

Connecticut lawmakers are attempting to adopt the "First in Flight" slogan, based on claims that Gustav Whitehead achieved powered flight in 1901, two years before the Wright Brothers.
This renewed controversy, largely driven by historian John Brown's research, cites evidence like a lithograph and eyewitness accounts, but lacks photographic proof of Whitehead's flight.
The initiative faces strong opposition from mainstream aviation historians, the Smithsonian Institution (due to an agreement recognizing the Wrights), and the National Aviation Heritage Alliance, who uphold the Wright Brothers' 1903 flight as the first.

See a mistake? Contact us.

Connecticut lawmakers hoping to adopt the coveted “First in Flight” slogan for their state have been urged to stick with the generally acknowledged claim that the Ohio-born Wright Brothers, Orville and Wilbur, were the first to pull off powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, in December 1903 in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

The controversy over who was really first to fly erupted in 2013 when Paul Jackson, the editor in chief of J_ane’s All the World’s Aircraft,_ wrote that German-born Whitehead and not the Wright Brothers was probably the first to fly a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in 1901, some two years before the Wright’s feat. Jackson’s conclusions were based in large part on the research of Australian pilot-historian John Brown, who has been engaged in a war of words and evidence with the Smithsonian over the controversy. The Smithsonian has as part of its agreement to display the Wright Flyer a clause that it will never recognize a different first to fly claim than the Wrights.