Gustave Whitehead - 1901

1901

The aviation event for which Whitehead is now best-known reportedly took place in Fairfield, Connecticut on 14 August 1901. An unsigned article written as an eyewitness report in the Bridgeport Herald newspaper said Whitehead piloted his Number 21 aircraft in a controlled powered flight for about half a mile up to 50 feet (15 m) high and landed safely. The feat, if true, preceded the Wright brothers by more than two years and exceeded their best 1903 Kitty Hawk flight, which covered 852 feet (260 m) at a height of about 10 feet (3.0 m). The article about Whitehead is widely attributed to journalist Dick Howell.

The Bridgeport Herald, a weekly Sunday newspaper, published the article on 18 August 1901. No photograph was taken of the aircraft in flight. The article was accompanied by a drawing, also credited by some Whitehead researchers to Howell, which depicted the aircraft in flight. Information from the article was also reprinted in the New York Herald, Boston Transcript and The Washington Times, which ran it on 23 August 1901. Over the next few months, the story ran in nine other American newspapers, some as far away as California and Arizona.

The Bridgeport Herald reported that Whitehead and another man drove to the testing area in the machine, which worked like a car when the wings were folded along its sides. Two other people, including the newspaper reporter, followed on bicycles. For short distances the Number 21's speed was close to thirty miles an hour on the uneven road, and the article said, "there seems no doubt that the machine can reel off forty miles an hour and not exert the engine to its fullest capacity.".

The newspaper reported that before attempting to pilot the aircraft, Whitehead successfully test flew it unmanned in the pre-dawn hours, using tether ropes and sandbag ballast. When Whitehead was ready to make a manned flight, the article said: "By this time the light was good. Faint traces of the rising sun began to suggest themselves in the east."

The newspaper reported that trees blocked the way after the flight was in progress, and quoted Whitehead as saying, "I knew that I could not clear them by rising higher, and also that I had no means of steering around them by using the machinery." The article said Whitehead quickly thought of a solution to steer around the trees:

"He simply shifted his weight more to one side than the other. This careened the ship to one side. She turned her nose away from the clump of sprouts when within fifty yards of them and took her course around them as prettily as a yacht on the sea avoids a bar. The ability to control the air ship in this manner appeared to give Whitehead confidence, for he was seen to take time to look at the landscape about him. He looked back and waved his hand exclaiming, 'I've got it at last.'"

When Whitehead neared the end of a field, the article said he turned off the motor and the aircraft landed "so lightly that Whitehead was not jarred in the least."

Junius Harworth, who was a boy when he was one of Whitehead's helpers, said Whitehead flew the airplane at another time in the summer of 1901 from Howard Avenue East to Wordin Avenue, along the edge of property belonging to the local gas company. Upon landing, Harworth said, the machine was turned around and another hop was made back to the starting point.

On 19 November 1901, the The Evening World (New York), ran a story about Whitehead's achievements and included a photograph of him sitting on his new flying machine. In it, he is quoted; "within a year people will be buying airships as freely as they are buying automobiles today and the sky will be dotted with figures skimming the air".

Before his reported 14 August flight, Whitehead was quoted in a 26 July article in the Minneapolis Journal, credited to the New York Sun, in which he described the first two unmanned trial flights of his machine on 3 May. Andrew Cellie and Daniel Varovi were mentioned as his financial backers and assisted with the flights. The machine carried 220 pounds of sand as ballast and flew to an altitude of 40 to 50 feet for an 1/8 of a mile (201 metres (659 ft)). According to Whitehead, the machine flew a distance of 1/2 mile (805 metres (2,641 ft)) for one and one-half minutes during its second test flight before crashing into a tree. He also explained his desire to keep the location of any future experiments hidden to avoid drawing a crowd who might make a "snap-shot verdict of failure".

During this period of activity, Whitehead also reportedly tested an unmanned and unpowered flying machine, towed by men pulling ropes. A witness said the craft rose above telephone lines, flew across a road and landed undamaged. The distance covered was later measured at approximately 1,000 ft (305 m).