Whitehead No. 21

Whitehead No. 21

The Whitehead No.21 was the aircraft that aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead claimed to have flown near Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 14, 1901. Mainstream aviation scholars dispute the flight; in 1980, C.H. Gibbs-Smith called the story a "flight of fancy".

The flight was reported in the August 18, 1901 issue of The Bridgeport Sunday Herald and was reprinted in the New York Herald, the Boston Transcript and the The Washington Times, which ran it on 23 August 1901. Within months, the story ran in nine other newspapers in all parts of the country, as far away as California and Arizona.

No photographs were taken, but a drawing of the aircraft in flight accompanied the Sunday Herald article. The No.21 was a monoplane powered by two engines--one for the wheels during the ground run, the other driving the propellers for flight.