Whitehead No. 21 - History

History

According to Whitehead and a reporter supposedly at the event, the monoplane's longest flight was 60 meters (200 feet) above ground for 800 meters (0.5 miles). These claims are contested. Whitehead did not keep a log book or document his work.

In an article in the August 18, 1901 issue of The Bridgeport Sunday Herald the reporter states he witnessed a night test of the plane, at first unpiloted but loaded with sand bags, and later with Whitehead at the controls.

Whitehead reportedly made four flights that day, supporters of Whitehead's claims offer that as the reason for conflicting accounts from different witnesses. The conflicts have been used by opponents of the claims to question whether any flights took place.

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 trial flights of his machine on 3 May. Andrew Cellie and Daniel Varovi were mentioned as his financial backers and assisted in the trial flights. The machine was unmanned and carried 220 pounds of sand as ballast and flew to an altitude of 40 to 50 feet for an 1/8 of a mile 650 feet (200 m). According to Whitehead, the machine flew a distance of 1/2 mile 2,600 feet (790 m) during its second test flight for one and one-half minutes 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".