Lost to Time

by Martin W. Sandler

  “This new machine has been tried twice, on January 17, 1902,” Whitehead replied to the editor.

  It was intended to fly only short distances, but the machine behaved so well that at the first trial it covered nearly two miles over the water of Long Island Sound, and settled in the water without mishap to either machine or operator. . . . On the second trial it started from the same place and sailed with myself aboard across Long Island Sound. The machine kept on steadily in crossing the wind at a height of about 200 feet, where it came into my mind to try steering around in a circle. As soon as I turned the rudder and drove one propeller faster than the other the machine turned a bend and flew north with the wind at a frightful speed, but turned steadily around until I saw the starting place in the distance. I continued to turn but when near the land again, I slowed up the propellers and sank greatly down on an even keel into the water, she readily floating like a boat. . . .

  AN UNDATED PHOTO of one of the assistants transporting one of Whitehead’s gliders, designed with foldable wings for easier transport.

  Copyright by William J. O’Dwyer and Flughistorische Forschungsgemeinschaft Gustav Weisskopf.

  The length of flight on the first was about two miles, and on the second about seven miles. The last trial was a circling flight, and as I successfully returned to my starting place with a machine hitherto untried and heavier than air, I consider the trip quite a success. To my knowledge it is the first of its kind. This matter has so far never been published.

  I have no photographs taken yet of No. 22 but send you some of No. 21 as these machines are exactly alike, except the details mentioned. No. 21 has made four trips, the longest one and a half miles on August 14, 1901. The wings of both machines measure 36 feet from tip to tip and the length of the entire machine is 32 feet. It will run on the ground 50 miles an hour, and in the air travel about 70 miles. I believe that if wanted, it would fly 100 miles an hour. The power carried is considerably more than necessary.

  Believing . . . that the future of the air machine lies in an apparatus made without the gasbag, I have taken up the aeroplane and will stick to it until I have succeeded completely or expire in the attempt of doing so. As soon as I get my machine out this spring, I will let you know. To describe the feeling of flying is almost impossible, for, in fact, a man is more frightened than anything else.

  Trusting that this will interest your readers, I remain,

  Very truly yours,

  Gustave Whitehead.

  After receiving Whitehead’s letter, the editor of American Inventor, realizing the importance of what Whitehead was claiming, immediately wrote back, asking Whitehead to confirm what he had written, to which Whitehead replied:

  Dear Sir:

  Yours of [January] 26th received. Yes, it a full-sized flying machine and I, myself, flew seven miles and returned to the starting point. In both the flights described in my previous letter, I flew in the machine myself. This, of course, is new to the world at large, but I do not care much in being advertised except by a good paper like yours. Such accounts may help others along who are working in the same line, as soon as I can I shall try again. This coming spring I will have photographs made of Machine No. 22 in the air and let you have pictures taken during its flight. If you can come up and [take the pictures] yourself, so much the better. I attempted this before, but in the first trial the weather was bad . . . and the snapshots that were taken did not come out right. I cannot take any time exposures of the machine when in flight on account of its high speed. . . .

  Yours truly,

  Gustave Whitehead.

  Whitehead’s two published letters in American Inventor are important in several regards. His statement that in operating a powered flying machine “a man is more frightened than anything else” offers a rare personal glimpse into a man who set down so little of his feelings in writing. So too does his declaration “I . . . will stick to it until I have succeeded completely or expire in the attempt of doing so.”

  Even more significant is Whitehead’s statement that his accomplishments in successfully flying both Airplane No. 21 and Airplane No. 22 were “new to the world at large.” Did he really believe that he had achieved the enormous distinction of being the first to accomplish manned, powered flight? And does his statement “I do not care much in being advertised” help explain why he did not push more for being credited for that achievement?

  It seems that the editor of American Inventor was ready to believe. In publishing Whitehead’s letters, he responded to Whitehead’s promise of photographs of future flights by ending his column with: “Newspaper readers will remember several accounts of Mr. Whitehead’s performances last summer [August 1901]. Probably most people put them down as fakes, but it seems as though the long-sought answer to the most difficult problem Nature ever put to man is gradually coming into sight. The editor and the readers of the columns await with interest the promised photographs of the machine in the air.”

  Unfortunately there would be no photographs. Nor would there be any other Whitehead flights. Throughout his life, Whitehead had struggled financially, and the years following the events of January 1902 were more difficult than ever. Forced to take a job in a Bridgeport factory, he was blinded in one eye when he was hit by a steel fragment and then suffered another serious physical setback when struck in the chest by a piece of factory equipment, an injury that led to a series of angina attacks. Throughout it all, according to a March 1996 article in Aviation History, Whitehead kept inventing. Competing for a prize offered by a railroad company, he invented a braking safety device but failed to win the prize. According to Aviation History, he also invented an “automatic” concrete-laying machine, which was used to help build a road near Bridgeport. But as Aviation History also stated, “He profited no more from these inventions that he did from his airplanes and engines.”

  On October 10, 1927, Gustave Whitehead died of a heart attack, leaving his family only the home he had built himself, a small amount of land, and eight dollars. The man who may well have made one of history’s greatest accomplishments was buried in a pauper’s grave. He was only fifty-three years old.

  In the 1930s, more than thirty people signed affidavits swearing that they witnessed Whitehead flights well before the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk achievement in 1903. In October 1964, Anton Pruckner, the man closest to Whitehead, gave sworn testimony that prior to 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright actually visited Whitehead in his Bridgeport workshop and “left here with a great deal of information” regarding the secrets of manned, powered flight. Stanley Beach of Scientific American almost matter-of-factly stated that Whitehead had flown more than two years before the Wrights. And, as exemplified by his published letters in American Inventor, Whitehead himself, whose truthfulness was never questioned by those who knew him, gave detailed descriptions of his 1901 and 1902 flights. So why then has Gustave Whitehead not been given the credit for one of the most momentous firsts in history?

  One of the reasons undoubtedly has to do with the fact that Whitehead was so absorbed with constructing flying machines and engines and piloting his creations that he paid no attention to keeping records, business or technical. A contributing factor to this may have been his extreme poverty. He was continually forced to take on jobs in factories and other establishments that left little time for record keeping even if he had been so inclined, and he may well not have had the money needed to patent his inventions even if he had desired to do so.

  Aside from disorganization and a shortage of time and funds, Whitehead’s lack of self-promotion stemmed also from the fact that, according to his assistants, he never believed that he had achieved what he personally regarded as the most important aeronautical goal. As officials at Germany’s Gustav Weisskopf Museum proclaimed, Whitehead was convinced that manned, powered flight would be meaningful only when an operator could fly a considerable distance to a specific destination. “To a large extent,” the museum stated, “it was Whitehead’s own dissatisfactio
n with what he had achieved, that he fell into oblivion.” As proof of this opinion, the museum offers Whitehead’s documented statements to Anton Pruckner in which he stated, “All [my] flights are not much good because they don’t last long enough. We just cannot fly to any old place. Flight will only then become of importance, when we can fly at any given time to any given place.”

  There are other reasons as well. Throughout the mid-1950s several Connecticut newspapers claimed that it was because of intense anti- German feeling brought about by the events of World War I that Whitehead, a German immigrant, did not receive the acclaim that he deserved. Perhaps most important of all, there is no question that Whitehead suffered from being so far ahead of his time. The public, the majority of whom ascribed to the long-held belief that “if man was intended to fly, God would have given him wings,” was highly skeptical of any claims of manned, powered flight. It was a fact discovered by the Wrights, whose patent for their flying machine was not granted until late May 1906, more than three years after it was filed, and whose claim to have conquered the air was not genuinely accepted until after many flights following Kitty Hawk in both the United States and Europe.

  All of these are viable reasons why Gustave Whitehead’s accomplishments have been lost to history. Perhaps the greatest reason is what those few modern-day champions of Whitehead’s achievements regard as nothing less than a conspiracy. If true, it is a conspiracy that involves one of America’s most prestigious institutions. In modern times, the most active Whitehead supporter was Major William O’Dwyer. O’Dwyer was a World War II air force flight instructor and later a ferry pilot with the Air Transport Command. For more than thirty years beginning in 1963, O’Dwyer—with the aid of archivist Harvey Lippencott of the New England Air Museum and Harold Dolan, a Sikorsky Aircraft engineer and vice president of the Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association—conducted intense research into every scrap of evidence that could be uncovered pertaining to Whitehead’s flights. After spending what he said was “a small fortune” in this endeavor, O’Dwyer’s conclusion was that history had been “tampered with.” Speaking of those historians who dismissed Whitehead’s claims almost out of hand, O’Dwyer stated, “It’s strange that [their] opinions evolved without extensive research, official inquiry, or probe.”

  At the heart of William O’Dwyer’s conviction that Gustave Whitehead was denied his just rewards was his uncovering of a remarkable contract that existed between the Smithsonian Institution and the Wright brothers’ estate. The contract was the result of challenges to the Wright brothers’ application for a patent for the first flying machine. It was motivated also by the fact that first Orville Wright and later he and his brother’s heirs had taken exception to the fact that the Smithsonian had proclaimed that Samuel Langley’s 1896 flying machine was the first machine capable of manned flight. The Wright brothers’ heirs were, in fact, so upset with that statement that it was not until 1948 that the family allowed the Smithsonian to exhibit the Flyer— and only, as O’Dwyer discovered, after an agreement signed by the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, which read:

  Neither the Smithsonian Institution or its successors, nor any museum or other agency, bureau, or facilities administered for the United States of America by the Smithsonian Institution or its successors shall publish or permit to the displayed a statement or label in connection with or in respect of any aircraft model or design of earlier date than the Wright Airplane of 1903, claiming in effect that such an aircraft was capable of carrying a man under its own power in controlled flight.

  William O’Dwyer and his fellow Whitehead supporters were not the only ones distressed by the Smithsonian/Wright brothers’ estate agreement. As evidenced by an article in its January 1988 issue, the publication Air Enthusiast also viewed the agreement as a serious miscarriage of justice. The journal stated,

  Weisskopf’s excommunication from the halls of aviation history was an unmerited sentence imposed not by history, but by contract. The evidence amassed in his favor strongly indicates that, beyond a reasonable doubt, the first fully controlled, powered flight that was more than a test “hop” . . . took place on 14 August 1901 near Bridgeport, Connecticut. For this assertion to be conclusively disproved, the Smithsonian must do much more than pronounce him a hoax while willfully turning a blind eye to all the affidavits, letters, tape recorded interviews and newspaper clippings which attest to Weisskopf’s genius. Though the Wrights finally succeeded in setting their names firmly in all the books, we should remember that the history written by the victor is only a half-truth, after all.

  The Smithsonian connection to the Whitehead saga did not end with the unique agreement. In the January 27, 1906, issue of Scientific American, Stanley Beach had described the first annual exhibit of the Aero Club of America, held at New York’s 69th Regimental Armory. In his article he reported that a “single blurred photograph of a large bird-like machine constructed by Whitehead in 1901 was the only photo of a motor driven aeroplane in flight.” Some seventy years later, one of the members of the research committee assembled by William O’Dwyer discovered a book titled A Dream of Wings, in which the same photograph was shown. In what can only be regarded as supreme irony, the author of the book was Thomas D. Crouch, the Smithsonian Institution’s curator of early aircraft, and the photograph was credited to the Smithsonian.

  GUSTAVE WHITEHEAD sits with his assistants under Airplane No. 21, daughter Rose on his lap.

  Copyright by William J. O’Dwyer and Flughistorische Forschungsgemeinschaft Gustav Weisskopf.

  Despite O’Dwyer’s efforts to have the photograph blown up by using computer technology, he had to admit that it was impossible to positively identify it as clearly showing Whitehead in flight. But the fact that such an authority as the aeronautical editor of Scientific American was convinced that it depicted Whitehead in flight was to O’Dwyer and his committee significant additional evidence that Whitehead had been the first to fly.

  There is no question that, although relegated to obscurity, Gustave Whitehead was one of the most important pioneers of aviation. As O’Dwyer wrote in his book History by Contract: The Beginning of Motorized Aviation, Whitehead was the first to cover the wings of a flying machine with silk and the first to build a concrete runway, and, according to O’Dwyer and others, Whitehead introduced rubber tires for takeoff and landings. Most of these accomplishments were achieved before December 17, 1903. But did he beat the Wright brothers into the sky? Perhaps someday someone will come forward with a photograph unequivocally revealing Whitehead in the midst of one of his 1901 or 1902 flights. Perhaps some other type of proof even more conclusive than the considerable amount of compelling evidence that already exists will be discovered. If not, it is a question that will never be satisfactorily answered. “Meantime,” as modern-day aviation journalist Frank Delear has written, “the long-suffering ghost of Gustave Whitehead still stands in the wings awaiting its summons on stage.”

  ELEVEN

  EXERCISE TIGER

  A Rehearsal for D-Day (1944)

  Most of us know the significance of June 6, 1944. We have been taught, have read about, and have seen movie and television depictions of how, on that date during World War II, Allied forces crossed the English Channel and stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, in the largest amphibious attack in history. What is little known, however, is the devastating sacrifice of a convoy of ships and men as they staged a rehearsal for the attack on Normandy’s Utah Beach, a sacrifice that resulted in a greater death toll than was later exacted during the actual invasion of Utah Beach.

  Plans for the Normandy invasion had been launched in Morocco during the Casablanca Conference, where U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill met with their top military advisors from January 14 to 24, 1943. The plan was code-named Operation Overlord, and its architects were well aware that they were setting in motion one of the greatest military invasions ever launched, one that would include an Allie
d force of some three million men, including one and a half million Americans. Transportation for this enormous force was to be provided by a fleet of more than 1,200 warships that would protect 4,126 landing craft and 1,600 merchant ships and other vessels. Support was also to be provided by some 11,590 airplanes and 3,500 gliders.

  U.S. TROOPS REHEARSE LANDINGS on April 25, 1944, on a beach in England in preparation for D-Day on June 6.

  A U.S. ARMY MAP shows the complex plans of assault outlined for D-Day.

  It was, to say the least, to be a monumental undertaking, and there were many Allied officers who were less than confident that their troops were ready for it. As Harry C. Butcher, an aide to Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote in his memoirs,

  I am concerned over the absence of toughness and alertness of young American officers . . . they seem to regard the war as one grand maneuver in which they are having a happy time. Many seem as green as growing corn. How will they act in battle . . . ? A good many of the full colonels also give me a pain. They are fat, grey, and oldish. Most of them wear the Rainbow Ribbon of the last war and are still fighting it. . . . On the Navy’s side, our crews are also green, but they seem to know how to handle their boats, yet . . . I recall that in plain daylight, with a smooth sea with our [ship] standing still, she nearly had her stern carried away by a landing craft . . . fitted out as an anti-aircraft ship. We were missed only by inches—in clear daylight.