TLS, two pages, 7.25 x 10.5, personal letterhead, October 19, 1937. Letter to Fred L. Black of the Edison Institute, in full: “I have not seen the book ‘Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead,’ but I did see the story on the same subject printed in ‘Popular Aviation’ of January, 1935, and signed by Stella Randolph and Harvey Phillips. I have learned through a friend in Washington that Miss Randolph works in a doctor’s office in Washington; that she has no particular interest in aviation; that the Harvey Phillips whom she had not known before, induced her to collaborate with him in the preparation of the story. I suspect that, could it be traced, the idea for the book would be found to have originated in the mind of A. F. Zahm, of whom you already know. He has been quite active in this matter, as I have learned from several sources. The book is interesting in showing how easy it is, after an interval of 35 years, to get affidavits on matters which are utterly false. Neither Wilbur nor I ever were in Bridgeport until 1909, and then only in passing through on the train.
I believe I told you of the statements of eye-witnesses secured by A. V. Roe to establish his claim to having been the first Englishman to fly. Unfortunately for Roe I had in my possession letters written by himself at the time that proved the statements of his witnesses false. Moore-Brabazon told me that he would have been helpless in refuting these statements, produced twenty-five years after the event, excepting for the evidence which was able to furnish.
In the case of Whitehead the design of the machine is in itself enough to refute the statements that the machine flew. Have you seen the article in the N.A.A. Magazine of December, 1936, by Professor John B. Crane, who made some investigation of the Randolph story and I interviewed some of the alleged eye-witnesses? I am hoping to get my work here cleared up enough before long so that I can make the postponed visit to Greenfield Village. Thanking you for the photostats of the affidavits in Stella Randolph’s book.” In fine condition, with a small tear to the bottom edge of the second sheet. Accompanied by a vintage 9 x 6.75 photo of a French exhibition showcasing Wilbur Wright's record-setting airplane.
Like Alberto Santos-Dumont of Brazil and Richard Pearse of New Zealand, Gustave Whitehead (1874-1927) was another intrepid aviation pioneer who claimed to have made several powered flights before the Wright Brothers lifted off from Kitty Hawk on December 17, 1903. Decades later, freelance writer Stella Randolph rediscovered Whitehead’s story in a scrapbook in a Smithsonian collection and published an article, ‘Did Whitehead Proceed Wright in First Public Flight?,’ in the magazine Popular Aviation. She continued to champion Whitehead’s cause with the referenced book, ‘The Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead,’ which was published the year Orville Wright wrote this letter, in which he staidly refutes the abilities of Whitehead’s machine. After years of public amnesia, Whitehead’s story reemerged in 1940 when Charles Whitehead was introduced on the radio show Famous Firsts as ‘the son of Gustave Whitehead, the first man to fly in a heavier-than-air machine.’The Whitehead story as heard on the radio was retold in Liberty magazine in April 1945, and the Liberty article was soon condensed in Reader's Digest in July 1945, running under the heading of ‘First’ by Mort Weisenger.
The publication of the Reader's Digest article prompted a then-74-year-old Orville Wright to write a short rebuttal, ‘The Mythical Whitehead Flight,’ which was published in the U.S. Air Services Magazine in August 1945. It can be read, in part, below.
‘The myth of Gustave Whitehead having made a power flight in 1901 was founded upon the story which appeared in the Bridgeport Herald of August 18, 1901…The Herald represented that just four persons were present on the occasion - Gustave Whitehead, Andrew Cellie, and James Dickie, his two partners in the flying machine, and a representative of the Herald. In an affidavit dated April 2, 1937, the above-mentioned James Dickie, after saying that he had worked with Gustave Whitehead when Whitehead was constructing and experimenting with aeroplanes, said: ‘I do not know Andrew Cellie, the other man who is supposed to have witnessed the flight of August 14th, 1901, described in the Bridgeport Herald. I believe the entire story in the Herald was imaginary and grew out of the comments of Whitehead in discussing what he hoped to get from his plane. I was not present and did not witness any airplane flight on August 14, 1901. I do not remember or recall ever hearing of a flight with this particular plane or any other that Whitehead ever built’...
In May, 1901, Stanley Y. Beach visited Whitehead at Bridgeport and wrote an illustrated article about Whitehead's machine, which was published in the Scientific American of June 8, 1901. Later he induced his father to advance money to continue Whitehead's experiments. Although Beach saw Whitehead frequently in the years from 1901 to 1910, Whitehead never told him that he had flown. Beach has said that he does not believe that any of Whitehead's machines ever left the ground under their own power, in spite of assertions of persons thirty-five years later who thought they remembered seeing them. Beach's nine years of association with Whitehead placed him in a better position to know what Whitehead had done than that of other persons who were associated with Whitehead but a short time, or those who had so little technical training, or so little interest that they remained silent for thirty-five years about an event which, if true, would have been the greatest historic achievement in aviation up to that time. If Whitehead really had flown, certainly Beach, who had spent nearly ten thousand dollars on the experiments, would have been the last to deny it.’
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