Густав Уайтхед: Пионер авиации и спор о первом полете

19/20th century German American aviator

Gustave Albin Whitehead (born Gustav Albin Weisskopf; 1 January 1874 – 10 October 1927) was an aviation pioneer who emigrated from Germany to the United States where he designed and built gliders, flying machines, and engines between 1897 and 1915. Controversy surrounds published accounts and Whitehead's own claims that he flew a powered machine successfully several times in 1901 and 1902, predating the first flights by the Wright Brothers in 1903. Much of Whitehead's reputation rests on a newspaper article which was written as an eyewitness report and describes his powered and sustained flight in Connecticut on 14 August 1901. Over a hundred newspapers in the U. S. and around the world soon repeated information from the article. Several local newspapers also reported on other flight experiments that Whitehead made in 1901 and subsequent years. Whitehead's aircraft designs and experiments were described or mentioned in Scientific American articles and a 1904 book about industrial progress. His public profile faded after about 1915, however, and he died in relative obscurity in 1927. In the 1930s, a magazine article and book asserted that Whitehead had made powered flights in 1901–02, and the book includes statements from people who said that they had seen various Whitehead flights decades earlier. These published accounts triggered debate among scholars, researchers, and aviation enthusiasts. Mainstream historians have consistently dismissed the Whitehead flight claims, which Orville Wright later described as 'mythical'. Researchers have studied and attempted to copy Whitehead aircraft. Since the 1980s, enthusiasts in the U. S. and Germany have built and flown replicas of Whitehead's "Number 21" machine using modern engines and modern propellers, and with fundamental changes to the aircraft structure and control systems.

Whitehead was born in Leutershausen, Bavaria, the second child of Karl Weisskopf and his wife Babetta. As a boy he showed an interest in flight, experimenting with kites and earning the nickname "the flyer". He and a friend caught and tethered birds in an attempt to learn how they flew, an activity which the police soon stopped. His parents died in 1886 and 1887, when he was a boy. He then trained as a mechanic and traveled to Hamburg, where in 1888 he was forced to join the crew of a sailing ship. A year later he returned to Germany, then journeyed with a family to Brazil. He went to sea again for several years, learning more about wind, weather and bird flight. Weisskopf arrived in the U. S. in 1893. He soon anglicized his name to Gustave Whitehead. The New York toy manufacturer E. J. Horsman hired Whitehead to build and operate advertising kites and model gliders. Whitehead also made plans to add a motor to propel one of his gliders. In 1893, Whitehead was in Boston where he experimented with gliders, kites, and models, and where he worked at Harvard's kite flying meteorological station. In 1896, Whitehead was hired as a mechanic for the Boston Aeronautical Society. He and mechanic Albert B. C. Horn built a Lilienthal type glider and an ornithopter. Whitehead made a few short and low flights in the glider, but did not succeed in flying the ornithopter. Also in 1896, founding Society member Samuel Cabot employed Whitehead and carpenter James Crowell to build a Lilienthal glider. Cabot reported to the Society that tests with this glider were unsuccessful.

According to an affidavit given in 1934 by Louis Darvarich, a friend of Whitehead, the two men made a motorized flight of about half a mile in Pittsburgh's Schenley Park in April or May 1899. Darvarich said they flew at a height of in a steam powered monoplane aircraft and crashed into a brick building. Darvarich said he was stoking the aircraft's boiler aboard the craft and was badly scalded in the accident, requiring several weeks in a hospital. Because of this incident, Whitehead was forbidden by the police to perform any more experiments in Pittsburgh. Whitehead's stated control method – a shifting of body weight – was said by Trimble to be insufficient to control a powered aircraft, and the supposed charcoal fired steam powerplant could not have been powerful enough to lift itself off the ground. A local historian claimed in 2015 that his research has uncovered evidence of the purported 1899 flight. Whitehead and Darvarich traveled to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to find factory jobs.

Whitehead did not give identifiers to his first aircraft, but according to Randolph and Harvey to the end of 1901 he had built "fifty six airplanes". A jointly designed biplane was built by Whitehead and fitted with a Whitehead 5 cylinder, water cooled 50 hp motor. The pointed bow of the craft comprised a metal water tank, with hot water being sprayed against the sides inside for cooling. Whitehead also built gliders until about 1906 and was photographed flying them.

In addition to his work on flying machines, Whitehead built engines. In 1904, he attended the St. Louis World's Fair and displayed an aeronautical motor. Air Enthusiast wrote: "Weisskopf's ability and mechanical skill could have made him a wealthy man at a time when there was an ever increasing demand for lightweight engines, but he was far more interested in flying." In 1908, Whitehead designed and built a 75 hp lightweight two cycle motor at the suggestion of aviation pioneer George A. Lawrence, who was having difficulty obtaining an aeronautic engine. The water cooled machine was designed so that functional cylinders continued to work if others failed, a safety factor to help avoid accidents due to engine failure. The men formed Whitehead Motor Works with an office in New York City and a factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut, that built motors in three sizes: 25, 40 and 75 hp, weighing 95, 145 and 200 pounds respectively. Whitehead's business practices were unsophisticated and he was sued by a customer, resulting in a threat that his tools and equipment would be seized. He hid his engines and most of his tools in a neighbor's cellar and continued his aviation work. One of his engines was installed by aviation pioneer Charles Wittemann in a helicopter built by Lee Burridge of the Aero Club of America, but the craft failed to fly. Whitehead's own 1911 studies of the vertical flight problem resulted in a 60 bladed helicopter, which, unmanned, lifted itself off the ground. Around 1915 Whitehead worked in a factory as a laborer and repaired motors to support his family. He died of a heart attack, on 10 October 1927, after attempting to lift an engine out of a car he was repairing. He stumbled onto his front porch and into his home, then collapsed dead in the house. In 1949, Crane published a new article in Air Affairs magazine which supported claims that Whitehead flew, but he made no reference to his first article, nor did he refute his previous evidence. In 1963, reserve Air Force major William O'Dwyer discovered photographs in the attic of a Connecticut house showing a 1910 Whitehead "Large Albatross" type biplane aircraft at rest on the ground. The Connecticut Aeronautical Historical Association (CAHA) asked him and his 9315th U. S. Air Force Reserve Squadron to investigate whether Whitehead had made powered flights. O'Dwyer continued his research for years and became convinced that Whitehead did fly before the Wright brothers. Former CAHA president Harvey Lippincott said in 1981 that Whitehead "may have flown 100 to 200 feet, 10 to 15 feet off the ground. This is confirmed by the witnesses that we have interviewed and talked with, and this seems reasonable for the state of the art in aviation at that time." O'Dwyer later contributed interviews of reputed flight witnesses to a second book by Stella Randolph The Story of Gustave Whitehead, Before the Wrights Flew, published in 1966. O'Dwyer and Randolph also co authored History by Contract, published in 1978, which criticized the Smithsonian Institution for signing an agreement with the estate of Orville Wright, requiring the Smithsonian to credit only the 1903 Wright Flyer for the first powered controlled flight. In 1968, Connecticut officially recognized Whitehead as "Father of Connecticut Aviation". The North Carolina General Assembly passed a resolution in 1985 which repudiated the Connecticut statement and gave "no credence" to the assertion that Whitehead was first to fly, citing "leading aviation historians and the world's largest aviation museum" who determined that there was "no historic fact, documentation, record or research to support the claim". In 2013, Jane's All the World's Aircraft published an editorial which asserted that Whitehead was first to make a powered controlled flight. The editorial relied heavily on researcher John Brown, whose claim that a vintage photo showed Whitehead's machine in powered flight was disproved by another researcher, Carroll F. Gray. Jane's corporate owner later issued a disclaimer concerning the editorial, stating that it contained the views of the editor but not necessarily the publisher. The Royal Aeronautical Society noted that: “All available evidence fails to support the claim that Gustave Whitehead made sustained, powered, controlled flights predating those of the Wright brothers.” The editors of Scientific American agree: "The data show that not only was Whitehead not first in flight, but that he may never have made a controlled, powered flight at any time.”

Stella Randolph stated in Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead (1937) that Richard Howell wrote the article about a Whitehead flight in the Bridgeport Herald, although the article carried no byline. O'Dwyer wrote that Howell made the drawing of the No. 21 in flight which accompanied the newspaper article, saying that Howell was "an artist before he became a reporter." Andy Kosch, who built and flew a replica of No. 21, said, "If you look at the reputation of the editor of the Bridgeport Herald in those days, you find that he was a reputable man. He wouldn't make this stuff up." Howell died before the controversy began concerning Whitehead. Gibbs Smith doubted the veracity of the account and complained that the newspaper article "reads like a work of juvenile fiction." Aviation historian Carroll Gray asserts that similarities in the Bridgeport Herald newspaper story show that it is a broad rewrite of an article published in the New York Sun newspaper on 9 June 1901. Gray points out that the Sun article described an unmanned test of a Whitehead flying machine on 3 May 1901, but the Bridgeport Herald changed this to a manned flight.

An early source of ammunition for both sides of the debate was a 1940 interview with Whitehead's wife Louise. Louise Whitehead told Randolph that she sewed the material for the wings on the plane and took care of the household, but did not watch any experiments. Whitehead's daughter Rose was three years old at the time of the controversial 1901 powered flight, and the other children had not yet been born.