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Who really was first in flight?
By Marc Kovac
COLUMBUS
A nonprofit group has offered some support to Ohio’s efforts to retain the Wright Brothers’ place in aviation history, over calls from at least one Connecticut lawmaker to direct first-in-flight honors to one of his state’s residents.
The National Aviation Heritage Alliance of Dayton on Thursday announced plans to donate several books on Wilbur and Orville Wright to the Connecticut State Library, in honor of National Aviation Day later this month.
The reading list includes “The Bishop’s Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright” by Tom D. Crouch; “Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention” by Peter Jakab; and “The Wright Brothers” by David McCullough.
The alliance’s chairman said in a statement that the gift was aimed at improving “Connecticut lawmakers’ access to sound historical information. ...”
“From recent legislation and statements by Connecticut legislators – including remarks aimed specifically at NAHA – we’ve seen a need for more and better knowledge about aviation history among Connecticut’s lawmakers,” Frank Winslow offered.
He added later, “We did an online search of the collection and found very few books on the subject. We think it might help Sen. [Kevin] Kelly and others in Connecticut to have better access to well-researched information gathered by eminent historians.”
Lawmakers in Ohio and Connecticut have been somewhat at odds over the Wright Brothers, with some of the latter giving credit to Gustave Whitehead for the first controlled powered flight more than two years before the Wrights were at Kitty Hawk, N.C.
A resolution adopted by the Ohio House earlier this year counters such assertions, noting that “scholarly research by respected and academically credentialed historians over many decades has found no evidence to substantiate the Whitehead claims,” and a publicized digitized photo of his purported flight “reveals only indistinct shapes.”
Connecticut’s Kelly, in a statement released through a spokesman Thursday, thanked the alliance for the book donation, but he remained firm in his commitment to Whitehead.
The books “will only help us here in Connecticut as we continue to shine a spotlight on a pioneering aviation event that took place in our state 114 years ago,” he said. “Gustave Whitehead successfully flew his Model 21 aircraft on Aug. 14, 1901, in Connecticut. This is widely believed to have been the first manned flight documented with eyewitness accounts. We thank Ohio for the publicity, and we hope public interest in this historic event will continue to soar.
“Ohio is a great state, and there’s no question that the Wright brothers will retain their place in aviation history. They just weren’t first in flight,” Kelly said.