Were the ‘first flights’ of the Wright brothers in 1903 preceded in 1901 by those of Gustav Whitehead?
Gustav Weisskopf, known as Whitehead, was of German origin. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, he made a name for himself in the press after the realization of several “flying machines”, ranging from gliders inspired by the work of Otto Lilienthal to motorized aircraft. At the time he was recognized, quoted by Octave Chanute in particular for his engines with a good mass/power ratio – he had previously been an apprentice motorist for Rudolf Diesel.
After testing gliders, he would have made several flights in the autumn of 1901 at the controls of a motorised aircraft of his own design, called Condor or n°21, and thus two years before the first motorised flights of the Wright brothers at the controls of their Flyer I, at Kittyhawk in December 1903. In March 2013, the editor of ‘Jane’s All the world’s aircraft’, a leading aviation publication, made it clear that Whitehead would have flown before the Wright brothers.
This led to much controversy in the US, where the Smithsonian Institute – exhibiting the Flyer I in its National Air & Space Museum in Washington – lobbied not to ‘revisit’ the history of the pioneers.
