Replica Tops Wright Flight, Aviators Claim

A group of aviation buffs said Tuesday they have flown a replica of a crude aircraft farther than the famed Kitty Hawk flight.

The replica of a crude, box-like airplane with flapping, bat-shaped wings made about 10 short test flights Monday, the longest of which was 230 feet--nearly twice the distance of the 120-foot Kitty Hawk flight, spokesman William O’Dwyer said Tuesday.

The group of engineers, former pilots and amateur historians claim Gustave Whitehead, a German emigrant who died penniless in Bridgeport, Conn., flew the original aircraft for about half a mile in 1901.

That was two years before the Wright Brothers’ famous Kitty Hawk flight on the wind-swept Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Same Horsepower

O’Dwyer, who has tried for about 20 years to put Whitehead in the history books ahead of Orville and Wilbur Wright, said Monday’s flights were powered by a modern engine with the same horsepower Whitehead used.

He stressed that Monday’s flights, therefore, cannot be considered a definitive refutation of the Wrights’ claim to be “first in flight.”

He said the flights were designed to test the aircraft’s structure and get some practice flying the fragile craft.

O’Dwyer said the success of the test flights should put additional pressure on the Smithsonian Museum in Washington to hold hearings into the Whitehead claim.