The Legend of No. 21
Examining the Story - and the Storytellers

By Louis Chmiel and Nick Engler

f all the people who claim to have flown before the Wright brothers, perhaps the most controversial is Gustave Whitehead. And with August 14, 2001 upon us, the controversy is heating up once again. According to believers in the Whitehead legend, August 14 is the true Centennial of Flight.

Whitehead, or Weisskopf in his native language, was a German immigrant with an undeniable passion for aviation. He was reasonably skilled with his hands and worked manual jobs in Boston, New York, Buffalo, Tonawanda, Johnstown, Pittsburgh, and finally Bridgeport, Connecticut. While in Boston in 1897 he built a glider for the Boston Aeronautical Society. The glider did not fly, whether because of Whitehead�s workmanship or the Society�s direction, it's hard to say. He continued building and experimenting with airplanes, and his supporters claim that he made powered flights in both Pittsburgh in 1899 and Bridgeport in 1901 and early 1902. His letters to periodicals and interviews in newspapers claim powered flights as early as 1898 and as late as 1903. He was, in fact, one of a several turn-of-the-century experimenters who regularly issued press releases that described successful flights with no real evidence to back his claims. Whitehead made his last airplane in 1908 � which did not fly � then went on to build helicopters which did not fly. The memory of Gustave Whitehead's aeronautical experiments faded as powered flight became a reality. They were briefly resurrected in 1913 during the "Patent Wars" between the Wright brothers and Glenn Curtiss. Curtiss' lawyers considered raising the possibility that Whitehead and others may have preceded the Wrights in powered flight but decided not to pursue this strategy, possibly for lack of evidence. Instead, Curtiss set about rebuilding Samuel Langley's Great Aerodrome that had crashed into the Potomac in 1903 to prove that it could have flown before the Wrights.

And there the matter rested until January 1935, when the magazine Popular Aviation published an article about Whitehead - "Did Whitehead Precede Wright In World's First Powered Flight?" by Stella Randolph and Harvey Phillips. The parts of this long article that made the readers sit up and take notice were the accounts of three powered flights, all alleged to have taken place before the Wright brother�s first powered flight on December 17, 1903.

1899 "...in the Oakland suburb of Pittsburgh in the Spring of 1899, [a]�steam-driven model had carried him and his assistant a distance of almost a mile. Firemen�lent their assistance that time to start the machine, while the assistant fed charcoal to the flame which heated water in the ordinary kitchen boiler which they were using. �[A]s they went onward and upward, steered by Gustave Whitehead at the controls in the front, they exceeded the distance originally planned and found themselves headed for a three-story brick house. Afraid to attempt to swerve, there was but one hope, namely that they might clear the top of the house. But they failed. Down fell the machine, all but demolished, while the agonized fireman in the back writhed with the pain of a scalded leg."

1901 "The mile and a half flight, made August 14, 1901, occurred at Lordship Manor, now a suburb of Bridgeport...One day, [the No. 21 airplane] was pushed into the street from the backyard of the modest house, 241 Pine Street, which was then the Whitehead home�Inside it, two engines were humming, one for propelling the wheels on which it was to get its start upon the ground, the other to turn the propellers when the machine was in the air. The small boys of the neighborhood came running, attracted by the unusual�.They drew excited breaths of awe, and whistled through their teeth as the creature dashed down the road, rose from the ground, not many feet higher than their heads, and flew above the dirt road that was then Pine Street."

1902 "On the afternoon of January 17, 1902, the weather looked promising. It was the day [Whitehead] and his helpers had been seeking, so they quietly took their new avion, No. 22, to the beach outside Bridgeport and started its kerosene motor. Gustave Whitehead took his place at the controls of the machine, the men gave it a preliminary push, and it trundled away on its three wheels and was off! The plane performed so admirably that its owner continued his flight for a distance of two miles over the Sound, following the shore line of the beach�The men pulled it ashore, and now Gustave Whitehead proposed to fly across the Sound�He took off again �[and] was steadily progressing out across the Sound�when it occurred to him that it might be interesting to see if he could make his machine turn�He turned the rudder slowly and drove one propeller faster than the other�Steadily and rapidly the machine came about until he was facing his starting point. As he neared his rejoicing helpers on the shore, he slowed the speed of the plane and again dropped it gently into the water. It had traveled a distance of approximately seven miles, not across the Sound, but it had made the first turn in the air so far as has been recorded"

Parts of Randolph and Phillip's tale were obvious fabrications. The account of the 1899 flight in a steam-powered airplane, with a fireman stoking the fire under the boiler, paints a wonderful picture in the best tradition of the American tall tale. The accounts of the 1901 and 1902 flights are more believable, but they begin to unravel if you poke around for a moment or two in the newspaper and magazine accounts that served as the sources for the Popular Aviation article.

Note: If you'd like to read Randolf and Phillips Popular Aviation article in its entirety, click HERE.

Later, he flew this adaptation of a Lilienthal glider.

Whitehead's airplane #21, built in 1901. He claimed to have made short flights in this aircraft. Airplane #22, which is alleged to have made longer flights, was very similar.

Airplane #21 from the rear -- this aircraft had wings very similar to Lilienthal's gliders.

Later, Whitehead built this biplane. It failed to fly.

Whitehead's helicopter in 1911. It has over 60 small propellers. The engine that he used was not powerful enough at the speed required for lift off.

Much of that article was inspired by a story that appeared in the Bridgeport Herald on August 18, 1901, and reported a flight that Whitehead claimed to have made four days earlier. This story had fairly wide coverage - it also ran in several New England newspapers within a few weeks of each other in 1901, among them the Boston Transcript and the New York Herald. Like Randolph and Phillip�s retelling, this account is hard to swallow in places. For example, the reporter claims that before Whitehead flew, he sent the No. 21 aloft with 220 pounds of sand in place of the pilot. The machine landed safely, the sand was unharmed, so Whitehead took the controls. Owing to fantastic details like these, the story lacked what advertisers have come to call verisimilitude - the appearance of truth. So despite wide coverage and implications that mankind had successfully flown, the public yawned. After all, this was an old game in late Victorian America. Whitehead used these newspaper stories to announce that he was taking on a partner - a mysterious Texan named W. D. Custead - and the two were beating the bushes for additional funding, even though Custead claimed to represent a "company of Southern gentlemen with unlimited capital." The multiple newspaper accounts had all the hallmarks of yet another public relations campaign designed to attract investors.

Note: If you'd like to read the Bridgeport Herald article in its entirety, click HERE.

Other sources, many of them letters and statements from Whitehead himself, contradict the Bridgeport Herald. In the June 1901 issue of Scientific American, Whitehead tells the readers that the No. 21 can make a turn in the air by varying the speed of the propellers. He has an engine which pumps gas under high pressure to pistons driving the propellers, and he can vary the pressure of the gas to each prop. The August 18, 1901 edition of the Bridgeport Herald tells us a little more about this engine - it is fueled by "rapid gas explosions" from acetylene generated from calcium carbide. Yet in that same issue Gustave Whitehead gives a firsthand account of a turn he made in the air to avoid a clump of trees and asserts, "I had no means of steering (italics ours) by using the machinery." This just two months after telling the Scientific American audience he could turn by varying the speed of the props! So he shifted his weight, the airplane banked into a turn, and he avoided disaster.

Much later, in a letter in The American Inventor in April 1902, Whitehead remembered that he could vary the speed of the props to make a turn over Long Island Sound in his January flight. However, according to that same letter, he was using a simple kerosene engine to run them. He had apparently discarded the acetylene engine, and with it went the alleged means for varying gas pressure and prop speed.

We asked Andy Kosch, who built and flew a replica of the No. 21 in 1986 and 1987 about these discrepancies. Andy maintained that Whitehead had some sort of "transmission" in the No. 22 to vary the prop speed, although Whitehead did not mention it in his letters to publications. Andy also told us that he doubted that the quotes ascribed to Whitehead in the Bridgeport Herald article were really his own words. "A German immigrant wouldn�t talk like that," Andy observed. This begs a bigger question - if the reporter was putting words in Whitehead�s mouth, what else was he making up?

Other details in these sources run the gamut from puzzling to incredulous. In November, the Bridgeport Herald and the New York World reported the incredulous: Whitehead was within spitting distance from having an aircraft factory up and running. He would be selling six passenger airplanes for $2000 apiece, according to an interview. As for puzzling, the letters Whitehead sent to Scientific American and The American Inventor reveal that the horsepower-to-weight ratio of Whitehead�s engines declined with each new model. According to his own telling, the efficiency of the acetylene engine driving the propellers in the No. 21 was 1.75 pounds power horsepower. Four months later in the No. 22, Whitehead uses a kerosene engine with an efficiency of approximately 3 pounds per horsepower, a drop of over 70 per cent.

In all fairness, there is some evidence that Whitehead had some skill as an engine maker in later years. Charles Whittaman, an airplane builder on Long Island, bought two engines from him in 1908 and 1910 and was well-satisfied - enough to call him a "very able designer." But in the years in question - 1899 to 1902 - his words and actions are impossible to reconcile. He tells us he is getting wonderful results from each new airplane and engine; then he discards them, never flying them again.

Aeronautical engineering, like all scientific disciplines, depends on reproducible results for true advancement. One of the most incredulous parts of the Whitehead legend is that he never seems to have any. Rather than make test flights and investigate the envelope of what he claims is a capable flying machine, his No. 21, he immediately goes on to a six-passenger version (No. 21-1/2?) and then No. 22. He flies No. 22 only twice that we are aware of, and goes on to fly gliders in 1904 and perhaps afterwards. In 1906 and 1908, we have a documented failures of two powered airplanes, the last of which he built for Stanley Beach, son of the editor of Scientific American. Why couldn�t Gustave Whitehead reproduce the results he claimed earlier?

Despite its discrepancies and contradictory sources, the Popular Aviation magazine article lit a fire under a few interested scholars. The Harvard University Committee on Research in the Social Science sent John Crane, a professor of economics to Connecticut. He began to interview the residents of Bridgeport to find out more details about Whitehead's 1901 and 1902 flights. To his surprise, he found only one person who could remember Whitehead's flights, despite the mention of "affidavits" in Randolph and Phillips' article. He interviewed several people who had business dealings with Whitehead, among them John J. Dvorak, a businessman who spent time in Bridgeport waiting for Whitehead to produce an engine. Dvorak told Crane that during the six months he spent in Whitehead�s home town in 1904 - before Whitehead was making glider flights - he never met a single person who could remember seeing Whitehead fly. Crane published the results of his investigation in an article in the National Aeronautical Association Magazine in December 1936. It was called "Did Whitehead Actually Fly?"

This state of amnesia didn't last very long, however. In 1940, 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 condensed in Reader's Digest in July 1945. It ran under the heading of "First" by Mort Weisenger.

"In 1940, (Joseph Nathan) Kane went on the air with Famous Firsts, parading such milestone-makers as Clarence Birdseye, perfecter of the frozen-food process; Anna Jarvis, founder of Mother's Day; and the late Colonel Jacob Ruppert, whose Yankee team was the first modern ball club to cop three pennants in a row.

"It was during one of these programs that Kane presented Charles Whitehead of Bridgeport, Conn., as "the son of Gustave Whitehead, the first man to fly a heavier-than-air machine � two years, four months and three days previous to the Wright flight at Kitty Hawk. " This was such a sensational claim that it cost Kane several hundred dollars to convince skeptics. At his own expense he mailed out thousands of photostatted newspaper clippings describing in detail a half-mile motor-controlled flight made by Gustave Whitehead, a Bavarian, on August 14, 1901. These were supplemented with copies of 11 affidavits signed by eyewitnesses�"

Orville Wright was still living at this time. He was aware of the Whitehead story, but did not think anyone took it seriously until it made its way into Reader's Digest. The 1945 story prompted him to write a short rebuttal, "The Mythical Whitehead Flight," in the U.S. Air Services Magazine in August, 1945.

"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.I n 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 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."

What Orville didn't say in that rebuttal was that he suspected that the Whitehead story was being manipulated by an old nemesis, Albert Zahm. Zahm was one of the rising stars at the Smithsonian Aerodynamical Laboratory (the forerunner of NACA, later NASA) when the Wrights launched their patent suit against Glenn Curtiss in 1909. Zahm had been an expert witness for Curtiss and also wrote the report on the performance of Langley's 1903 Great Aerodrome when Curtiss modified it and made a short hop-flight in 1914. This was done to establish the possibility in the courts that another aircraft may have been capable of flight before the Wright Flyer. Zahm's report, which glossed over the modifications Curtiss had made to the Aerodrome to make it airworthy, incurred Orville's wrath and began an arm-wrestling match between Orville Wright and the Smithsonian Institution that Orville eventually won in the court of public opinion. This reflected badly on the Smithsonian, which passed the blame to Zahm, and Zahm was forever trying to prove he had been wronged. In fact, he issued his own rebuttal to Orville's in 1945, entitled "Whitehead First To Fly With Petrol Power" and even offered a reward for a photo of any Whitehead airplane in flight.

In his book Wilbur and Orville, author Fred Howard explains the involvement of Albert Zahm in the Whitehead story thus:

The campaign to discredit the brothers had not ended with the termination of the suit against Curtiss in 1917. The anti-Wright propaganda had never ceased to proliferate, and its source in Orville's opinion was Albert Zahm. Zahm had left the Smithsonian's Aerodynamical Laboratory in 1915 to become chief research engineer of the Curtiss Aeroplane Company. Two years later he left Curtiss to become director of the U.S. Navy Aerodynamics Laboratory. In 1925 he was awarded the Laetare Medal by his alma mater, Notre Dame University, as the outstanding Catholic layman of the year for his work as scientist and pioneer in the field of aerial navigation. When the Guggenheim Chair of Aeronautics was established in the Library of Congress in 1929, Albert Zahm became the chair's first incumbent. Since his primary task as chief of the library's Aeronautics Division was to acquire aeronautical material for the library's collections, he was in an ideal position to carry out his campaign of belittlement. The claim of any person to have flown before the Wright brothers was carefully considered. Zahm's most successful effort in this line was the creation of a revival of interest in the discredited German-American Gustave Weisskopf -- or Whitehead -- who claimed to have made at least two flights before the Wright brothers first flew in 1903."

Orville was aware of Randolph and Phillip�s article, and was aware that Randolph expanded the article into a book in 1937, The Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead. He had heard from several sources that Albert Zahm had urged its publication. Stella Randolph, who worked in a doctor's office and had no expertise in aviation, was persuaded by Harvey Phillips to collaborate on the Popular Aviation article about Whitehead. Afterwards, Zahm apparently encouraged her to expand the article into a book. Orville did not comment publicly on either publication, but privately told friends the book was "too incredible and ridiculous to require serious refutation."

Orville, however, may have been mistaken in thinking that Zahm and Randolph were in cahoots. In later years, Randolph often remarked that she did not get along with Zahm and felt he was trying to use her, even steal her research. His rabid anti-Wright attitude put her off and she did everything she could to distance herself from him.

It�s also apparent that Zahm had his own agenda, independent of Randolph. He had been publishing his version of aviation history for many years before he and Randolph crossed paths, beginning with his book Aerial Navigation in 1911. This publication downplayed the role of the Wrights in pioneer aviation, painting the invention of the airplane as the slow accumulation of data and experience by many different experimenters. He took one last swing at the Wright brothers in 1945 with a forty-page booklet, Early Powerplane Fathers. In it, Gustave Whitehead was the most successful of Zahm's four candidates for the true inventors of the airplane, all of which preceded the Wrights.

Albert Zahm retired from the Library of Congress in the same year he published Early Powerplane Fathers was published. He was probably gratified with the resurgence of public interest Gustave Whitehead, although that was due more to Kane�s radio broadcast and the Reader�s Digest article than it was to his or even Stella Randolph�s efforts. That interest ratcheted up a notch in 1964, when Air Force Reserve Major William O' Dwyer produced some hitherto unknown photos of Whitehead�s airplanes and joined forces with Randolph to have Whitehead declared the "father of Connecticut aviation." That precipitated another book (History by Contract) and a few television documentaries, complete with a newly exposed "conspiracy" to keep Whitehead from receiving the recognition due him. Randolph and O�Dwyer claimed to have discovered a clandestine agreement between the Wright estate and the Smithsonian Institution that the 1903 Wright Flyer would be returned if the Smithsonian ever recognized anyone other than the Wrights to be the first people to make a "controlled, sustained, powered flight." The so-called "secret" agreement was public record and had been mentioned - even explained in detail - by several Wright biographers. Ironically, Orville and his heirs put this agreement in place to protect the Wright brothers from Albert Zahm - and any future Albert Zahms that the Smithsonian might someday put in a position of authority.

Today, the Whitehead legend needs no help from a Randolph or a Zahm to sustain itself. There are groups of zealous supporters in America and Germany to keep the flame burning. These organizations get periodic shots in the arm from the media which knows - like the late Victorian magazines and newspapers before them - that the Whitehead story draws an audience, regardless of its scientific or historic merits.

When called upon by the media, the supporters of Whitehead rely on three major themes to argue his case.

• Whitehead never flew his aircraft more than once or twice because he was a perfectionist.
• Affidavits and other reports from eyewitnesses prove Whitehead flew.
• Recently-developed replicas of Whitehead�s airplanes prove the originals were airworthy.

Perfectionist - Whitehead supporters explain that the reason he never reproduced his flights, and hence was lost to history, was that he was never satisfied with them. This idea runs through the advocacy of Whitehead beginning with Randolph�s work in the 1930s. In her book, The Lost Flights of Gustave Whitehead, she writes:

"The flights of Gustave Whitehead were lost from the pages of aviation history for two reasons: They were premature - the public was not willing to believe such nonsense as a man flying - and Whitehead was dissatisfied with his own success.

"In attempts to fly Whitehead was a perfectionist. He had studied the birds too much to be satisfied with anything less than bird performance."

Contrast this view of a perfectionist with the reports in the newspapers in 1901, just after his alleged August flight. A November New York World article titled "Flying Machines Soon at $2,000 Each," quotes Whitehead as saying, "A flying machine will be out on the market that will accommodate six persons, the cost will be about $2,000." Remember that Whitehead had only recently discovered he needed a steering system for his airplanes and he was still two months away from actually testing it, by his own telling. Yet here he is announcing the impending availability of airplanes that will carry passengers. Their very lives will depend on his untested steering system. Perfectionists don�t usually overlook these sorts of details.

Affidavits - Another drum that Andy Kosch and others beat is that there are just too many people who remember seeing Whitehead fly for there not to have been some flying going on. There are several affidavits that Stella Randolph collected from people in the 1930s who say they saw Whitehead fly some 35 years previously. And these stories persist, even today. "Bridgeport people stop in all the time and tell me their grandfathers and grandmothers remembered seeing Whitehead fly," Kosch told us. There is little doubt that these people are telling the truth. Whitehead did make some public glider flights after 1904. Stanley Beach once towed the Whitehead/Beach airplane aloft behind his automobile and people saw it in tethered flight. But did they see Whitehead fly on August 14, 1901? Or did they simply misremember flights they had seen later as children? To give you an idea of just how one�s memory can play tricks, read Stella Randolph�s own words in the opening to her 1978 book, History by Contract, as she reconstructs a childhood experience:

"My father, always interested in anything progressive, read about the efforts of the Wrights in a bee-keepers journal, published by A.I. Root of Dayton, Ohio. (He was actually from Medina, 175 miles away - authors). I was a little girl, but well recall (italics ours) hearing my father exclaim with delight, "Those boys are going to fly." My childish imagination pictured them with flapping wings and wondered how it could be. One year and two weeks before the Wright�s acclaimed success, December 17, 1903, my father died; he had not the satisfaction of seeing his prophecy come true."

To those familiar with early aviation history, the error in her statement is obvious. Amos Root wrote his story in late autumn of 1904, almost two years after Randolph�s father had died. Given that, it is puzzling that Whitehead supporters insist on relying on testimony taken decades after alleged flights from people who were children at the time, just as Randolph was when her father allegedly remarked on a magazine article that had not yet been written.

Replicas - More recently, supporters of Gustave Whitehead under the direction of Andy Kosch have attempted to bolster their case by building and flying replicas of Whitehead�s No. 21, reconstructed from photos and sketches. In doing so they are essentially conducting experiments in "new archaeology," a discipline that has developed since the 1970s. A "new archaeologist" recreates the circumstances of a historic or prehistoric event as closely as possible and deals with the problems that crop up using the technology available at the time to better understand that event and the people who lived through it. Many such experiments are launched to test an ancient technology and see if it is possible to shape an arrowhead or raise a pyramid using such-and-such a method. These experiments do not prove what happened, they simply test the possibilities - any new archaeologist worth his flint will tell you the same. By the same token, the flights of Whitehead replicas do not prove that Whitehead ever flew. They simply indicate the possibility, despite the assertions from both America and Germany that their replicas have proved the validity of Whitehead story. Both sets of experiments are suspect in any event, considering both replicas used modern ultralight engines and high-speed propellers. In new archaeological terminology, this is a no-no.

A hundred years later, the Whitehead legend has more vigor than it did when Whitehead was actually building airplanes. Even his airplanes seem to be more successful, as the replicas of the No. 21 have shown by flying more than once or twice. You can probably look forward to more replica flights and escalating claims in 2003 as reporters look for offbeat angles from which to report the Centennial of Flight. That�s a good thing - it creates a lively debate and raises public interest in pioneer aviation. The more astute of the newly interested will read the primary sources and discover the contradictions and personal agendas that obscure the history behind the legend. They will also discover that for all the time and energy this debate continues to absorb, it is remarkably unimportant. While Whitehead believers insist that he was first to fly, no one claims that his work had any effect on early aviation or the development of aeronautic science. Even if someone someday produces a photo of No. 21 in flight on August 14, 1901, it will be nothing more than a footnote, a curious anomaly in the history of aviation. Stella Randolph�s vindication and Albert Zahm�s revenge, if it ever arrives, will seem hardly worth the lifetimes they invested.

Regarding Whitehead himself, he deserves to be respected and admired for the enthusiasm and passion he brought to the quest for flight. His statements to young children that some day they would see planes crossing the sky as regularly as birds certainly mark him as a man of vision. He was an imaginative and innovative thinker whose scientific and mechanical skills did not parallel his sense of possibility. In the face of these qualities, however, it�s hard to ignore his penchant for exaggeration, obfuscation, and oftentimes bizarrely contradictory proclamations.

• Gustave Whitehead, Aviation Pioneer -- A group called the Historical Flight Research Commitee Gustave Whitehead (HFRC-GV) in Germany maintains this website to explore the Whitehead side of the story. The pages are presented in both German and English.
• Airplane No. 21 Replica -- Both Andy Gush of Bridgeport, Connecticut and the HFRC-GV has built and test flown replicas of the aircraft that Whitehead claimed to have flown in 1901. Neither of these were faithful replicas in that they used two 45 hp ultralight engines and high speed props, generating much more power and thrust than would have been available to Whitehead. Nonetheless, it's an ambitious and exciting adventure in new archaeology, and we applaud their work to illuminate this poorly understood chapter of aviation history. Beware of accepting the conclusions of Rush and the HFRC-GV  at face value, however. New archaeology was developed to gain insight into the possible experiences of people in times past. It does not prove what did or did not happen.