Whitehead No. 21
| No.21 | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Gustave Whitehead and his 1901 monoplane taken near Whitehead's Pine Street shop. His infant daughter, Rose, sits on her father's lap, and the engine that powers the front landing-gear wheels is on the ground in front of the others. | |
| Role | experimental |
| Manufacturer | Gustave Whitehead |
| Designer | Gustave Whitehead |
| First flight | purportedly August 14, 1901 |
| Primary user | Gustave Whitehead |
| Produced | 1901 |
| Number built | 1 |
The Whitehead No.21 was the aircraft that aviation pioneer Gustave Whitehead claimed to have flown near Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 14, 1901. Mainstream aviation scholars dispute the flight; in 1980, C.H. Gibbs-Smith called the story a "flight of fancy". More recently, the 100th anniversary edition of Jane's All the World's Aircraft has credited Whitehead as the first man to build and fly an operational heavier-than-air flying machine.
An description and photographs of Whitehead's aircraft appeared in Scientific American in June 1901, stating that the "novel flying machine" had just been completed, and was "is now ready for preliminary trials."
The flight was reported in the August 18, 1901 issue of the Bridgeport Sunday Herald and was reprinted in the New York Herald, the Boston Transcript and the Washington Times, which ran it on 23 August 1901. Within months, the story ran in nine other newspapers in all parts of the country, as far away as California and Arizona.
Photographs exist showing the aircraft on the ground, but there are no photographs known of the aircraft in flight. A drawing of the aircraft in flight accompanied the Sunday Herald article. The No.21 was a monoplane powered by two engines—one for the wheels during the ground run, the other driving the propellers for flight.
The No.21 was a wire-braced monoplane with bat-like wings and triangular horizontal tail. There was no vertical fin, and lateral control was intended to be accomplished by shifting the pilot's body sideways.
The wings were constructed with radial bamboo ribs and covered with silk, and had a span of 36 ft (11 m). They had noticeable dihedral, which would have contributed to the aircraft's stability had it ever flown, and could be folded like a fan for transport.
The fuselage was of rectangular box section with constant height, curved to taper inwards at front and rear when seen from above. Four small wheels were fixed to the bottom.
Although having two engines and twin propellers, the aircraft was not a conventional twin. It had separate engines for ground running and flight, both designed and made by Whitehead. The ground engine was of 10 hp (7.5 kW) and drove the wheels to reach takeoff speed. Propulsion was then changed to a 20 hp (15 kW) acetylene engine driving two counter-rotating tractor propellers mounted on outriggers. The aircraft could supposedly take off under its own power and without assistance.
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Wikipedia