COLUMBUS, Ohio – First it was North Carolina. Now it’s Connecticut. Ohio may have to battle with all 49 of the other states for the right to claim to be the birthplace of manned flight.
It appears from a resolution moving through the Statehouse that Ohio lawmakers don’t buy Connecticut’s claim that one of its aviators beat the Wright brothers to the first successful airplane flight by two years.
The Ohio measure got its first hearing Tuesday.
If passed, it would repudiate Connecticut’s claim “that Gustave Whitehead successfully flew a powered, heavier-than-air machine of his own design on August 14, 1901, or on any other date.”
The two states have been at it for years.
Connecticut passed a law in 2013 declaring Whitehead’s 1901 flight as beating the Wright Brothers’ December 1903 flight off Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
A Dayton aviation historian has said the Wrights win by being first to combine airplane lift, control and thrust systems