Who Flew First?
On Monday ABC screens Who Flew First? a docu-drama that will challenge the notion that the Wright Brothers were the first to fly in December 1903.
This is produced by Artemis International (Who Do You Think You Are?).
Who Flew First is a docu-drama about the controversy over the world’s first motorized flight. Every school child is taught that the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright flew first in December 1903. But the Australian aviation expert John Brown claims that the German born immigrant to the US, Gustave Whitehead, flew two years before the Wright Brothers, in August 1901 in Bridgeport Connecticut and he has evidence to back his case. Opposing Brown are historians supporting the official view that the Wright Brothers flew first. They claim that the 17 eye-witness accounts from the 1930s attesting to Whitehead’s flights are unreliable. But a discovery is made that in return for the right to display the 1903 Flyer in their museum, the Smithsonian
Institution agreed that it will never claim that anyone flew before the Wright bothers. History may not be as certain as we thought.
9.20pm Monday December 5th on ABC.
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