Released Today Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Controversial Book 'Wright Brothers, Wrong Story' Declares One Brother Flew

Just Released Book (Dec 4) Wright Brothers Wrong Story points to Wilbur Wright as the Man who Invented Flight with his brother Orville changing history to claim credit. Smithsonian brings new thesis on Wright Brothers Historic Flight to light.

A new book has turned aviation upside down with amazing reviews https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/william-hazelgrove/wright-brothers-wrong-story and a full write-up in the Smithsonian Magazine https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-wilbur-wright-deserves-bulk-credit-first-flight-180970714 with the assertion that Wilbur Wright was the man responsible for inventing the first plane capable of powered flight.

Bestselling Author William Hazelgrove's http://williamhazelgrove.com new book "Wright Brothers, Wrong Story" has set the assumed belief that the brothers worked in tandem on its head by delving into the papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright and emerging with a very different story than the standard team story of two men who banded together to produce the worlds first airplane. As pointed out in the Daily Mail, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6411537/New-book-claims-Orville-Wright-exaggerated-role-invention-flight.html the book explores the family life of the brothers as well and the strange proclivities of the insular Wright children who never left home. 

By far the best published work on the Wright brothers' personal and professional lives. Thought-provoking and controversial in highlighting Wilbur's brilliance in aeronautics and showing how he clearly overshadowed his brother's contribution to manned flight.Alan C. Carey, Author of "We Flew Alone: Men and Missions of the United States Navy's B-24 Liberator Squadrons"

"I wanted to demythologize the Wright Brothers and find out who these two men were who dropped out of high school, never married, and never left home," Hazelgrove said in a recent interview. The book has been making waves in the aviation community that has stuck to the view that both brothers equally created the worlds first plane. "What people don't understand is this was Wilbur's dream and that he solved the head-cracking physics of flight and he went down to Kitty Hawk alone initially... it was his plane first and last."

• The book claims Orville Wright exaggerated his role in the invention and rewrote history in a one-sided biography of himself 
• "In Wright Brothers, Wrong Story," author William Hazelgrove reveals the real genius was older brother Wilbur, who died nine years after the first flight in 1912
• Orville, who died in 1948, claimed to have come up with wing warping - Wilbur's big breakthrough and was also photographed in the famous flying photo 
• Wilbur's letters to his friend and fellow inventor Octave Chanute show Orville was not involved in any of his plans 
• It was only when Wilbur arrived in Kitty Hawk, NC to test his flight in 1900 -  the boys' father Milton sent Orville to help him
• The book reveals Orville and Wilbur showed no interest in the opposite sex and were raised to stay at home and believe only "family could be trusted"

The book is released by Prometheus Books and available everywhere. 

The Odd Couple of Wilbur and Orville Wright

Orville always made sure his socks matched. He made sure they had a bit of color. His mustache was trimmed perfectly. His hands were immaculate. His collar snapped, his eyes clear as water. He inspected his shoes carefully after they were shined. His derby was top of the line and fitted just so. Orville would work on greasy engines and the flyer in a smock and never smudge his starched white shirt. The world was at attention when Orville walked in the room. Unlike his brother.

Wilburs skin was rough from sun and wind burnt. His clothes tended to hang on his lanky frame. His eyes bore right through a person. Some said he had the gaze of a hawk and was always intent on the next thing. He did get dirty from working on the plane. He didn't bother to wash his hands and his nails would get grease stained. His shoes were smudged. His socks matched but they were black. He was more rugged than his brother.

When they returned from Kitty Hawk Orville would bleach his faced with lemon juice to reduce the tan. Within a week he was back to his normal pallor. Wilbur remained dark and tan and could have cared less. He was trying to figure out how to make a plane fly.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Five Things You Didn't Know About the Wright Brothers

The first thing you don't know is that history was decided by a coin toss on December 14 1903 in Kitty Hawk. The Wright Brothers tossed a coin into the windswept air of Kill Devil Hills to decide who would fly first. Wilbur won the toss and on December 14 he went up and then down. The flight was not successful. That left Orville to fly on December 17 when the 1903 flyer would leave the earth for twelve seconds.

The Second thing is that Orville Wright had a girlfriend. Mabel Beck. History has told us that the Wright Brothers had no time for women with their pursuit of flying. Orville did. Mabel Beck was his secretary and she would become his secret lover. This would not be revealed until the 1990s when a man who saw the two in a lovers moment finally told a newspaper of what he saw in the 1930's. Wilbur had no girlfriend we know of.

The third thing is that both brothers dropped out of high school and lived at home with their father and sister their whole lives. They had no desire to leave the family home even as adults after they had become famous. Orville would finally buy a mansion after Wilbur died and the family would move there but neither brother ever would feel the urge to start a life apart from the family.

The fourth thing is Wilbur went to Kitty Hawk alone the first time and almost died. He had to cross Albemarle Sound to get to the Outer Banks. A storm hit while he was crossing and the sailboat took on water. He had to bail water to keep the boat afloat. His brother would later join him once Wilbur had set up camp.

The final thing is this. Wilbur Wright invented the airplane with help from his brother. This goes against the Wright Myth they did it together. But the truth is only Wilbur had the intellectual horsepower to crack the Gordian knot of human flight.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Amazing Kirkus Review of Wright Brothers Wrong Story

The idea that Orville and Wilbur Wright were equals in ushering in the era of manned flight is a myth, posits Hazelgrove (Al Capone and the 1933 World’s Fair) in this intriguing recasting of the brothers’ now-legendary story. “The truth was,” he declares, “that Wilbur was the primary inventor and pilot”; Orville was “a glorified mechanic assisting his older, smarter, genius brother.” This fact was buried due primarily to two factors: the famous photo of the 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, which immortalized Orville’s turn in the plane and thereby eclipsed Wilbur’s subsequent longer ride, and Wilbur’s early death from typhoid fever in 1912, which gave his brother 36 years to shape their story. Hazelgrove makes a strong case, citing numerous primary sources, notably Wilbur’s correspondence with engineer and aviation researcher Octave Chanute… Hazelgrove’s original take on two of the pioneers of human flight will greatly interest flight buffs and popular-history aficionados — Publishers Weekly

For more than a century, Wilbur and Orville Wright have been touted as equal partners in the invention of the flying machine and of the concept of manned flight. Yet in this intriguing, well-researched treatise, Hazelgrove (Shots Fired in Terminal 2: A Witness to the Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting Reflects on America’s Mass Shooting Epidemic, 2017, etc.) rejects that notion in favor of a more logical one: Wilbur was the genius behind the theory of putting a man in a machine that could soar like a bird, and Orville followed his brother’s instructions, assisting in the mechanical aspects of building the first airplane. The author also points out that it was just by chance that it was Orville’s turn to test the plane when the first photograph was taken. This coincidence made many assume that the brothers were operating on the same level, but as Hazelgrove demonstrates convincingly, they were far from it. Not only does he discuss the events at Kitty Hawk; the author delves into the Wright family dynamics: of the father who knew Wilbur was the brighter of the two boys; of how they remained at home their whole lives along with their sister, who only married late in life; and of the impact the death of their mother had on the children. Hazelgrove also ponders the sexualities of the three siblings and Wilbur’s grave illness, which may have given him the time in bed necessary to dream of flying. For anyone curious about the details behind the invention of the flying machine, this engaging book will inform and entertain as it turns an assumed piece of aviation history upside down.

Aviation history does a loop-the-loop as the author shares new and exciting insight into the history of the Wright brothers.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Was Wilbur and Orville Wrights Sister Gay?

The sex lives of the Wrights are all mixed up. They all lived at home. They all had an overbearing father who proclaimed the world evil.  Orville had a secret girlfriend and Wilbur professed not to ever have time for any kind of relationship. Then there is Katherine Wright, the enigma wrapped up in a riddle. You don't start out researching with an agenda. You come to it like an explorer looking for gold. The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright in the Library of Congress were my gold mine. They are bound in two volumes that are probably five inches across each. About 2500 pages in all. And buried in those 2500 pages of letters, diaries, official documents, drawings, are the letters of one Katherine Wright who dutifully cared for Wilbur and Orville and her father most of her life. The brothers never left home and neither did Katherine until much later.

Pictures of Katherine Wright are not kind. She is a plain almost boyish woman with wire rimmed glasses who stares directly at the camera in many of her photos. Her father Bishop Wright demanded from his daughter she keep the home after his wife died. Add to that her two brothers who also needed looking after as they scurried off to Kitty Hawk. So where is all this going. Katherine's primary relationships from high school through college and into adulthood were with woman and one in particular. Her letters to Margaret are that of two people in a relationship. Margaret was her best friend and they spent lots of time together, going to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago on an extended trip when Margarets husband was away.

As you read the correspondence a glimmer of suspicion begins. We live in an age  when being gay has not a sixteenth of the connotation it did at the turn of the century. Katherine's letters gush about Margaret as they pursued their friendship and the pictures are one after another of the two women enjoying each others company. There is no smoking gun here but it would make sense. Katherine was a tough no nonsense woman who enjoyed putting bad boys in their place in her classroom. Katherine would marry at 55  a widower after a long correspondence. Orville would never speak to her again for leaving the family home. This of course is all conjecture, but the question is there along with all the other questions regarding the secretive Wright family....was Katherine Wright gay?

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

How Wilbur Wright Almost Died Going to Kitty Hawk

In 1900 Wilbur Wright wanted to go somewhere to test his new glider. He had been working on it above the bike shop and now he had found a perfect place where wind was constant and sand abundant for soft landings. The problem was it the Outer Banks of Kitty Hawk North Carolina, a desolate fishing village of castaways and nerdowells that was  almost impossible to get to. After taking a train to Elizabeth City Wilbur had to get a across Alebmarle Sound. Kitty Hawk was on a spit of land that kept the Atlantic Ocean at bay and was the home of many shipwrecks.

The man in the derby from Dayton Ohio found one Israel Perry to take him across the sound. They set out in a small skiff to get to his boat moored offshore. This was his first inclination there might be a problem. The boat immediately took on water. Wilbur and Perrys son began to bail like mad and when he asked the condition of the sailing schooner Perry told him the skiff was in better shape than the sailboat. They reached the boat and Wilbur found out this was true. They headed across intro the teeth of a lingering hurricane.

Wilbur now was bailing for his life.  When the main sail blew down he had to to out on the top of the boat to retrieve it. The weather turned so bad that Perry headed for a sand bar with only the jib acting as a kite. The boat was in danger of being swamped and Wilbur bailed with Perrys son to keep from gong to the bottom. When they finally reached the other side of the bay in the morning, Wilbur fell asleep on the dock waking to the sleepy isolated community of Kitty Hawk. He had survived. In three years he would look down upon the Albermarle Sound...from the sky.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

Orville Wright's Girlfriend

We have been told the Wright Brothers are stick men. They had no carnal knowledge and didn't want any. They come through history as these sawdust figures without urges, needs, bodily fluids. They are men in derbies and high collars hurrying to the next meeting on how to make a better airplane. Historians marvel that these men were so singularly focused on cracking the code of flight that they did not need women or anything else that mere mortals required. But...like most myths, it is simply not true.

Her name was Mabel Beck. She was Orville's secretary, protector, keeper of all things, and his girlfriend. This would not be revealed until the 1990's and then ignored by historians and all people writing on the Wright Brothers. But it was true. Many suspected it for years. After Wilbur had died Mabel moved onto the second brother. She had been Wilbur's secretary for years and then became Orville's. But Wilbur died in 1912 and that left Orville and Mabel 36 years to get to know each other before he succumbed to a heart attack in 1948.

In those years a secret relationship between the world famous inventor and the Dayton local girl developed. The smoking gun in all of this would happen during the Great Depression when a young boy pulled himself up to Orville Wrights laboratory window. He had been shining Orville's shoes and was curious to see the inventor at work. What he saw was Mabel Beck on Orville's lap and making out with the brother of Wilbur.

This clandestine relationship would go on to the end of his life. It fit perfectly really. Wilbur could still come across as the asexual man while having the very woman who acted as bulwark against the world be his sexual partner. It is almost blasphemous to assert that either Wright Brother had an interest outside of flying into the wide blue sky. But at least in Orville's case, he didn't mind being grounded every now and then for some maintenance.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story

A Coin Toss Changed the History of Flight

We have seen the  iconic photo of Orville Wright flying in the plane in Kitty Hawk in 1903 and lifting off for 12 seconds and changing the history of modern flight forever. But what you don't know  is that history depended on which way a penny turned in the ocean wind three days before on Dec 14. That was when the Wright Brothers flipped a coin to see who would fly  first. Wilbur won and took off only to crash very quickly. Three days later Orville would fly and a box camera would record the image for all time.
 
And the world would make the assumption then that Orville was the father of flight as much as Wilbur. The fact that Wilbur would follow the 12 second flight with a 59 second flight would be hidden way in the annals of history. The first twelve seconds of flight had Orville as the pilot and historians would look up this as evidence he was as much a participant in cracking the code of flight as his brother. The coin toss would be mentioned then quickly forgotten.

But if the toss had gone the other way then Wilbur would have been the man to fly on Dec 17 1903 and he would have been the man whom history deemed to have broken the Rubicon of flight. History would have been altered forever. But as it was, the myth of the Wright Brothers began here.

Wright Brothers Wrong Story