I wasn’t actually thinking of anywhere, I just wondered if you had an airfield nearby, that’s all.

Very well put James, I totally agree with all that.

Everyone else has gone rather quiet on this thread so I think it’s rather past time I shut up and let someone else have a go with their thoughts on this topic (“Hallilujah” I hear you all say!)

Errol, I apologise if anything I said offended you or anyone else. I know that you are a historian, as is James and many others reading this thread. I too enjoy researching, discovering and recording history. Cor, I have been called a historian myself in the local press, which rather shocked me!

My comments on historians were not meant to be aimed at anyone personally and not meant to denegrate the work of historians at large, they are just some casual observations I have made about how these things seem to work as far as I see things. We all see things differently, and no doubt we disagree. I’m always happy to listen and learn.

I understood that this thread was about how history has recorded the first flyer – maybe others don’t agree, but I thought my comments were related to the topic. Sorry to all if they are irrelevant

Errol, as I’ve said before I have a lot of respect for your own research, and among your works that I have been fortunate to read, I found your ‘For Your Tomorrow’ books in particular very inspirational when I discovered them. I refer to them often not just for research purposes but sometimes simply to browse through, reflect and remind myself a little of what my own research is about, and the standards I would like to aspire to, in recording my own RNZAF history project. I feel priviledged to have the advise (and even scorn sometimes) of other researchers and historians on this forum, as it is a great learning curve.

In retrospect of what I said earlier, I concede that of course researchers and historians are not all alike. And not all research is the same. There is all kinds of research, I know this and should have made that clear before. Sorry. Much of the historic topics I have worked on myself have never been recorded before specifically, so I have no reference to work from except interviews I conduct. Other parts have been well-recorded over the years and I am simply portraying my interpretation of other people’s resources.

I guess no matter what the source is though, and who has worked on it before for better or worse, it is how well we make use of it ourselves that makes all the difference.

I would also gladly stand you a few pints in the local if you’re ever up this way Errol. I’d be glad of any opportunity to have a chat with you, and I KNOW I would certainly learn a lot.

JDK – are you under the impression that I think Pearce was definately the first flyer because Hamish Keith says so???

That is completely not the case and you did not need to spend all that time writing a lecture for me about something I’m already aware of. I have studied history and heard of the notions you have put forward, and am well aware of them.

I think a lot of people have completely missed my very point here – despite my trying to put it into black and white – this thread started off with people disputing what was known as the “truth” or “fact” by historians because they’ve read otherwise written by other historians and now they think others may be the contender. I was attempting to point out how bad books by ‘proper historians’ can be, trying to show an example that clearly points out that ALL written history is open to debate and you can never be certain of anything in a history book.

(just ask a Yank who discovered the continent of North America for a case in point there! It was clearly not Columbus because he never went there)

Though very useful, even primary sources are at best subjective to the author’s point of view and won’t tell the “whole” truth, and then these can then be misconstrued by the researcher attempting to interpret it themselves into their own way of thinking.

Had Richard Pearse written in 1910 in his own handwriting (primary resource) that he was definately first to flyin the world, would everyone doubt it/believe it without any other information to back it up?

Even if the primary resource is absolutely spot on right and provable, it is seldom going to be the only view of a subject that should be used. Eg the Wrights had everything on photograph, film, paper, etc – but that alone does not make them undoubtedly proven as the first to fly in the world. It makes them the first people known to have documented themselves as flying.

History is constantly being changed. Just when you become comfortable with what all the “experts” are saying, they change it. Historians always claim they’ve found new evidence, blah blah, when usually all they’ve done is looked at the same evidence with a different subjectivity and interpreted it in different ways. I’m sure you are fully aware of all this.

Hamish Keith has undoubtedly based his statements that I quoted upon ‘knowledge’ deducted by historians at the time. Some of it would have been accepted as fact, some still up for debate. Just like now. But since then, as everyone keeps pointing out ad nauseum, the whole premise that Pearce flew first has been debunked. fair enough, I have never argued with that. I have the magazine and did read it when it came out. Still doesn’t change my view that the evidence presented is the writer’s view. he may be right 100%, I’m willing to accept that. But just because someone has written something different from what has been done before, and people claim it is definitive, doesn’t make it so, if you know what I mean.

I do not know either way who flew first and never will because I was not there. It doesn’t even matter in the big picture of things. But in ten years time someone else will review the situation again and the current claims will again be debunked, and counter-claims made by someone else, guaranteed. That is how history works. And the further down the track in time it is, the more radically different from the original recordings they seem to turn out.

Yet there are still a lot of people in this world who think because they read something in a book, and it is referenced, etc., it is gospel truth. Well, maybe it is, but who can really say? Basically all the references help with is for the next historian to look up the sources and form their own opinion so they can write their own account of something saying the last person was right or wrong, about something they had nothing to do with at the original time.

I hope this has been clear to all who read – sorry if it is not, I am pretty stressed right now.

Yes, you’re correct as usual Peter.

Sorry if my posts seemed like heated argument, they were never meant to come across like that. I’m not arguing with anything or anyone, simply stating a point of view. Some may agree, some may not. So be it.
Cheers,

Why anyone with a serious interest in aviation history would bother with such a book, let alone quote from it on an aviation forum, is quite beyond me.

I think you completely missed my point here Errol. Perhaps I did not put it very well. Sorry.

I was trying to point out that so much has been written about those many people who supposedly flew first, or are claimed to have, from all around the world, all with such differeing views, facts and pieces of fiction, WE WILL NEVER KNOW!!

This is but one book out there of many purporting theory as fact, and this is a fairly common one at that, it’s widely distributed thanks to its wide reaching publisher, that has ‘apparently’ such shonky research it is all rubbish (apparently, but who knows?).

But hey, Keith must have got his “facts” from somewhere – as you say, he’s not an aviation researcher, though he is into art, literature and some areas of history. He IS a very noted author and he knows the ropes of researching. I would not consider Hamish Keith the type to simply pluck sentences out of the blue for the heck of it, would you? He must have researched this and got what he wrote from somewhere……..surely……

So, where did he get this from????????

Obviously he would have written this based on something he believed to be well researched. Research from someone who considered themselves to have been right, in the know and an authority, at the time.

That is all I’m saying. Any of the people mentioned on this thread, including the Wrights, could easily have been over-written and had the facts twisted about their history by researchers of the past, and twisted again by the many revisionists as time goes on. Without some actual factual account written and confirmed at the time, and perhaps photos, then who can really prove anything in history.It is an impossibility and becomes conjecture and theory.

The first flyer in the world is as much up for debate as the theories in Walking For Dinosaurs as far as I’m concerned. And I am as open-minded about it as that excellent, but possibly innaccurate TV show.

History is written by the victors or the strongest/richest of the time. It is wholeheartedly subjective, and then it is anylised, deconstructed, re-anylised, re-written, twisted, made into a film, debunked, rebunked……….you know how it goes….. even the original text may be propoganda/spin/complete bunkum.

So to recap – I was trying to support your own notion (as I saw it) and agree with you that what has been written is often wrong, and we have to keep an open mind. I’m not disputing your findings, research, theories or notions at all. I simply thought that Keith book was a good example of when books are bad examples to go by.

Cheers Errol. It is always good to have the input and thoughts of someone like yourself who knows a lot about these things. I highly respect your work and your input, as I’ve said before. If I am on the wrong track completely here, I apologise. It is just how I see things, and I always welcome other views that may broaden my thinking.