Called upon as an aviation expert, Mr. Gibbs-Smith asserted on British national television that UFO-sightings were of interplanetary vehicles and UK & US Govts. were keeping the information secret:

http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist//ITN/1966/01/23/FS230166002/?s=Gibbs-Smith&st=0&pn=1, Clip FS230166002 0 

Gibbs-Smith: "Absolutely. The first thing in my life. I know its history from A to Z. No question. Anyone who knows me will tell you."

Interviewer: "What do you think the object is?"

Gibbs-Smith: "I simply don't know. What I know it's not, it's not a conventional aeroplane of any kind, it's not a balloon, it's not a comet, it's not a sputnik, it's not a cloud. All those are ruled out by the most obvious things: Balloons don't have efluxes, sputniks don't have efluxes, clouds change every moment as they go across - you can see those changes - and with no contrail and no smoke trail - no smoke trail of any kind."

Interviewer: "An eflux... is that sort of below...?"

Gibbs-Smith: "...There was a spurious kind of mass of white if you like in the back. It has this granular content which is so strange."

Interviewer: "So you think it could be an interplanetary vehicle?

Gibbs-Smith: "Yes, I'm afraid one has to reduce oneself to saying it and further, it probably is."

Interviewer: "If there are such things as flying saucers, why isn't there more evidence and more information available?

Gibbs-Smith: "There's an enormous amount of information and an enormous amount of evidence that gets dispersed in the newspapers. But we're quite convinced that the higher echelons in Washington and Whitehall do, in fact, know all there is to know and give the job of interviewing the press, answering the queries and so on to fairly low-ranked officials, so there should be no contact, so that you only get low-ranked officials answering queries. And they fob them off as soaring ballons, shirts hanging out the window, plates being throw up in the air and all this sort of stuff, this we're pretty certain of."

Interviewer: "So, you think that the authorities really are surpressing the information?"

Gibbs-Smith: "...and not allowing their junior officials to know anything so they can't tell lies anyway."

Comment:

In the above interview, note that Mr. Gibbs-Smith switches from "I" to "we" when making his assertion about a Govt. conspiracy. In much the same manner, when rejecting Whitehead's claim to first flight, he cites "consensus among historians" in support of his opinion, without ever naming any.  



Mr. Gibbs-Smith accuses Whitehead of fantasizing. His protege, Tom Crouch, accuses Whitehead researchers of "conspiracy theories" (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2003-04-22/features/0304220332_1_kitty-hawk-wright-brothers-hawk-flight and here) in much the same way his mentor accused US & UK governments of a UFO conspiracy. 



Aside:

As a Whitehead researcher seeing this, it's tempting to lash out at these two leading Whitehead detractors for both the content and the presentation of their case.

Historians' ethics dictate, however, beyond the presentation of facts, one must leave the reader to form his or her own opinion. (Indeed, ones own opinion must always follow the facts dispassionately, even if they contradict one's own hypothesis.)

Scorn, derision and ridicule are not the tools of historians. This applies to both the subjects of their research as it does to the conclusions of other historians.

Notwithstanding this, no code of conduct can protect historians from bringing ridicule upon themselves.