Gibbs-Smith claims proof of flying saucer - quickly dispoved

Called upon as an aviation expert, Mr. Gibbs-Smith asserted on British national television that a home movie shot from the window of an airliner could only possibly show an extra-terrestrial UFO:

http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675064060_Unidentified-Flying-Object_Charles-Harvard-Gibbs-Smith_interview-broadcast, retrieved Sept. 3, 2012

A journalist quickly proved Mr. Gibbs-Smith wrong by boarding the same airliner on the same route, sitting in the same seat and filming from the same angle. What Mr. Gibbs-Smith said showed a UFO was, in fact, the aircraft's own tailplane skewed by the prism-like frame of the aircraft's reinforced window pane.

Here's the full text of Mr. Gibbs-Smith's expert statement:

Gibbs-Smith: "My position now, I think, is that I believe that about 5% of these are inter-planetary, that is to say, they come to us from a world outside our planetary system and that some of them are, in fact, inhabited by intelligent beings of some kind. And some look as if they're remotely controlled. Who really do we think we are. We're a fifth-rate, miserable, measly little system out on the edge of the Milky Way falling around the universe with four or five thousand years of so-called civilization behind us. We think we are the cat's whiskers and we're not. We're a potty, second-rate lot - fifth-rate - lot. Conceited and apes - not all of us. And here we go, the moment anybody suggests that something is coming in from outside, we go no, no, no, it can't be that. It's quite out, you know, These things can't happen. I think we're all - I do it myself - we're all thinking medievally."

Reporter: "What convinces you more than anything else?"

Gibbs-Smith: "The evidence of the men who have seen them and primarily the behavior and the descriptions of the objects themselves which do not fit, really, any other explanation. And the Oldfield sighting, this film which will become really famous... They're a couple who live in a little cottage outside Manchester, took their first airline journey, and they had aboard a little film, a little cine camera, and they take pictures down of the fields as a couple would the first time they would be in an aeroplane. And she takes what she thinks is an aeroplane coming up from behind them and then it goes out of vision in about 12 seconds or thereabouts. And she goes on taking a few more of bits of distant clouds and gets back. And when they get down to watch this thing it's inexplicable by any... unless it's a straight fake. And to fake an 8mm film in color requires a lot of equipment. And who on earth ... this charming couple ... what would they be doing lending themselves to faking these images. It is nothing airborne we've ever seen. I mean, it's basically just sausage-shaped with two dorsal and two ventral fins. And as you look at this film, it turns away on its vertical axis from you and goes - disappears out that way. I mean, you can argue until you're blue in the face; what is it except something that is airborne by a force - probably something electrogravitoc force of some kind that we know nothing whatever about. It is nothing conventional. It is nothing unconventional or aerodynamic. There is no single piece of airborne equipment of any kind that looks and behaves like that."

Mr. Gibbs-Smith's expert opinion on whether Whitehead flew may rely on some of the same expertise. What's more, all Whitehead critics since Gibbs-Smith - most notably Dr. Thomas Crouch Ph.D., have, by their own admission, relied heavily on and quoted extensively from Mr. Gibbs-Smith's determinations.

Does the world really want the history of aviation to have been dictated by the assertions of a man, who with a similar air of certainty, declared an aircraft's tailplane to be an extraterrestrial vehicle - and nothing else?

In all his publications on the subject, Mr. Gibbs-Smith accused Whitehead of fantasizing. Clearly, Mr. Gibbs-Smith knew what he was talking about).

Note: When the author of this site discovered the above interview by Whitehead's main critic, it briefly occured to him that the history of first flight in its current form might have started out as a practical joke that just kept going because no one bothered to check. However, after reflection, it still seems more likely that historians merely repeated Orville Wright's arguments (and that they were the ones who never bothered to check).