These have become dark days for the aviation historians and others who have maintained that Gustave Whitehead of Bridgeport flew a heavier-than-air airship more than two years before the Wright brothers' first flight on Dec. 17, 1903.

Last month, the publication "Jane's All the World's Aircraft" pulled back slightly from its 2013 stance backing Whitehead's flight. 

Now, in what's seen as the latest blow to Whitehead's legacy, famed historian David McCullough, the recipient to two Pulitzer prizes, dismisses the Whitehead claim in his book released last week, "The Wright Brothers."

Of the claim, McCullough writes: "The story was entirely without evidence and wholly untrue, but kept drawing attention as the years passed to the point where Orville felt obliged to denounce it himself. (Orville) made it plain that Whitehead was a man of delusions."