An earlier poster said:
He was even casting doubts on their 1905 Flyer - which was a much improved aircraft...somebody has to have been first
In this case, as in many other inventions, NOBODY was first because you have to define what "powered, controlled flight" means before you can say who was first at it, and the definition doesn't just fall neatly and precisely out of the facts.
But it looks like, amongst all the great pioneers, the Wrights were very early in bringing the things together, through patient research and studying the findings of others, but the "controlled" part took them a long time to get right. The modern experience suggests that in 1903, to maintain control, they had to be ahead of the aeroplane to a paranormal extent.
Turning it into "who was first" just makes it a p1ssing contest. And then trying to win that contest by denying that they did what they did is to miss the point twice.
Parallel case: who invented printing with movable type? Gutenberg actually invented a nifty way of casting type; that brought together a whole lot of stuff, all of which was needed, and which started with the development of alphabetic writing 2000 years before Gutenberg.