U.S.N.A. --- Trident Scholar project report; no. 334 (2005)
AN HISTORICAL AND APPLIED AERODYNAMIC STUDY OF THE WRIGHT
BROTHERS’ WIND TUNNEL TEST PROGRAM AND APPLICATION TO
SUCCESSFUL MANNED FLIGHT by
Midshipman 1/c Michael G. Dodson, Class of 2005
United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, Maryland
Reading through the whole study...they pay tribute to the wright brothers intuitive development technique and do not accuse the wrights of not flying in 1903 !The Brothers gained much useful knowledge from the wind tunnel tests but obviously were aware of the limitations of the some of the results and intuitively arrived at a reasonable aerofoil shape which was a marked improvement on the previous glider design !
Quote from the study
However, had they used their wind tunnel as a quantitative tool the Wright Flyer would have
been grossly over-designed and may have been too heavy to fly. Therefore the Wrights must
have recognized the limits of the tunnel and used it as a qualitative tool, along with the
experience they gained in earlier full scale experiments, to engineer and design the first
successful manned aircraft.