Peculiarly, in a letter to Gibbs-Smith dated 15 August 1957, James Watson discredits Bell Milne's testimony above, advising that because he was not present in 1903, he could not have seen the machine that he and Preston were testing was a rocking-wing aeroplane, criticising the fact that Bell Milne saw a biplane glider that had a front-mounted elevator. Owing to himself claiming that Preston had flown an unpowered aircraft that year in "Aeronautics" magazine two years earlier and in the later letter to Gibbs-Smith, one wonders whether James was aware of the discrepancies in his own testimonies, as one by one his claims were disproved.