Tom Crouch is Senior Curator of the Division of Aeronautics at the National Air and Space Museum. A Smithsonian employee since 1974, he has served both the National Air and Space Museum and the National Museum of American History in a variety of curatorial and administrative posts. He holds a Ph.D. from Ohio State University and an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters, conferred by Wright State University. Crouch has authored or edited over ten books and several articles for both popular magazines and scholarly journals, most on aspects flight technology history. He is perhaps best known for The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright (W.W. Norton, 1989) and A Dream of Wings: Americans and the Airplane, 1875-1905 (W.W. Norton, 1981). He is the recipient of history book prizes offered by both the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Aviation/Space Writers Association, and received a l989 Christopher Award for The Bishop's Boys .

By presidential appointment, Tom Crouch is the Chairman of the First Flight Centennial Federal Advisory Board, an organization created to advise the Centennial of Flight Commission.

James Tobin is currently writing a book about the Wright brothers and their rivals in the quest for flight (Free Press, 2003). The project was awarded the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize for 2000, an award given jointly by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Tobin is also the author of Ernie Pyle's War: America's Eyewitness to World War II (Free Press, 1997), which won the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award in biography. As a reporter for the Detroit News from 1986 to 1998, Tobin was nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. His work won first-place honors in the National Awards for Education Writing and the annual Best of Gannett competition. Tobin earned a Ph.D. in history at the University of Michigan.

Fred Howard served as a WWII bombardier and navigator in the B-25 bomb squadron made infamous in Catch 22 . He became aeronautics librarian in the Library of Congress after the war at a time when The Papers of Wilbur and Orville Wright were being prepared for publication by the Library's Aeronautics Division. His contributions to those two volumes include four appendices: early aviation nomenclature; the Wright wind tunnel experiments; their propeller theory; and Wright airplanes and engines . After leaving the Library, he worked as editor for several publishers and government agencies, retiring in 1980 to devote his full attention to writing Wilbur and Orville . Published in 1987, this Wright biography received a Christopher Award, was cited as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and in 1998 was published in an updated edition. Howard has described his participation in the making of Kitty Hawk as “the Indian summer of [his] 50-year association with the Wright brothers' story.”

Fred Howard has become an indispensable editorial source and influential contributor to Kitty Hawk, and has ensured the historical accuracy of the documentary.

Peter L. Jakab is a curator in the Aeronautics Division of the National Air and Space Museum. He has been with the Museum since 1983, and holds a BA, MA, and Ph.D. in American history from Rutgers University. Areas of Jakab’s specialization include the history of technology, aerospace history, and American social and cultural history. His prior museum work includes stays at Edison National Historic Site and the New Jersey Historical Commission. Jakab also spent a year working with the Thomas A. Edison Papers Project and two years teaching American history at Rutgers University. During his time at the NASM, Jakab has curated numerous exhibitions and frequently lectured on the history of technology, the history of invention, and the Wright brothers and pioneer aviation. His publications include the books Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990); and The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000).

Peter Jakab is currently the curator of The Wright Brothers & the Invention of the Aerial Age , a major exhibition to open at the NASM in 2003.