I believe it. Tom is a trustworthy man and a true role model. If he claims something to be true I see no reason to doubt him.
Of course, the wiki entry is needlessly in the third person, and that alone diminishes its value.
Simple calculations demonstrate that Tom was dishonest in the original report. His claim that he lied on the beach at sea level with a reflector telescope and managed to hold an image steady by hand is unbelievable.
Now consider the Airy disk. Since light acts as a wave, diffraction would limit Tom's view as well. Indeed in the earth's atmosphere, the resolution angle would be limited to lambda/diameter, where lambda is the light's wavelength and diameter is the diameter of the aperture of the telescope. Let's go with lambda of 0.0000005 m, diameter of 0.1 m, and a distance of 37 km.
So the angle of the smallest object Tom could resolve with that very large telescope would be 0.00035
o. At 37 km, the smallest object Tom could possibly identify with that very large telescope would be 13 m. His outlandish claim otherwise is, simply and entirely, a lie.
References:
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airy_disk.
Excel work: