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The first airplane crash in
history
The first airplane crash in
history which also
resulted in the first ever person to die in an airplane crash, happened
about 5
years after man’s first flight.
With the famous 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk
by the Wright
brothers still fresh on the minds of many, Orville and Wilbur were
still
traveling across America and Europe, demonstrating their flying
machine.
Everything had gone very well until the fateful day of that airplane
crash in
September 1908.
Exhibition flights were still being
carried out for the
United States Army who were considering purchasing the Wright’s machine
so as
to create the very first military airplane.
The military wanted it to be proved to
them that this new
machine could successfully carry passengers and Orville had already
done
several flights with passengers aboard.
The first on September 10 at Fort Myer,
Virginia had seen
him take his first official passenger Lt. Frank P. Lahm, up in the air.
On
September 12th, Orville carried another passenger, Major George O.
Squier up in
his airplane for nine minutes.
Now the third trial would see him carry
Lieutenant Thomas
E. Selfridge who had volunteered to be the third passenger.
The airplane took off just after 5 pm on
September 17,
1908. They were flying at the usual altitude of approximately 150 feet
when
Orville had a light tapping behind him. He looked but could see
nothing.
What followed were two loud bangs which
caused the engine
to start shaking vigorously. A propeller then flew off the airplane.
The machine suddenly turned to the left
and then at about
75 feet pointed downwards and hurtled fast in that direction. Orville’s
desperate efforts to regain control bore no fruit.
The airplane hit the ground with a loud
bang, creating a
large cloud of dust. Orville Wright and Lt. Selfridge were both trapped
in the
wreckage from where they were disentangled and rushed to nearby
military
hospital. Both men were still alive, Orville conscious but Lt.
Selfridge was
unconscious. Lt Selfridge died a few hours later as doctors desperately
tried
to operate on him. The cause of death was a fractured skull. He became
the
first man to die in an airplane crash.
Orville survived and was treated for
several broken ribs,
cuts on his head and many bruises. He was released from the hospital
about six
weeks later.
There was naturally no black box in those
days but there
had been a survivor who was in fact one of the designers and
manufacturers of
the airplane. He concluded that the airplane crash had been caused by a
stress
crack in the propeller. The flying machine was quickly redesigned to
correct
the flaws that had led to the airplane crash.
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