THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 15, 1995 TAG: 9510130632
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GEORGE TUCKER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Virginia has the dubious distinction of having been the site of the first airplane fatality. The tragedy took place on Sept. 17, 1908, at Fort Myer in Arlington, a U.S. Army post near Washington.
Aviation buffs already know that the first powered flight was made by Orville Wright - the younger brother and joint aeronautical experimenter of Wilbur Wright - at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903. The Virginian-Pilot front-paged the story the next morning with a seven-column headline: ``Flying Machine Soars 3 Miles in Teeth of High Wind Over Sand Hills and Waves at Kitty Hawk on Carolina Coast.''
Five years later, on Sept. 18, 1908, the Pilot headed its front page story of the first airplane fatality thus: ``Airplane's Wild Plunge to Earth in Flight at Fort Myer Yesterday Kills Lieutenant T.E. Selfridge and Gravely Injures Orville Wright.''
To tell the story from the beginning: Early in 1908 the Wrights decided that Wilbur would go to France to make aeronautical demonstrations. Meanwhile, Orville remained in this country to fulfill a contract with the United States War Department to build its first military airplane.
Orville Wright arrived at Fort Myer in August 1908, and was allocated a shed on the grounds for assembling and housing the test plane. By Sept. 3 all was in readiness, and a great crowd, including President Theodore Roosevelt's son, Theodore Jr., who was present to report later to his father, assembled for the first test.
``When the plane first rose,'' young Roosevelt reported, ``the crowd's gasp of astonishment was not alone at the wonder of it, but because it was so unexpected. I'll never forget the impression the sound from the crowd made on me. It was a sound of complete surprise.''
Also, in retelling the historic event, Fred G. Kelly wrote in The Wright Brothers: A Biography: ``When he landed after this flight, it was Orville's time to be astonished. Three or four supposedly `hard-boiled' newspapermen who rushed up to interview him had been so stirred by witnessing the `impossible' that each had tears running down his cheeks.''
From then on, Orville Wright continued to stage repeatedly successful demonstrations, little dreaming that the final one scheduled for Sept. 17, 1908, would end in disaster. Since the three earlier flights on that day had gone smoothly, the crowd was euphoric. Then, when Orville was ready for the last flight for the day, he took along Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, a 26-year-old graduate of West Point, who had requested to be an observer.
Selfridge for years had studied aviation and was considered one of the nation's best-informed authorities on aeronautics.
Before he and Orville Wright had been airborne for a few minutes, however, tragedy struck when a propeller cracked, resulting in a chain reaction of mechanical failures. Suddenly, according to the Pilot's account, the plane was ``like a bird with a broken wing,'' later plummeting to the ground.
After a moment of incredulous silence, the crowd stampeded to the crash site. Fortunately, a company of soldiers arrived there first and formed a cordon around the wreck while others made frantic efforts to lift the wreckage off Wright and Selfridge. Wright suffered a fractured thigh and ribs and later recovered. But Selfridge, whose body was found under the plane's engine, received a severe fracture at the base of his skull and died shortly.
Although one of its own men had become the world's first airplane fatality, the Army continued to believe that the Wright brothers' invention was here to stay. It finally purchased one Flier airplane for $25,000. As for Orville Wright's reaction to the accident, Kelly in The Wright Brothers, recounts this anecdote.
``While Orville was recovering from his injuries, an acquaintance, C.H. Claudy, visited him and asked: `Has it got your nerve?'
`` `Nerve?' replied Orville, not quite understanding. `Oh, you mean will I be afraid to fly again? The only thing I'm afraid of is that I can't get well soon enough to finish those tests next year.' '' by CNB