Fort Myer, Virginia, lies a few scant
miles from Washington, DC. The post is the traditional billet for the US Army’s
chief of staff, and historically it is a destination post for military officers
who hope to climb the ranks and wear stars on their shoulders. Thomas Selfridge was such an officer. A graduate of the West Point class of 1903,
he had ranked a respectable 31st out of 96, and had initially posted
in artillery before being assigned to the Signal Corps’ aeronautical
division.
Selfridge
was one of the first pilots in the military.
He had piloted a heavier than air craft designed by the inventor of the
telephone, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, in 1907.
Selfridge turned his own efforts towards design, the result of which was
the “Red Wing,” which in May 1908 flew for about 300 feet at an altitude of 20
feet but was destroyed in a crash landing; the project was funded by Bell with
the support of his wealthy spouse (Selfridge was not piloting). After returning the US following the test of
the Red Wing, Selfridge and two other Army pilots turned to the assignment of
learning to pilot lighter-than-air craft, training in August 1908 to fly the US
Army’s first dirigible out of Omaha (later the home of the Strategic Air
Command). However, on learning that the Army had purchased a successful Wright
Flyer, Selfridge arranged appointment to Fort Myer to participate in the trials
of the heavier-than-air craft.
On
September 17, the Wright Flyer trials took place and 1st Lt.
Selfridge arranged to accompany Orville Wright as a passenger on the
trial. They circled above Fort Myer at
the incredible height of 150 feet, when a mechanical failure on their fourth
orbit led to a fatal turn of events.
Writing to his brother Wilbur, Orville Wright described the mechanical
failure and the crash:
On the fourth round, everything seemingly working
much better and smoother than any former flight, I started on a larger circuit
with less abrupt turns. It was on the very first slow turn that the trouble
began.
A
hurried glance behind revealed nothing wrong, but I decided to shut off the
power and descend as soon as the machine could be faced in a direction where a
landing could be made. This decision was hardly reached, in fact I suppose it
was not over two or three seconds from the time the first taps were heard,
until two big thumps, which gave the machine a terrible shaking, showed that
something had broken.
The
machine suddenly turned to the right and I immediately shut off the power.
Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the
ground. Our course for 50 feet (15 meters) was within a very few degrees of the
perpendicular. Lt. Selfridge up to this time had not uttered a word, though he
took a hasty glance behind when the propeller broke and turned once or twice to
look into my face, evidently to see what I thought of the situation. But when
the machine turned head first for the ground, he exclaimed 'Oh! Oh!' in an
almost inaudible voice.
When the craft crashed, Wright and
Selfridge were thrown forward. Wright
struck the tension cables of the flyer, breaking his ribs, pelvis and a
leg. Selfridge’s head struck a wooden
strut, resulting in a severe skull fracture.
He died later that day. For
nearly five years flyers had taken experimental flights that often ended in
crashes. Orville Wright’s crash at Fort
Myer was the first fatal crash of a heavier-than-air craft in aviation
history, and it took as its victim a rising military officer who had
independent successes in aircraft design.
Thomas
Selfridge was 26, and the Army would later name a field in his honor –
Selfridge Field in Mount Clemens, Michigan.
The foundation was laid for Selfridge’s celebrity to grow, if not for
his death in the open-air frame of a Wright Flyer. Popular publications covered the flight of
his airplane design in 1907 – the “Selfridge Aerodome.” His name was rising to
rank with his contemporaries such as the Wright Brothers and Glenn Curtiss, who
was backed by Bell as part of the Aerial Experiment Association. It was between two of Tom Selfridge’s
contemporaries (Wright and Curtiss) that the battle was waged for military
aviation contracts, ultimately won by Curtiss on the basis of design with his
“Jenny” that was the backbone of American military aviation for the next
decade.
History
remembers Thomas Selfridge because he was the first person to die in a plane
crash. His untimely death illuminates
the seemingly risky nature of flight and also the ease with which some human
beings assume that risk. It also reminds
us of a heady environment of invention and innovation that existed at the dawn
of the modern era, when electronic innovations – telephone, movies, and the
airplane – broke down the barriers of time and space and created instant
communications and, eventually, nearly instant travel. Thomas Selfridge navigated the circles of
this heady period of innovation, working with entrepreneurs in aviation such as
Wright and also Bell, who had a tremendous hand in inventing modern
communication by virtue of his telephone.
More information on the first crash of a Wright Flyer can be found in can be found in Noah Adams'
excellent 2004 book Flyers: In Search ofWilbur & Orville Wright.
