Volume 14 , Issue 27

1912 - Harriet Quimby & Passenger Killed In Fall From Plane

It was 1912, July 2nd, Tuesday, in the New York Tribune, that we learn of the death of Harriet Quimby and a passenger killed in fall from a plane. The woman aviator, Harriet Quimby, and W.A.P. Willard plunge 1,000 fee into Boston Harbor when wind upsets machine.

The death of Miss Harriet Quimby constitutes the fifth aviation fatality to a woman since the inception of the new science. Miss Quimby, of New York, was the first woman to win an aviator's license in America and the first woman to cross the English Channel in an airplane. Miss Quimby was instantly killed with her passenger, W. A. P. Willard, manager of the Boston aviation meet, at Atlantic, when her Bleriot monoplane fell into Dorchester Bay from a height of one thousand feet.

The accident happened when Miss Quimby and Willard were returning from a trip over Boston Harbor to Boston Light and back a distance of twenty miles. The flight was made in twenty minutes. The Bleriot, one of the latest models of military monoplanes, circled the aviation field and soared over the Savin Hill Yacht club, just outside the aviation grounds.

heading back into the eight-mile gusty wind, Miss Quimby started a volplane. The angle was too sharp, and a gust caught the tail of the airplane, throwing the machine into a perpendicular position. For an instant it poised there. Then, sharply outlined against the setting sun, Willard's body was thrown clear of the chassis, followed almost instantly by Miss Quimby's body in her dark aviation suit.

They reported that the bodies hurtled over and over, downward, striking the water 20 feet from shore. They splashed out of sight a second before the monoplane plunged down, fifteen feet away.

It was low tide and the water was only five feet deep. Men front eh yacht club in motor boats were on the spot quickly, leaping overboard, hauled the two bodies out of the mud into which they had sunk deeply. Death was reported as instantaneous.

Both bodies were badly crushed. Several of Quimby's bones were broken and on her flesh were many late bruises. Willard, who wighted 190 pounds, struck the water face foremost, and over one eye there was a cash, from which the blood was flowing. Willard had several fractures and bruises.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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