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    Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959
    Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959
    Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959
    Ebook149 pages31 minutes

    Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959

    By Joshua Stoff

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    About this ebook

    During the first fifty years of American aviation, Long Island was at the center of aircraft innovation and flight. There were more aircraft manufacturers and airports located on Long Island than in any other part of the United States. Due to the extraordinarily high volume of air traffic, Long Island also led the country-if not the world-in aircraft crashes. Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959 portrays the daring flights, accidents, and mishaps of pioneer pilots, and the conditions that contributed to many crashes. Long Island ultimately saw the earliest air-traffic control systems, airport lighting, aviation weather reports, paved runways, and professional flight schools. Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959 contains captivating images from Mitchel Field and Roosevelt Field, the two most active airfields on Long Island. In addition to airfield activity, this book illustrates some of the first experimental flights over Hempstead Plains; military training at Hazelhurst Field; the L.W.F. Owl bomber (the largest landplane of its time); the world's first instrument-guided flight; and Amelia Earhart posing with the new Sperry Gyropilot.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 31, 2004
    ISBN9781439631812
    Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959
    Author

    Joshua Stoff

    Joshua Stoff is the curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, and is a noted aviation historian. He is the author of numerous aviation and space titles, including Arcadia Publishing�s Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909�1959 and Building Moonships: The Grumman Lunar Module.

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      Book preview

      Long Island Aircraft Crashes - Joshua Stoff

      Field.

      INTRODUCTION

      During the first half-century of flight by man, Long Island, New York, was truly one of the centers of the aviation world. There were more aircraft manufacturers here and more airports located here than in any other part of the United States. Due to this extraordinary volume of air traffic, it is only logical to assume that Long Island also probably led the country, if not the world, in aircraft crashes. Normally, when one writes of the history of aviation, it is usually a story of continually better aircraft, better technology, new records, and new heroes. This book portrays the darker side of the history of aviation, how we got from there to here, on a road paved with tragedy. It is a story that must be told. Because of the many crashes here, Long Island ultimately saw the earliest air-traffic control systems, airport lighting, aviation weather reports, paved runways, and professionally run flying schools. It is estimated that the crashes shown in this book are probably only about 10 percent of those that occurred on Long Island during this period.

      The reasons for these accidents are many. Pilots, on occasion, make mistakes. Weather is unpredictable, especially in aviation’s pre–World War II days, when weather reports were often inaccurate, infrequent, or did not exist at all. Unlike today’s small aircraft, early planes often suffered engine failure, and in-flight structural failure was not unheard of. The flying speeds of early aircraft were also so low they were always on the edge of a stall or spin. Prior to World War II, air-traffic control was nonexistent. Thus, midair collisions in the crowded skies around Long Island airports happened with alarming frequency. Furthermore, when one examines the photographs of these pre–World War II airfields, one can clearly see flying fields in poor condition. Ruts and mud were the routine, and these conditions undoubtedly led to many planes nosing over, especially combined with the fact that the planes usually had no brakes.

      Accustomed as we are now to safety in the air, when flying around the world is safer than driving to a nearby store, it is hard to keep in mind just how dangerous flying really was in its early days. For the first 30 years or so, nearly all airplanes were fragile-looking wooden structures braced by wires and covered with varnished fabric. Even the safest of early aircraft were dangerous in comparison to today’s planes.

      Man paid dearly in his quest to conquer the sky. Many lives and fortunes were lost. However, what was learned from these accidents has brought about most of the improvements in modern aviation. Flying has clearly learned from its mistakes. Aviation today is a remarkably safe way to get from Point A to Point B. Airline passengers are far safer than if they drove between the same two points. There is no doubt that flying is increasingly becoming safer in spite of the continuous increase in air traffic. Aviation’s accident rate in the 1930s was appalling when compared to the present-day rate. Regardless of the many accounts of accidents in this book, flying by any comparison is now a relatively risk-free form of travel. People can be assured that lessons learned from these accidents have been applied in making aviation continually safer. This history helps to show how flying got to be as safe as it is today.

      Since the first aircraft fatality (Lt. Thomas Selfridge in a Wright aircraft in 1908), news of air crashes has always been met by the public with a combination of concern, horror, and fascination. There has always been a strange attraction

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