The Story of The First Man To Die In an Airplane Crash

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Speaker 1: And we continue with our American Stories. Up next, a story on a few firsts: one astonishing, one tragic, and the twenty-six-year-old lieutenant who accomplished both, Thomas E. Selfridge. To tell the story of Lieutenant Selfridge is Craig Dumay of the Grateful Nation Project, an education organization that gathers, preserves, and shares the true stories of those who gave, quote, “the last full measure of devotion for our freedom,” unquote. Take it away, Craig.

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Speaker 2: Although you may not have heard of him, Thomas Ethelyn Selfridge’s name is directly tied to some of the most famous names and events in American history. He crossed paths with Douglas MacArthur, the Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell, just to name a few. And although Selfridge’s life was tragically cut short at twenty-six, he holds major firsts in world history thanks to his passion for a new, developing technology. Thomas E. Selfridge was born into military royalty, if you can call it that. His uncle, Thomas Oliver Selfridge, also had two interesting firsts. The first officer to receive a diploma from the recently established United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, and eventually he and his father, Thomas Oliver Selfridge Senior, became the first father-son rear admiral duo in America. A passion for advancing technology must have been embedded in the family genes. During the Civil War, the uncle, Thomas O. Selfridge Junior, briefly served as commander of the Navy’s first ironclad warship, the famed US Monitor, and he commanded the Navy’s first powered submarine, the USS Alligator, which he would later call a failure. It would be another forty years before the Navy finally commissioned a submarine. All that said, young Thomas Ethelyn Selfridge was a shoe-in for a life of distinguished service to his country. He would graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point thirty-first in the class of nineteen oh three, the same year of the Wright Brothers’ first motorized flight, and he’d graduate next to the future General Douglas MacArthur, first in that West Point class. The Army had commissioned Selfridge as a lieutenant and assigned him to the Field Artillery, but his passion was for the emerging field of aeronautics, which the Army and the world, for that matter, was just beginning to explore. Military aviation in America began during the Civil War, eighteen. From sixty-one to eighteen sixty-three, the United States Army laid claim to a newfangled branch called the Union Army Balloon Corps, led by aeronaut – yes, that’s what they called pilots during the Civil War – Fattiest Low. As a side note, how Low got the job is pretty incredible. He had experience with hot air balloons, wanted to take one across the Atlantic, and proposed a demonstration to President Lincoln in Washington, D.C. He flew up five hundred feet with a telegraph line between his balloon and the White House. His telegraph to Lincoln read: “This point of observation commands an area nearly fifty miles in diameter. The city, with its girdle of encampments, presents a superb scene. I have pleasure in sending you this first dispatch ever telegraphed from an aerial station, and in acknowledging indebtedness to your encouragement for the opportunity of demonstrating the availability of the science of aeronautics. The service of the country.” Seeing the potential of an aerial vantage point, Lincoln authorized the U.S. Balloon Corps and named Fattiest Low as chief aeronaut. The balloons proved very useful during the war. Tethered on the banks of the Potomac, observers in balloons could call out Confederate movement miles away and help the Union Army train artillery without actually seeing the enemy in front of them. You’re probably beginning to see how Lieutenant Selfridge’s story leads to a good number of equally interesting American stories. By nineteen oh three, on a stretch of beach in North Carolina, the first powered flight ushered in what historians call the Pioneer era of aviation. Despite the Wright Brothers’ remarkable achievement, it took some time for the press and the world to grasp what had occurred. Reports of the breakthrough wouldn’t catch the public’s attention until two years later, when a description appeared in an obscure journal about beekeeping. That’s right: not The New York Times, not Life magazine, not even Scientific American. The federal government was also slow to catch on, but four years later, in nineteen oh seven, the U.S. Army was taking an interest in the experimental, heavier-than-air Howard flying machine. The eager young Lieutenant Selfridge would volunteer his services to Orvile and Wilbur Wright, only to be turned down. They preferred to have only permanent assistants and were wary of sharing technical details with an employee of the federal government. Selfridge’s passion for the fledgling industry would not be deterred. Later that spring, he met Doctor Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Bell was also experimenting with powered flight and had established the new Aerial Experiment Association, inviting Selfridge to be one of its original five members. Thomas would take to the sky for the first time in Canada aboard Bell’s very odd-looking tetrahedral kite, made of an astonishing three thousand three hundred and ninety-three winged cells, and he would become the first passenger of any plane in Canada. Lieutenant Selfridge then designed the association’s first conventional airplane, Aerodrome Number One, later nicknamed “Red Wing” because of the red silk used on its wings – the color chosen because red achieved good results in black and white photos. It would become the first publicly demonstrated aircraft in America. Though its intrepid designer never had the opportunity to fly it, he did fly Aerodrome Number Two, nicknamed “White Wing.” In doing so, Selfridge became the first U.S. military officer to fly solo in a powered flag machine. As for the fate of the “White Wing,” it would be destroyed in a crash landing in nineteen oh eight and also become the subject of a lawsuit with the Wright Brothers, who would claim that Bell’s AEA organization violated the Wright Brothers’ patent on movable wing surfaces. We know these movable surfaces as ailerons today, and you still see them on every plane in the sky. The following year, nineteen oh eight, Lieutenant Selfridge would finally earn his wings when he was assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps Aeronautical Division at Fort Meyer, Virginia. There he was tasked with designing and flying dirigibles. Keep in mind, Selfridge and the rest of these guys weren’t trained pilots by any stretch of the imagination. Everything was new and experimental. They’d be making it up from scratch, flying by the seat of their pants, you could say, learning from their mistakes, which could easily prove deadly. The technology race was on. In September nineteen oh eight, Orville Wright was preparing to demonstrate his flying machine to Army officials at Fort Meyer. The Wright brothers had just signed a contract with the U.S. government and set out to prove that their new plane could hold two people, flying at forty miles per hour and remain in the air for one hundred and twenty-five miles. A fellow officer convinced the relatively experienced Selfridge to be Orvile Wright’s passenger in the demonstration, although Orville suspected that Selfridge was acting beyond his Army observation responsibilities and was working secretly to gather information as a competitor. Nevertheless, the demonstration flight took place on September seventeen, nineteen oh eight, with Orville and Selfridge on board. Halfway through the fifth circuit in the air, vibration caused the propeller to strike a guide wire and tear it from the rudder. Orville would recount what happened next in a letter to his brother. “Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the ground. Lieutenant 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 headfirst for the ground, he exclaimed, ‘Oh, oh!’ in an almost inaudible voice.” Orville Wright broke several ribs and suffered a broken leg, but recovered after being hospitalized for months. Selfridge, however, died later that evening. Today, history records that Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge was the first person to ever die in an airplane crash, just fifty yards away from the west gate of Arlington National Cemetery, where Selfridge was buried with full military honors a week later. From the beginning of time, man has looked up at the birds and wondered, what would it be like to fly? For millennia, that possibility only existed in the imagination. December seventeenth, nineteen oh three, the first heavier-than-air powered aircraft changed the world with a flight of twelve seconds, one hundred and twenty feet, and a top speed of six point eight miles per hour. Then, in a span of just sixty-five years. What began with two bicycle mechanics tinkering in the sands of North Carolina culminated in two astronauts leaving their footprints on the dusty surface of the Moon and planting the American flag two hundred and thirty-eight thousand, eight hundred and fifty-five miles from home, thanks to those magnificent men in their flying machines.

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Speaker 1: The story of Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, here on Our American Stories.