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Thomas Etholen Selfridge (February 8, 1882 – September 17, 1908) was a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army and the first person to die in an airplane crash. He was also the first active-duty member of the U.S. military to die in a crash while on duty.
- Louis Ferdinand Ferber
- Antonio Fernández Santillana
- Ferdinand Léon Delagrange
- Gabriel Hauvette-Michelin
- Thaddäus Robl
- Charles Wachter
- Daniel Kinet
French aviator Louis Ferdinand Ferber became interested in gliders in 1898 and went on to build airplanes of his own design after corresponding with the Wright brothers. According to thefirstairraces.net, in 1906 Ferber, an Army captain, took leave from the military and began working at the Société Antoinette, building gliders and eventually powere...
On December 6, 1909, Spanish aviator Antonio Fernández Santillana’s airplane engine exploded at 1,000 feet; he was killed in the resulting crash. The Hartford Courant noted that Fernández was working as a tailor in Nice, France, when he became interested in flight. Using his tailoring skills, he constructed a biplane “resembling in a general way th...
Ferdinand Léon Delagrange of France was one of the best-known pilots in Europe, and is credited with being the first to take a woman—Thérèse Peltier—aloft on July 8, 1908, in Milan. (Peltier, taught by Delagrange, would solo just two months later.) Delagrange set several speed and distance records, participated in the world’s first air race (at Por...
The nephew of Édouard Michelin (of tire fame), Gabriel Hauvette-Michelin was killed in his Antoinette at the Lyon air meet in May 1910. Just a few months earlier, Hauvette-Michelin participated in the first flight above Egypt, in the same aircraft. Historian Gary Leiser includes a description of Michelin’s aircraft, written by a reporter for al-Mu’...
The first German fatality, Thaddäus Robl was killed in a Farman biplane on June 18, 1910, near Stettin, Germany. Robl was a famous cyclist who became interested in aviation after retiring from cycling. While flying in gusty conditions, he fell from the aircraft to his death.
French aviator Charles Wachter was killed in a crash at the July 3, 1910 Rheims air meet. He was descending when spectators heard an explosion, and the wings of his Antoinette monoplane folded. Wachter was a mechanic, notes thefirstairraces.net, and had been flying for only two months before entering the air meet. Michel Efimoff flew the final flig...
Belgian pilot Daniel Kinet began his aviation career as a balloonist, finishing third—at age 19—in a competition in Ghent. By 1910 he was a student of Henri Farman, in France, obtaining his pilot’s license on February 1. According to peoplepill.com, just weeks later Kinet was a chief pilot at the Mourmelon flight school. He set several records by t...
Mar 3, 2024 · Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge, of the signal corps, was killed, and Orville Wright, the aviator, received a fractured thigh and two broken ribs, late yesterday afternoon, when the lather’s aeroplane plunged to earth during an experimental flight over the drill grounds at Fort Myer.
Sep 16, 2015 · Two weeks later on September 17th, following several flights with Wright piloting, the plane crashed after four minutes, mortally injuring passenger Lieutenant Thomas Etholen Selfridge (1882-1908). When he subsequently died of head wounds later that day he became aviation’s first fatality.
- Julia Blakely
Apr 29, 2018 · Everything went well until that fateful day, September 17, 1908, which began with a cheering crowd of 2,000 and ended with pilot Orville Wright severely injured and passenger Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge dead.
- Jennifer Rosenberg
Sep 17, 2010 · During flight trials to win a contract from the U.S. Army Signal Corps, pilot Orville Wright and passenger Lt. Thomas Selfridge crash in a Wright Flyer at Fort Myer, Virginia. Wright is injured,...
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While riding as a passenger in a willowy, wing-warping biplane piloted by Orville Wright, U.S. Army First Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge became the first person to die during powered flight. Even...
