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[[newspaper clipping (paper's name cut off) one column]] The New Yo ^[[March 15, 1915]] [[line]] NEW YORK, MONDAY, MARCH 15, [[line]] ^[[1915]] BEACHEY KILLED IN A TAUBE DROP [[line]] Air Pressure Crumples Monoplane's Wings as Airman Tries to Resume Glide. [[line]] CROWD OF 50,000 HORRIFIED [[line]] Machine and Aeroplanist Fall Into San Francisco Bay-Recovered by Navy Diver. [[line]] BROTHER SAW HIS PLUNGE [[line]] Fatal Perpendicular Drop from 3,000 Feet Like Feat Beachey Often Had Executed in Biplane. [[line]] Special to The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO, March 14.--Lincoln Beachey, noted as an aviator the world over and perhaps the greatest rival of the Frenchman Pegoud, in the execution of hair-raising aerial feats, fell to his death here today in the new German Taube monoplane in which he had been attempting to duplicate the spectacular performance of which, in the biplane, he was the acknowledged master. The fatal drop was made from a height of 3,000 feet at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, and was witnessed by a crowd of 50,000 people. The Taube, with Beachey, fell into San Francisco Bay. The machine, with the body of the ill-fated aeroplanist still strapped in the aluminum body of the Taube, was recovered two hour later. Hillary Beachey, a brother of the aviator witnessed the tragedy. He was standing in the deck of the transport Crook watching the flight. He said he heard a cracking sound like the breaking of a ship's mast. He cried out as the monoplane began to plunge toward the bay. It fell only a few feet away from the transport. The young airman-he was 31-was completing his second flight of the day. Having previously electrified the crowd with a series or aerial somersaults, the airman sought to add an additional thrill by making one of the sensational perpendicular drops which usually featured his flights. The fatal fall was attributed to the fact that Beachey intrusted his life for the first time in several years-to a monoplane. An exceptionally large crowd had been attracted to the fair grounds to see whether he would attempt the same breathtaking stunts in the new machine that [[?he]] had performed in his biplane. On the first flight all went well, and the aviator's familiar tricks were indulged in with the exception of the perpendicular drop. This Beachey had saved for the climax. It proved too much of a strain for the frame of the monoplane. Wings Crumpled Under Pressure. The machine was at an altitude of about 3,000 feet when Beachey shut off his power. For a great distance it dropped head on. Then the aviator grasped his control levers to adjust the planes for the graceful descent which had characterized his previous flights. Almost at that moment the wings crumpled, and the aeroplane, turning over and over in its fall, plunged into the bay. Thousands of spectators rushed to the near-by waterfront, but with the exception of a few splintered fragments of the aeroplane floating on the surface of the water, no sign of the wrecked machine could be seen. Launches put out immediately, equipped with grappling hooks, and a boat's crew from the battleship Oregon, which was anchored in the stream a short distance away, joined in an attempt to recover the machine and its occupant from their resting place forty feet under water. The body was recovered shortly after 5 o'clock. The monoplane was faster than anything that the daring aviator had ever piloted, and of a type with which he was not so familiar as with the biplane in which he had made over 1,000 loops. In looping the loop a few minutes before Beachey evidently was in complete control of the machine, and also as he made an upside down flight. It was as he attempted to straighten out after the perpendicular drop to the green that the wings of the new monoplane failed him. He had often dipped from as great a height in his biplane, but the double wings had withstood the tremendous pressure which was not exerted on the single spread of the Taube. A dozen pleasure launches were among the boats that swarmed over Beachey's resting place, immediately after the accident, and several of them threw out grappling hooks in an effort to locate the wrecked machine. After ten minutes of fruitless effort on the part of these volunteers a sailing launch arrived from the Oregon bearing a score of bluejackets and a score of experienced divers with their diving outfits. Wreck Located by Diver. The bluejackets were under command of Chief Turret Capt. C. R. Young, who selected Josepoh Maerz, one of the most experienced divers in the navy, to make the first descent. For nearly half an hour Maerz wandered through the deep mud 40 feet below the surface, while the thousands of people who lined the wharfs and buildings waited in feverish expoectancy. Finally the sailors received the signal that Maerz had been successful, and a few minutes later the diver was hauled back into the launch. While under water he had made a line fast to the tail of the monoplane, and the sailors now started pulling it toward the surface. Presently the dripping rear rudder of the machine appeared above the surface. The word "Hats off to Beachey," ran through the crowd, and almost every man in the great packed mass of humanity bared his head. When the tail of the machine was out of the water, a heavier line was made fast to it and a donkey engine on the transport Crook drew the mass of wreckage from the water. Firmly strapped in the seat was Beachey's body. Alive When He Struck the Water. That Beachey was still alive when he struck the water and had sustained no major injury as a result of the fall except a broken leg was the opinion expressed bu Dr. David F. Stafford, autopsy surgeon, who examined the body at the morgue tonight. The face, said Dr. Stafford, was discolored from choking and strangling, indicating that death was due to drowning. Cuts on the aviator's hands were taken to indicate that he had made desperate efforts to release himself from the mesh of twisted wires and rods in which he was entangled. When the machine fell, Beachey was protected by the engine, propellers, and hood of the monoplance, which struck the water first. It was pointed out that if Beachey could have disengaged himself [[line]] Continued on Page 5. [[/newspaper clipping, one column]] [[newspaper clipping, five columns [[first column]] [[double line]] BEACHEY KILLED IN A TAUBE DROP [[line]] Continued from Page 1. [[line]] he probably would have managed to keep afloat long enough to be rescued. [[line]] San Diego, Cal., March 14.--Lincoln Beachey on a recent visit to San Diego was warned by army aviators against performing sensational feats in the type of aeroplane he was using when killed. It was here about a year and a half ago that Beachey first looped the loop. [[line]] BEACHEY ONCE QUIT FLYING. [[line]] Fatalities Appalled Him, but He Re-entered Game to Outdo Pegoud. Lincoln Beachey on May 12, 1913, said at the Olympic Club in San Francisco: "I am through with flying. You get me into an aeroplane again at the point of a revolver. I am convinced that the only thing that draws crowds to see me is the morbid desire to see something happen. They call me the Master Birdman, but they pay to see me die. "Moreover, I am affected by the deaths of so many boys who were friends or pupils of mine. 'Gene Ely was killed in October, 1911, at Macon, Ga., trying to do my dip, and his widow told me that she would still have him with here if he had never seen me fly. In Chicago last September Horace Kearney's mother begged me not to teach her son any more aerial tricks, and he said to her: 'Mother, I must do what Beachey does if I want to be a top-liner." Three months later he was drowned while flying from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Charlie Walsh's wife begged him to cut out the spirals, and he said: "Beachey does them; I have to do them, too." Last October he tried a spiral in Trenton, N, J., when a wire snapped, and 50,000 people saw him killed. I feel as if I had murdered him. "Those boys were like brothers to me, and I am through." Four months later Beachey appeared [[/first column]] [[second column]] at Glenn H. Curtiss's establishment at Hammondsport, N. Y. and joined the Curtiss staff of aviators. "In a year," he said, "aviation has changed from a dangerous sport to a serious and useful profession. The development of the flying boat will mean much to the world. That Frenchman Pegoud, has been doing some wonderful stunts looping the loop," he added. "I believe I can do everything he has done and go a little further. Only a few weeks later, on Oct. 7, Beachey lost control of the aeroplane in which he was flying at Hammondsport and ran into a group of spectators on the roof of a shed, killing Miss Ruth Hildreth of New York and seriously injuring her sister Dorothy and two Lieutenants of the Navy Flying Corps. In the following November, at San Diego, Cal., he not only duplicated Pegoud's loop-the-loop, but did a triple loop, surpassing the French flyer. About a year ago, while looping the loop at Santa Barbara, Cal., he fell and was slightly injured. Beachey took out the first Wright license last May and built a new machine, in which he expected to install a European motor, to enter the Gorden Bennett race, which was to have taken place in September, 1914. Beachey was considered the most skillful and daring of American aviators, and was bracketed with Lieut. Milling by Orville Wright as one of the two "natural" flyers in the country. He was born in San Francisco in September, 1887. While still a boy he started to learn the navigation of the air in dirigible balloons, at that time the only machines available. His preceptor was Capt. Thomas Baldwin of San Francisco, under whose direction he made his first flight in a dirigible at Oakland in 1905. In the summer of 1906 he circled the Capitol at Washington; in September of that year met with his first accident--at Baltimore--when his balloon caught fire several hundred feet above ground. Beachey escaped with slight burns. In the following June, after he had been flying for some weeks at Happyland, Staten Island, he flew to Manhattan, descending at Battery Park, and when ordered on by the police, flew away uptown, and eventually was carried over Randall's Island, where his balloon was wrecked and fell on a buoy in Little Hell Gate. Four months later he won a race at St. Louis from his old instructor, Capt. Baldwin. In June 1908, a balloon in which he was flying fell into a briar patch at Jamaica, L. I., but Beachey escaped unhurt. Meanwhile the Wrights had found out how to fly; and when, after a year or two, the development of the sport had shown that it had come to stay, Beachey decided to become an aeroplanist. He began to take lessons in the Winter of [[/second column]] [[third column]] 1910-11. His first machine was wrecked at St. Paul, Minn. He then went to Los Angeles, Cal., made a successful flight, and wrecked another machine. In the following Spring, however, he came out as one of the greatest stars of the game. On May 5 he circled the Capitol at Washington; on June 27 he flew over the Niagara Horseshoe Falls and under the steel arch of the upper bridge in the presence of 150,000 people. On Aug. 5 he won the $5,000 prize offered by Gimbel Brothers to the winner of a race from New York to Philadelphia; and two weeks later at Chicago, he broke the height record for an aeroplane by rising 11,578 feet. At this meet Beachey was the star, making numerous sharp spirals such as never had been tried before. After that he delighted in all sorts of tricks for the entertainment of the crowds. He frequently flew in women's clothing; he was accustomed to make the figure 8 without ever putting his hands on the control: he would make startling volplanes, leading the crowd to think he surely had lost his balance and was falling. At the Chicago meet in 1912 he was fined, along with Horace Kearney for risky work, Beachey's fault consisting in the fact that he had done his "ocean waves" at a height of not more than ten feet above the crowd. The deaths of Kearney, Walsh, and Ely, and several others who had tried to emulate him finally sobered him and drove him out of the game, but he could not stay [[/third column]] [[fourth column]] away after Pegoud had begun to surpass his achievements. Among Beachey's best-known stunts were the death dip, or vertical glide; the spiral glide, and the Dutch roll. He claimed to have flown before 20,000,000 people. [[line]] TOLEDO, March 14.--Lincoln Beachey at 18 was working in an airship factory here. He asked Charles Strobel, his employer, to give him a chance at flying. His request was refused. He was determined to be an airman, however. He would sleep in a tent at the factory, and at dawn would sneak out one of the dirigibles and make a flight unknown to Strobel. He kept this up for several weeks and finally demanded a contract. The last time Beachey was seen in Toledo was when he raced his aeroplane against Barney Oldfield on a half mile track. While looping the loop thousands of feet above the crowd his aged mother sat in a motor car on the track. She closed her eyes and kept them closed until told that her son had descended. [[line]] "END TO DAREDEVIL FLYING." [[line]] Time to Call a Halt, Howard Huntington of Aero Club Says. "An end to daredevil flying," was the comment of Howard Huntington, of the [[/fourth column]] [[fifth column]] Aero Club of America, last night on hearing of the death of Lincoln Beachey. "I knew him very well," said Mr. Huntington. "He was one of the most lovable of men. I have constantly wondered, year in and year out, how his end ever was postponed from one month to another. The pity is that such a tragedy has to be charged against aviation as an art and as a science. "I have in my office the full working drawings of Beachey's latest monoplane. How he ever dared to make a long dive in it I don't understand. It was a fragile machine, never built for such work, away underbraced for the strain it would have to stand in such a trial. "But then if all men stopped to think of braces and stays and pressure per square foot, probably we should have had no first generation of flyers. Beachey did wonders, for he dramatized aviation to thousands to whom it really never had appealed until they saw Beachey's dances across the sky, his up-side down flying, and his loops in the air. "Beachey died as most of his brothers of the first generation of airman have died. It is fitting that we close the era of flying of which Beachey's career was a part. I mean the era of flying for thrills for a crowd and for strictly and exhibition reputation. We know enough now not to go aloft with wings carrying only one set of stay wires for the dare-devil work which won Beachey his world-wide fame." [[/column five]] [[image - torn advertisement for GREENHUT]]
Transcription Notes:
mandc: Volplane: a controlled dive or downward flight at a steep angle, especially by an airplane with the engine shut off.
