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Flying Too Close to the Sun

“Learning the secret of flight from a bird,” Orville Wright wrote, “was a good deal like learning the secret of magic from a magician.” It wasn’t going to be free. The age of powered flight began in 1903 when Orville made the first sustained powered flight on December 17 in an aircraft he designed and built with his brother, Wilbur. This 12-second flight led to the development of the first practical airplane two years later and launched worldwide efforts to build better flying machines. But it took the brothers a few crashes before that secret was partially revealed to them.

The first aircraft accident occurred three days before that historic flight. On December 14, Wilbur tried to coax his Flyer into the air and almost made it. But the sensitivity of the aircraft’s elevator surprised him and the aircraft nosed up, stalled, and then dived into the dunes. It took three days to repair it in preparation for what would become the historic first flight.

The brothers had always been aware that flying meant courting almost certain death. “If you want safety,” Wilbur once said, “you would do well to sit on the fence and watch the birds.” It was the price one paid to emulate the gods. Even the mythical Icarus had died flying too close to the sun, which melted the wax that held the feathers on his wings together. When the wings failed, he plummeted into the sea and drowned. Put it down to a young man’s arrogance, complacency, or disobedience in not listening to his instructor father — all errors that continue to kill new pilots today — but Icarus’s death was the first pilot error ever recorded. However, what is never recounted is that his father, Daedalus, using a similar pair of wings, avoided going close to the sun and flew all the way from Crete to Sicily to live there happily ever after. In what must be the earliest ever accident investigation, he had learned from his son’s crash to prevent future such tragedies.

In their pursuit of flight, the Wrights were influenced by the writings of Otto Lilienthal. The German aerial pioneer chose an arc for his glider’s airfoil, mistakenly theorizing that birds flew because they had rigid wings and not the parabolic cambers that evolution had given them. This would cost Lilienthal his life in 1896 when he crashed, his last words said to be, “Sacrifices must be made.” It was by investigating why he had crashed that the Wrights were able to perfect their own airfoil so that in 1903 they could invent the aircraft.

Such was the exhilaration among the pioneers of conquering gravity that personal safety was second place, if considered at all. Having flown for five years without killing themselves, the Wrights saw their luck run out on July 2, 1908, when Orville was badly injured on the fifth crash, breaking his thigh and several ribs. His passenger, U.S. Signal Corps Lieutenant Tom Selfridge, was less fortunate, having been thrown out of the aircraft and killed on impact. A “clean” investigation of the wreckage to discover why it happened would have been impossible, since army officers galloped up to the site, outracing the crowd of spectators that followed. An army surgeon conducted the autopsy of history’s first aviation fatality and pronounced that Selfridge had died of a skull fracture. After that, in what became the first protective measure for pilots, Selfridge’s colleagues were encouraged to wear their West Point football helmets while flying.

While an official inquiry cleared the Wrights of any blame, Alexander Graham Bell (who saw what remained of the crashed aircraft on his way to Selfridge’s funeral) surmised that the brothers’ use of twin propellers — one of which had cracked lengthwise and lost all thrust — had caused the aircraft to drop. With the intricate warping controls, Orville didn’t have time to ease the plane into a controlled glide.

Cocooned as we are today from actually experiencing the sensation of flight itself, it is impossible to imagine the exhilaration the early aviators must have felt defying gravity. Poor seat recline, too-small overhead storage bins, harried flight attendants snapping at your request for another drink, a mediocre entertainment system — these are our hardships today. Entitled to departing the airport exactly on time, we expect our aircraft to withstand air resistance without its wings falling off and its pilots to be more than capable of meeting the vagaries of weather and traffic en route.

To the early aeronauts, flying was never just a mode of conveyance. It was subjugation of the laws of gravity, giving one power over the elements. It was, someone wrote, like sex with the gods. Aviation author Leighton Collins, who first soloed in 1929 in an open-cockpit biplane, remembered, “Flying releases something almost uncontrollable in the average pilot.” Air mail pilot pioneer Elrey Jeppesen recalled in an interview: “Those old, open airplanes — you felt like a bird, part of the airplane. You could feel the wind on your face, the wind on the stick and the rudder. You were a part of it. Today you just might as well get on a train.”[1] No one captured the exhilaration of flying better than the “High Flight” poet John Gillespie Magee, Jr., who wrote that with flying one “slipped the surly bonds of Earth … and touched the face of God.”

But that onrush of joy was sometimes lethal, and most fatal accidents in aviation history have occurred because of it. The greatest danger wasn’t the unreliable engine or fragile fuselage but the pilot himself. Again and again, the young man (or woman) pushed the plane too far and died.

Or he was killed by birds, the original proprietors of the air. Most bird flying occurs between 30 to 300 feet above ground level, the height attained by early aviators. Bird hazards (or “feathered bullets,” as flocks were called) date back to the initial flights of the Wright brothers. Doing circuits over fields at Dayton, Ohio, on September 7, 1905, the brothers encountered flocks of blackbirds that twice struck their aircraft. The first bird-strike fatality in North America was in 1912 when Cal Rodgers, the first man to fly across the United States, lost his life after a gull became jammed in the controls of his aircraft, causing the plane to crash.

Bird strikes weren’t reported then because they rarely brought an aircraft down. For one thing, the aircraft’s airspeed wasn’t high enough to cause severe damage to the wings and fuselage when a bird struck it, and for another, no pilot had yet made it to the heights of the massive annual migrations of large birds such as Canada geese. Strikes that occurred against the forward-facing parts of the aircraft did expose the pilot to flying glass and bird debris, but the propellers on piston-engine aircraft were too strong to be damaged by birds. The rotating blades protected the engines, if only by reducing bird size and thus the effect of impact.

The late Thomas Selfridge had been a member of the Aerial Experimental Association (AEA) formed at Baddeck, Nova Scotia, by Alexander Graham Bell. In addition to Mrs. Bell, who funded the organization, the other members of the AEA were F.W. “Casey” Baldwin and J.A.D. McCurdy, two young engineers from the University of Toronto, and Glenn Hammond Curtiss, a motorcycle builder from Hammondsport, New York. As every Canadian knows (or should know), McCurdy’s flight in the Silver Dart on February, 23, 1909, inaugurated aviation in Canada and the rest of the British Empire. Yet although Canadians might have heard of what happened at Baddeck, very few had actually seen flying machines, and there were many who doubted men could fly at all.

That changed in the summer of 1910. The two great aviation meets at Lakeside, Quebec, and Weston, Ontario, that June and July fielded a profusion of biplanes and monoplanes that sometimes took to the air. There were also dirigibles bumping along, balloons ascending, and even parachute jumps from the latter. Remarkably, although there were several crashes at both meets, the Silver Dart among them, and some injuries (and one near-drowning in Valois Bay, Lake Saint-Louis), there were no fatalities (or none recorded) among the pilots or the onlookers.

The first Canadian to be killed flying an aircraft was the Toronto-born St. Croix Johnstone. When his wealthy father refused to buy him an aircraft in 1910, saying he didn’t want his son to die, Johnstone joined the Moisant travelling aero circus then based at the New Orleans stockyards.[2] Soon, with a few “firsts” behind him such as first flights over cities in the United States, Canada, and Cuba, he achieved fame on the aerial circuit. At the Mineola, New York, fair on August 5, 1911, the young Canadian broke the flight-duration record by remaining in the air for four hours, one minute, and 59 seconds, a difficult feat considering the amount of fuel he had to carry aloft to do so.

Ten days later Johnstone flew his Blériot-type monoplane at the Grant Park air meet held on the Chicago waterfront. Among the onlookers were his parents and young wife, who watched as a mile from shore he executed a perfect corkscrew dive over the water. The aircraft’s wings suddenly crumpled, a local newspaper reported, “like paper and the machine hurtled into the lake, its heavy engine and tangled wires dragging its pilot to his death.”

Reporters attributed the cause of the crash to a “flaw in the airplane’s mechanism.” But in what is probably the earliest accident investigation into the death of a Canadian pilot, other aviators at the meet connected the wings’ collapse to the torque of the dive and/or the strain caused by the Mineola exhibition 10 days earlier. The “shear centre” of a wing wasn’t properly understood until the mid-1920s, and the failure to identify it then meant the industry was unable to ascertain why Blériot-type aircraft, in particular, were prone to shedding their wings in flight.[3]

Before the First World War, the face of aviation in the United States was Orville and Wilbur Wright and Glenn Curtiss, and in Canada, Alexander Graham Bell and J.A.D. McCurdy, all mechanical tinkerers who through trial and error had painstakingly untangled some of the mysteries of powered flight. But more familiar to the public were aerial daredevils such as Archibald Hoxsey, Walter Brookins, Lincoln Beachey, and Cal Rodgers. In the pursuit of cheap thrills, the miracle of flight of which so much had been promised was being strangled at birth. Mass entertainment meant dangerous flying stunts such as inverted loops and spiral dives. Between 1908 and 1913, the New York Times calculated that 308 “aeronauts” had died in air crashes in the United States, with 85 in the first eight months of 1913 alone. The magazine Scientific American deplored the situation in which aircraft that had promised so much were now “providers of sensational amusement,” like racing cars and motorcycles, rather than “practical means of transport.”[4]

The Wrights decried the use of their aircraft for what they termed “fancy flights,” and in refusing to modify their Wright B Flyer for aerobatics, killed several pilots. Nothing could be gained by stunting, the brothers said, except more deaths. But after 1910, with so much money at stake, even they were willing to trade notoriety for a share of the gate receipts and prize money. Like Curtiss, the brothers set up the earliest flying schools. For $500 down to earn their wings (later reduced to $250), students began with ground-school instructions at the Dayton workshop. They studied how a Wright Flyer was built and repaired, graduating to an ingenious “flight simulator” (a Flyer with its control levers powered by an electric motor that regulated the wing warping) before actual flight training at Huffman Prairie Field. All aircraft used for instruction were equipped with dual controls, and the student was allowed five hours of flying before being tested for a licence. The test was carried out in front of observers from the Aero Club of America and was run according to Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) standards.

Without safety measures like helmet and gloves, William Stark gave a flying exhibition with his Curtiss biplane at Minoru Park Racetrack, Richmond, British Columbia, on April 20, 1912. Vancouver Archives.

The odds for the early air man to die violently weren’t in his favour. Planes crashed because no one had put everything together yet. The Wrights, for example, had figured out how the wings on an aircraft worked but were never quite sure where the fuselage fitted in. The little scientific knowledge available then depended on the observation of birds, on intuition, and on limited experience. Aerodynamics was vaguely understood by aircraft engineers and even less by pilots. There had been no experimentation on the structural demand of an aircraft’s wings. Were short, stubby, and strong wings better than long and slender ones or vice versa? Which were more aerodynamic — elliptical or tapered wings? Too many aircraft were falling out of the sky because of thin wings, the planes stalling with no warning to their pilots. Yet no one had figured out that thick wings were safer because they gave the pilot warning and allowed him to reduce pitch. North Americans used pusher engines, but European designers favoured tractors. How did the engine’s position affect the aircraft’s centre of gravity? What was the aspect ratio to be? Were biplanes with their web of bracing wires the future, or were monoplanes such as the birdlike Antoinette with no wires at all the way to go?

Montreal’s Bois Franc Polo Grounds, Toronto’s Trethewey Farm and Long Branch, and Richmond, British Columbia’s Minoru Park Racetrack have long been buried under suburban sprawl. But in the summers of 1910–13, whether in those cities or Saskatoon, Calgary, Fort Erie, or Quebec City, untrained (as all pilots were) birdmen took to the air in numbers for prize money and adulation. Aerial circus promoters attracted the crowds by promising suicidal manoeuvres in flight, luring to their deaths devil-may-care, fatalistic young men possessing little knowledge of aeronautics. And with the public clamouring for thrills and chills, it was a foolish pilot who attempted to satisfy his audience with mundane-level flights.

The daredevils at Canadian aviation meets were almost always American, and it was no surprise that one would die in the first fatal aircraft accident in Canada. Stunt flyers on tour of the Pacific Northwest, the husband-and-wife team John and Alys Bryant had been trained at a Curtiss aviation school and flew only Curtiss aircraft. On July 31, 1913, at Minoru Park Racetrack, Alys Bryant became the first woman to fly in Canada. Not to be outdone, her husband, John, concluded his flying routine by shutting off his engine at 2,500 feet, then diving steeply. Within 100 feet of the ground, he levelled out and landed, still without using his engine. The pair then took their show to Victoria, British Columbia, where on August 6, despite a strong wind, John performed the same routine over the harbour. This time, as he dived, a wing collapsed and the aircraft fell, smashing onto the roof of a building near the waterfront. Bryant died instantly, and his wife never flew again.

In Canada, as in the United States, anyone could build an aircraft and/or fly one. Licences, regulations, and safeguards were unheard of. As with today’s drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), aircraft had evolved so quickly that they outran the bureaucracy seeking to regulate them. There was no organization, government or private, to prevent an aviator from killing himself or others with an airplane. Nor were there procedures in place to earn a licence to fly one or requirements for a permit to build a safer flying machine or restrictions on where it could or couldn’t be flown.

The policy-makers in Ottawa had barely grasped the effects of the increasing use of automobiles in cities — this was, after all, the heyday of the railway — and aircraft were little more than large motorized kites. The first and only Canadian until 1915 to earn an FAI pilot’s licence was J.A.D. McCurdy, awarded to him on August 23, 1910, by the Aero Club of America. By contrast, in France, licences for civilian pilots who met certain requirements were mandatory by 1909, to be followed by military licences in 1911. French pilots were also required to use seat belts and helmets; Germany and other European nations soon followed suit.

Before the First World War, flying wasn’t so much for the brave as for the foolhardy. A culture of safety for the pilot, if it existed at all, was a distant second to actually taking off (instead of hopping) and maintaining a credible altitude. The more death-defying the flight promised to be, the larger the audience promoters could attract — the gate receipts dependent on the absence of any safety measures. If the aviator was fortunate to accomplish a semblance of flight, then there followed cautious turns and dives, sometimes both manoeuvres unplanned. Fighting the engine’s torque and freezing wind, praying that the wings didn’t fold on him, a pilot did all he could just to stay in the air. Since all exhibition flying had to take place as low as possible within sight of spectators and photographers, there was no chance to recover from a stall.[5] However, with so much free publicity from air shows, to paraphrase Curtiss, what better way to show off your aircraft than have it perform such daredevil feats?

It was accepted among the more sensible that flying was a suicidal activity, which dissuaded many amateur pilots such as the young Fiorello La Guardia, Benito Mussolini, and Winston Churchill (fortunately) from killing themselves at an early age. The future British prime minister understood the perils of flying when he famously warned: “The air is an extremely dangerous, jealous, and exacting mistress. Once under the spell, most lovers are faithful to the end, which is not always old age.”

If the Wrights dressed for flying as they would for church services, the earli­est personal safety equipment for aviators was as much for motorcar drivers of the day. Goggles, gloves, a heavy leather coat, and a cork-and-leather helmet were de rigueur. Seat belts weren’t the easy metal lift-lever ones used in cars and aircraft today and were thus viewed with suspicion because they hindered immediate escape in case of a fiery crash or if the aircraft hit the water. It is incredible that not one of the great innovators who dominated early flight thought to include an easy-to-operate seat belt for the pilot — a basic and obvious piece of safety equipment today.[6] Not strapped in, pilots fell out of their wicker seats when the aircraft tilted or turned over — or came apart in mid-air.

Once they got airborne, the earliest pilots only had an engine thermometer and oil pressure gauge for instruments. Altimeters, airspeed indicators, tachometers, and even compasses were in the future. As he did when riding a bicycle, a pilot relied on his body, either the seat of his pants (i.e., his buttocks) or his shoulders, for balance. It was no wonder the Wrights were cyclists and Curtiss was a prize-winning motorcycle racer. Curtiss’s Model D Pusher, the first aircraft to be mass-produced, relied on ailerons operated via movement of a shoulder harness for lateral control.

Parachutes, the original safety device, were familiar to both aviators and the public. Parachute jumps from stationary balloons had been a feature at carnivals for many years, sometimes featuring the risqué attraction of women in tights leaping from them. The first use of a parachute to exit an aircraft in Canada took place over Vancouver on May 24, 1912, when, wearing bright red tights and a leather helmet, Charles Saunders floated down. Not yet made of silk, the parachutes of the day were too bulky and heavy to carry aloft and fit in a tiny cockpit. In any case, the flimsy aircraft came apart too quickly or were too low to the ground for pilots to use parachutes.

Nor could an aircraft’s construction be relied upon to withstand the aerobatic pressures put on it. The ash, bamboo, or spruce utilized to build the fuselage — all three chosen for their strength-to-weight ratios — were never durable enough for aerial manoeuvres. The first and for a long time only aviator to use lightweight aluminum in aircraft construction was St. Croix Johnstone’s former employer, Jean Moisant. Canada’s first aircraft, the Silver Dart, was made of bamboo, friction tape, steel tubes, wire, and silk that had been dyed silver for photographic and legal reasons. Steel was only used for the nuts, bolts, and joints that held the fuselage together. But unlike the Wright Flyer, which relied on wing warping for lateral movement, the Silver Dart featured hinged, controllable wing-tip flaps called ailerons. Better control of the aircraft meant increased safety.

Baddeck No. 1 being prepared for trials at Petawawa, Ontario. It crashed on August 13, 1909, because of incorrect balance; i.e., placing the engine too far to the rear of the aircraft.

Library and Archives Canada.

What also killed many of the early pilots was irregular maintenance — their safety was only as good as their support team. Between exhibitions in various cities and countries, the whole contraption, sometimes with a spare aircraft, had to be disassembled and transported by train and horse carriage to be re-rigged at the new site, the wires and joints once more tightly wound. Only Curtiss’s Model D Pusher was designed for easy assembly and disassembly.

By 1909 the military uses of aircraft were being considered in Europe and the United States and even in Canada. The AEA was dissolved on March 31 that year, but given Alexander Graham Bell’s prestige, the Canadian government expressed an interest in what his Silver Dart might do on the battlefield. J.A.D. McCurdy and Casey Baldwin were invited to demonstrate their aircraft at the militia camp at Petawawa, Ontario. The Canadian Department of Militia and Defence had only been in existence since 1906, when the last British forces left Canadian soil, so for Canada to extend such an invitation was bold, if a little impertinent. The Mother Country itself wouldn’t show such courage concerning aviation for another few years. The Canadian government even allotted the pair the sum of $5 for preparations, the first expenditure on aviation in the country’s history. Since both Baldwin and McCurdy had served in the Royal Canadian Engineers while at university, they were welcomed with much enthusiasm at the camp on July 1, 1909. They brought with them the historic Silver Dart and a second, newer aircraft, Baddeck No. 1. Army engineers helped assemble the Silver Dart, flatten the cavalry grounds into a rudimentary airstrip, and build a shelter out of logs — the first aircraft hangar in Canada.

News arrived from Ottawa that Louis Blériot had flown across the English Channel on July 25, heightening everyone’s expectations as to what McCurdy and Baldwin would do. The precious 42-horsepower Kirkham engine was to be tested on the Silver Dart before being tried on the Baddeck No. 1. The older aircraft did four short flights on August 2 but then crashed and was deemed irreparable. Suffering minor injuries, McCurdy and Baldwin transferred the Kirkham engine to Baddeck No. 1 for the formal trial.

After days filled with great expectations exacerbated by an impatient Ottawa press, disbelieving onlookers, and high winds, on August 12, Baddeck No. 1 was flown in a test run but barely made it to a height of 100 feet. For the formal trial the next day, the audience included the deputy minister of militia, the quartermaster general, and the chief of the general staff. This time Baddeck No. 1 struggled to an altitude of 15 feet, then stopped and fell backward to crash-land on its propeller and rudder, destroying both along with the carriage, struts, and rods. The cause of the crash was incorrect balance; in other words, placing the engine too far to the rear of the aircraft. Although McCurdy and Baldwin promised to return to Petawawa within a month, they didn’t, and Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s government could be forgiven when it lost all interest in aviation, military or civil.[7]

Given the very public deaths of aviators (editors knew that blaring headlines like “Air Tragedy” sold newspapers), it was little wonder that aviators were regarded as the latest form of acrobats, closer to trapeze artists than to pilots and working without even a safety net. Until 1927, pilots would be ineligible to purchase life insurance, a cause of concern to their widows, and the U.S. government census classified their occupation as “entertainers.” To be fair, besides the headlined crashes, the insurance industry had no accurate statistics to go on. If the popular aviation song for the era was “Come Josephine in My Flying Machine,” less romantic was doggerel from the period that said it better:

There was an old woman who lived in a hangar,

She had many children who raised such a clangor

That some she gave poison, and some aeroplanes

And all of them died with terrible pains.[8]

Even the experienced flyer, it seemed, didn’t escape the inevitable. When the U.S. Army wanted to use aircraft in the Mexican campaign in 1912, out of the 14 pilots in its Signal Corps, eight had already died in crashes, the first of whom had been Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. Charles Rolls, one of the two founders of the Rolls-Royce Company, was lauded for flying across the English Channel and back, something no one had done yet. But on July 12, 1910, before hundreds of spectators at Bournemouth, England, death caught up with him. His Wright Flyer’s stabilizer broke off in a vertical dive, the aircraft barely 40 feet off the ground, and he fell out. Rolls was found without a mark on his body, having died of a broken neck and becoming the first British aviation casualty.

Persuaded by this, the British government enacted the Aerial Navigation Act that year, drafted not for the safety of the aviator but to protect his audience — those on the ground who might be killed by crashes. The Home Office had nominal jurisdiction over civil flying, as it did over all means of transport. In the earliest legislation on safety, Parliament gave the secretary of state the power to prohibit flying over such areas as he might prescribe. Augmented by acts in 1913 and 1919, he also had the authority to regulate air navigation; issue, revoke, and suspend pilots’ licences; and “certify” aircraft. Several European nations followed suit, but not the United States or Canada yet.

The nearest to a national aviation authority the British and their empire had was the Aero Club of the United Kingdom. Its members were wealthy sportsmen who raced cars, sailed for the America’s Cup, skied the Cresta Run at St. Moritz, and in 1909 became “dedicated to spreading knowledge to advance the sport of aviation.” Meeting regularly, club members reported on aviation advances around the world and granted “Aviator Certificates” (the earliest pilots’ licences) to deserving colleagues. They also liaised with like-minded clubs overseas, one of which was the Aero Club of Canada. So socially well connected were members of the British Aero Club that in 1911 they were granted a Royal Charter. Like many of his subjects, King Edward VII enjoyed air shows and had even chatted at one with the Wrights.[9] Prompted by the death of Rolls, the Royal Aero Club became interested in why accidents occurred and on January 9, 1912, established a Public Safety and Accidents Investigation Committee to be coordinated by George Bertram Cockburn, an enthusiastic member.

That year, on May 13, a Flanders monoplane crashed at Brooklands Racetrack and burned. The club committee happened to be meeting the following day, and the Brooklands accident was discussed. It became not only the first in the British Empire to be formally investigated, but also the first on which a report was published. Copies of the report went into widespread circulation by June 8, 1912, and formed the basis of all British and Canadian accident reports in the future. It is reproduced here in its entirety:

BROOKLANDS ACCIDENT.

Report on the fatal accident to Mr. E.V.B. Fisher and his passenger, Mr. Victor Mason, when flying at Brooklands on Monday, May 13th, 1912, at about 6 p.m.

Brief Description of the Accident. — Mr. E.V.B. Fisher flying with a passenger on a Flanders monoplane fitted with a 60-h.p. Green engine had made two or three circuits of the Brooklands flying ground. He was making a left-hand turn when the aircraft fell to the ground, killing both the aviator and passenger. Almost immediately after contact with the ground, the aircraft was in flames.

Report. — The Special Committee sat on the following dates: — Tuesday, May 21st, Wednesday, May 22nd, and Tuesday, May 28th, 1912, and heard the evidence of two eye witnesses, both of whom were aviators holding certificates. The Committee also heard the evidence of the designer and manufacturer of the aircraft, and of the representative of the maker of the motor. The written reports of other witnesses, and the report of Dr. Eric Gardner, were also considered.

From the consideration of this evidence the Committee is of opinion that the following facts are clearly established: —

(1) That the accident originated while the aircraft was making a left-hand turn at about 100 feet from the ground. (Evidence as to height, in the opinion of the Committee, is not conclusive.)

(2) That the aircraft had turned through an angle of about 90˚ in the horizontal plane.

(3) That it then side-slipped inwards.

(4) That it struck the ground head first, with the tail practically vertical.

(5) That from the effect produced on the engine and other parts the velocity at the moment of striking the ground was very considerable.

(6) That the fire which took place originated subsequently to the fall, and was the result not the cause of the accident.

(7) That there is no reason to suppose that the structural failure of any part of the aircraft was the cause of the accident.

(8) That from the commencement of the flight the aircraft was flying tail down.

(9) That the engine was actually running when the aircraft struck the ground.

(10 ) That Mr. Fisher was not in any way incapacitated so far as the normal control of the aircraft was concerned by an injury to his left shoulder, which he had sustained on April 18th, 1912.

(11) That the passenger did not cause the accident.

(12) That Mr. Fisher was thrown, fell, or jumped out of the aircraft when the latter was a considerable height from the ground, his body being found about 60 ft. in front of the spot where the aircraft struck. The passenger remained in the aircraft: his position was such that he could not readily have been thrown out.

(13) Mr. Fisher was granted his Aviator’s Certificate No. 77, on May 2nd, 1911, by the Royal Aero Club.

E.V.B. Fisher in the cockpit of a Flanders F.3, this one fitted with a Marconi wireless. Fisher is in the rear seat.

Opinion. — The Committee is of opinion that the cause of the accident was the aviator himself, who failed sufficiently to appreciate the dangerous conditions under which he was making the turn, when the aircraft was flying tail down, and in addition was not flying in a proper manner.

A side slip occurred, and Mr. Fisher lost control of the aircraft.

It seems probable that his losing control was caused by his being thrown forward on to the elevating gear, thereby moving this forward involuntarily, which would have had the effect of still further turning the aircraft down. This would explain his being thrown out whilst in the air.

In the opinion of the Committee it is possible that if the aviator had been suitably strapped into his seat he might have retained control of the aircraft.[10]

The Royal Aero Club served as a model for the Aero Club of Canada, formed when 26 Torontonians with “an amateur interest in aviation” met in 1912. Rules and bylaws were copied from the British club, and like its counterpart, the Aero Club of Canada joined with various newspapers to lobby the government to regulate aviation before members of the public, let alone pilots, were killed. But except for young Tom Wensley’s accidental death in 1888 (the first aerial casualty in Canada, he had been clinging to a balloon’s rope in Ottawa, was carried aloft, and fell to his death) and despite years of exhibition flying in the dominion, there hadn’t been a single aviation fatality among bystanders.

The singular instance in which the bureaucracy in Ottawa did acknowledge there might be some use to aviation was in the imposition of tariff duties on aircraft. With few exceptions all flying machines were built outside Canada, either in Europe or the United States. Even J.A.D. McCurdy had set up a plant in the United States to do so. This led the Canadian commissioner of customs to announce in July 1912 that imported flying machines would come under Tariff Item #453 and the following rates would apply: a 15 percent British preferential duty, with Americans and all others subjected to a 27 percent duty.

That was about all the federal government could do, since sports/amusements and the licensing of vehicle operators were provincial matters. Critics must have pointed out that no Canadian province required a driver to be certified (or tested) to operate an automobile and that many more drivers and pedestrians were killed on the roads than pilots in the air. The federal government’s attitude seemed to be that as long as deaths at aerial circuses were confined to foolhardy pilots who were Americans, it wouldn’t get involved. But the shape of things to come was hinted at the Saint John, New Brunswick, air show on September 2, 1912, in which the teenage American birdman Cecil Peoli carried two intrepid passengers aloft. While there were no casualties that day, it was only a matter of time before someone was killed.

On June 27, 1914, a month before the First World War began, Montrealers gathered at Maisonneuve Park to watch Lincoln Beachey “loop the loop” — the first time this had ever been done in Canada. Twenty-two pilots had died trying to fly inverted (this was before symmetrical wings with the same curvature on the top and bottom were invented), and it looked as if Beachey would make it one more. Promoters could always count on sellout crowds when “The Demon of the Sky” performed, especially as he did his closing trick: putting his plane into a steep dive and then, after throwing his hands up in the air to show the crowd, grabbing the controls to level out, it seemed, almost inches from the ground.[11]

Applauding him as he successfully performed the inverted routine somehow without losing his fuel and oil, no one in the audience could have guessed that it was the last month of peace or the end of aviation’s adolescence.