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Billed as the youngest licensed aviator in the United States, he made his first flight of the day at 3 p.m., after
having had some engine trouble. In front of 12,000 spectators, he fell from 100 feet because of a strong downwind.
Two days after collecting his prize money, Dixon died, moments after takng off at an airshow in Spokane,
Washington. The air was hot and thin, and Dixon's airplane took a long time to get airborne. He probably ran into
a thermal that was building over the waste ground just north of the field. He naively banked just as he caught the
cool downdraft at the edge of the column of rising air. Several hundred horrified spectators saw him go down.
Witnesses who were less than 100 yards from the crash site said the biplane
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The History Detectives talk with a Cromwell Dixon biographer, consult with
the curator at the Glenn M. Curtiss Museum, and finally came across a key clue at the Stuhr Museum in Grand
Island, Nebraska.
In the local newspaper it was recorded that Cromwell had crashed his plane made of
linen that had been treated with a varnish substance to keep the wind from blowing through it, bamboo, wire and
string. He was not hurt, but there was damage to the plane.
It was also recorded that the grandfather of the
woman who found the fabric swatch was at the fair with his mother. He would have been 13 at the time. The fabric had
the name of the plane on it that Dixon flew as well as the name of the owner of the plane. |
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