{"id":7080,"date":"2018-05-13T20:51:12","date_gmt":"2018-05-14T01:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7080"},"modified":"2023-12-10T14:03:01","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T20:03:01","slug":"mfdj-05-13-18-the-wingfoot-air-express-disaster-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7080","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 05\/13\/18: The Wingfoot Air Express Disaster, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Plunging\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

The\u00a0Wingfoot Air Express<\/em>\u00a0was a\u00a0dirigible\u00a0that crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in\u00a0Chicago\u00a0on Monday July 21, 1919. The Type FD dirigible, owned by the\u00a0Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, was transporting people from\u00a0Grant Park\u00a0to the\u00a0White City amusement park.\u00a0One crew member, two passengers, and ten bank employees were killed in what was, up to that point, the worst dirigible disaster in\u00a0United States\u00a0history.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe Wingfoot Air Express in happier times<\/em><\/p>\n

The following are\u00a0excerpts from the book\u00a0City of Scoundrels<\/a><\/em>\u00a0detailing the crash:<\/p>\n

But then, just as the airship crossed over busy State Street, [the ship’s pilot] Boettner] felt something strange – a tremor in the fuselage, a shudder of the steel cables that held the gondola beneath the blimp. He looked up and saw smoke and flames licking the bag just above its equator, and he knew immediately that the situation was dire. The pilot stood up and started waving his arms at the men behind him. “Over the top, everybody,” he yelled as loudly as he could. “Jump or you’ll burn alive!”<\/p>\n

The other occupants of the blimp seemed confused at first, but then, looking up themselves, they comprehended the gravity of the situation. As they scrambled to heave themselves over the side, Boettner could see the flames moving rapidly above. The bag was crackling noisily as the fire spread out to consume the whole blimp. Just as the airship buckled in the middle and started to fold in on itself, Boettner jumped.<\/p>\n

….<\/p>\n

Witnesses could see the five tiny figures falling away from the flaming blimp. They saw four parachute start to open – like long ribbons fluttering out of a magician’s hat – as the ropes pulled the chute packs from the side of the gondola. One ribbon caught fire before it opened completely. This was Carl Weaver’s chute. As the silk fabric dissolved in tongues of flame, the mechanic fell “like a rocket,” crashing through the glass skylight of the two-story building below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At least two of the other parachutes also seemed to be afire, although they were burning more slowly. Harry Wacker was able to control his descent somewhat, though he fell faster and faster as each square inch of silk above him was consumed. Plunging toward the street, he struck a ledge on the Insurance Exchange Building, nearly gained his footing on the masonry, but then fell again. [Photographer] Milton Norton, who had delayed jumping from the gondola as he worried over his camera and plates, was descending just as fast, spinning wildly round and round. He was thrown violently against a window of the Western Union Building. The window smashed, and Norton was snagged momentarily on the sill, but his momentum was too great and he, too, continued falling to the street.<\/p>\n

Jack Boettner, being a trained pilot, had known to jump as far as possible from the flaming bag, and so his parachute had just been licked by the spreading flames as it opened. Even so, one edge caught fire. The pilot began to whirl in the air as he dropped. He couldn’t see where he was going, but his feet soon struck the roof of a high building. Jolted by the impact, he rolled a few times and found himself peering over the edge of the roof, down into the street far below. Boettner didn’t know it at the time, but he had landed safely on top of the Board of Trade Building, one of the tallest in the city.<\/p>\n

Only one of the five figures did not fall away from the gondola. Earl Davenport\u00a0 [a publicity agent for the White City Amusement Park] had tried to jump with the others, but his rope had somehow become entangled in the blimp’s rigging. He fell only about fifty feet and then just hung there, upside down, swinging back and forth. According to witnesses, he was kicking and struggling, but couldn’t free himself from the tangle. All he could do was hang there helplessly as the flaming blimp collapsed in on itself, losing all buoyancy and then plummeting toward the roof of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank below.<\/p>\n

[Tomorrow’s fact will continue the story from the perspective of the bank employees.<\/em>]<\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Plunging\u00a0Yet Truly Morbid Fact! The\u00a0Wingfoot Air Express\u00a0was a\u00a0dirigible\u00a0that crashed into the Illinois Trust and Savings Building in\u00a0Chicago\u00a0on Monday July 21, 1919. The Type FD dirigible, owned by the\u00a0Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, was transporting people from\u00a0Grant Park\u00a0to the\u00a0White City amusement park.\u00a0One crew member, two passengers, and ten bank employees were killed in what was, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7080"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10806,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080\/revisions\/10806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}