Long Island Aircraft Crashes 1909-1959

Joshua Stoff

Arcadia Publishing, Mar 1, 2004 - History - 128 pages

During the first fifty years of American aviation, Long Island was at the center of aircraft innovation and flight. There were more aircraft manufacturers and airports located on Long Island than in any other part of the United States. Due to the extraordinarily high volume of air traffic, Long Island also led the country-if not the world-in aircraft crashes. Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959 portrays the daring flights, accidents, and mishaps of pioneer pilots, and the conditions that contributed to many crashes. Long Island ultimately saw the earliest air-traffic control systems, airport lighting, aviation weather reports, paved runways, and professional flight schools.Long Island Aircraft Crashes: 1909-1959 contains captivating images from Mitchel Field and Roosevelt Field, the two most active airfields on Long Island. In addition to airfield activity, this book illustrates some of the first experimental flights over Hempstead Plains; military training at Hazelhurst Field; the L.W.F. Owl bomber (the largest landplane of its time); the world's first instrument-guided flight; and Amelia Earhart posing with the new Sperry Gyropilot.

Contents

• Inrroducrion: 7
• 19091914: 9
• 19141918: 17
• 19191939: 31
• 19391945: 87
• 19461959: 95
• Toward Safer Flying: 119

About the author

Joshua Stoff, noted aviation historian and author, is the curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum. Many of these photographs have come from the extensive archives of the museum, as well as the once magnificent archives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which were sadly lost in the attacks of September 11, 2001. Fortunately, these representative photographs, many of which have never before been published, were copied prior to those attacks and were saved.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Long Island Aircraft Crashes 1909-1959; Images of America; Images of America: a history of American life in images and texts
• Author: Joshua Stoff
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing, 2004
• ISBN: 0738535168, 9780738535166
• Length: 128 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / General; History / United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA); Transportation / Aviation / History