The plane was at about 75 feet by the time it reached the lower end of the field, went neatly into its first turn, and came sweeping back at about 100 feet.
“It was noticed that Lieutenant Selfridge was apparently making an effort to talk with Mr. Wright,” reported the Washington Post. “His lips were seen to move, and his face was turned to the aviator, whose eyes were looking straight ahead, and whose body was taut and unbending.”
The plane circled the field three times at about 40 miles per hour. On the fourth turn, heading for Arlington Cemetery, Orville slowed down somewhat and all seemed to be working well.
Then, suddenly, just as the plane was passing over the “aerial garage,” a sizable fragment of something was seen to fly off into the air.
“That’s a piece of the propeller,” shouted one of the army officers.
Orville would later describe hearing an unexpected sound, “a light tapping” behind him, in the rear of the machine. A quick backward glance revealed nothing, but he slowed the engine and started toward a landing.
Then, at an altitude of about 125 feet came two loud thumps and “a terrible shaking.” Orville shut off the engine, hoping to glide to a landing. He pulled as hard as he could on the steering and lateral balance levers, but to no effect. “Quick as a flash, the machine turned down in front and started straight for the ground.”
Lieutenant Selfridge, who had remained quiet until now, was heard only to say in a hushed voice, “Oh! Oh!”
Those below watched in horror as the plane twisted this way and that, then plunged straight down, “like a bird shot dead in full flight,” in Orville’s words.
It hit the ground with terrific force, throwing up a swirling cloud of dust. A half dozen army men and reporters, along with Charlie Taylor, rushed out to help, led by three cavalrymen on horseback.
Orville and the lieutenant lay pinned beneath bloodstained wreckage, faces down. Orville was conscious but moaning in pain. Selfridge lay unconscious, a great gash across his forehead, his face covered with blood.
The scene around the wreckage became one of wild confusion. Officers were shouting orders, automobiles honking. Hundreds of people from the crowd who dashed forward had to be held back by the cavalrymen, one of whom was heard to shout, “If they won’t stand back, ride them down.”
Several army surgeons and a New York doctor in the crowd did what they could for the two men until the stretchers arrived and they were carried off to the base hospital at the far end of the field.
A reporter wrote of having seen Charlie Taylor bend down and loosen Orville’s tie and shirt collar, then, stepping back to lean against a corner of the smashed plane, sob like a child.
Among the crowd that gathered outside the hospital as night came on were Charles Flint and Octave Chanute.
Not until well after dark did word come from within the hospital. Orville was in critical condition, with a fractured leg and hip, and four broken ribs, but was expected to live. Lieutenant Selfridge, however, had died at 8:10 of a fractured skull without ever having regained consciousness. His was the first fatality in the history of powered flight. Speaking for the Army’s Signal Corps, Major George Squier praised Lieutenant Selfridge as a splendid officer who had had a brilliant career ahead of him.
But no one who had witnessed the flights of the previous days could possibly doubt that the problem of aerial navigation was solved. “If Mr. Wright should never again enter an aeroplane,” Squier said, “his work last week at Fort Myer will have secured him a lasting place in history as the man who showed the world that mechanical flight was an assured success.”
That Orville’s passenger that day could well have been Theodore Roosevelt was not mentioned.
The telegram from Fort Myer arrived at 7 Hawthorn Street just after Katharine returned from school. Bishop Wright was in Indiana attending a church conference.
There was never a question of what she must do. Moving into action without pause, she called the school principal, told her what had happened, and said she would be taking an indefinite leave of absence. Then, quickly as possible, she packed what clothes she thought she would need and was on board the last train to Washington at ten that same evening.
Bishop Wright, too, had received the news, but from the little he wrote in his diary there is no telling how stunned or alarmed he was. Nonetheless, he excused himself from the conference and returned to Dayton without delay. Once there he wrote to Orville and clearly from the heart.
I am afflicted with the pain you feel, and sympathize with the disappointment which has postponed your final success in aeronautics. But we are all thankful that your life has been spared, and are confident of your speedy though tedious recovery, and of your triumph in the future, as in the past.
Then, in the way of a fatherly sermon, he added, “We learn much by tribulation, and by adversity our hearts are made better.”
It was eight o’clock at Camp d’Auvours the morning of September 18 when Hart Berg arrived at Wilbur’s shed to tell him the news. At first Wilbur seemed not to accept what he heard. A thousand people had already gathered at the field. The weather was ideal for flying, Le Mans more crowded than ever with people eager to see him fly. But out of respect for Lieutenant Selfridge, Wilbur postponed all flights until the following week, then, shutting himself in his shed, refused to see anyone except Berg and one or two others who came to console him.
“Now you understand why I always felt that I should be in America with Orville,” he said. “Two heads are better than one to examine a machine.”
Left alone, he sat with head in hands. When another friend came in—Léon Bollée most likely—Wilbur looked up, his eyes full of tears, and said if anything could make him abandon further work in solving the problem of flight, it would be an accident like this. Then, springing to his feet, he declared, “No, we have solved this problem. With us flying is not an experiment; it is a demonstration.”
Others present saw him struggle with his emotions. He asked for fuller details, but there were none.
Since coming to Camp d’Auvours, he had acquired a bicycle on which he now went riding eight miles to Le Mans in the hope of hearing further word from Fort Myer. For some time he could be seen pacing nervously about the porch at the Hôtel du Dauphin. He felt very bad about “this business,” he told a reporter for the Paris Herald who approached him. “It seems to me that I am more or less to blame for the death of poor Selfridge, and yet I cannot account for the accident.