List of Accidents and Incidents Involving Military Aircraft Before 1925 - 1913

1913

February

Vickers E.F.B. 1 Destroyer (Experimental Fighting Biplane), the first of the Gunbus series of designs, contracted for in early 1913 by the Admiralty shortly after creation of the Naval Wing of the Royal Flying Corps in 1912, a pusher design, completed and displayed at the 1913 Olympia Aero Show, crashes soon afterwards, possibly on its first flight. No production ordered.

8 February

Russian pilot N. de Sackoff becomes the first pilot shot down in combat when his biplane, possibly a Maurice Farman MF.7, is hit by ground fire following bomb run on the walls of Fort Bizani during the First Balkan War. Flying for the Greeks, he comes down near small town of Preveza, on the coast N of the Aegean island of Levkas, secures local Greek assistance, repairs plane and resumes flight back to base.

March

Royal Aircraft Factory B.S.1 (c.f. Blériot Scout, indicating a tractor aeroplane), the first aircraft in the world designed and built from the start as a single-engine, single-seat fighting scout, first flown in March 1913 by Geoffrey de Havilland, crashes later that same month from a flat spin, pilot suffering a broken jaw. Repaired and modified, but no production ordered. Rebuilt as the B.S.2, then redesignated S.E.2 (Scout Experimental), and with enlarged vertical tail surfaces as the S.E.2A, and given serial 609, but still no production ordered.

8 April

Lieutenants Rex Chandler and Lewis H. Brereton on training flight from North Island, San Diego, California, in Curtiss F floatplane, Signal Corps 15, with Brereton as pilot, crashes and Chandler is knocked unconscious and drowns.

27 May

Lieutenant Desmond Arthur died when his Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2 biplane, 205, collapsed without warning while flying over Montrose. This was Scotland's first fatal aircraft accident.

20 June

First fatality in U.S. Naval aviation occurs when flight instructor Ens. W.D. Billingsley is thrown from pilot seat of the second Wright CH seaplane, B-2, at height of 1,600 feet in turbulent air over Annapolis, Maryland. Passenger Lt. John Henry Towers stays with airplane, sustaining injuries when it hits water. Design was modified conversion of Wright Model B with two pusher propellers driven through chains connected to a 60 hp (45 kW) Wright engine.

23 June

The S-21 Sikorsky Russky Vityaz ("Russian Knight"), designed by Igor Sikorsky and built by the RBVZ, a redesigned variant of the Bolshoi Baltiski, as the first large aircraft intended exclusively as a bomber, first flies on this date, the world's first four-motored aircraft. It is lost in a freak accident during 1913 military trials when the Gnôme rotary on a Moller II pusher biplane (some sources cite a Morane design) tears loose and hits the giant bomber.

4 September

U.S. Army 11th Cavalry 1st Lt. Moss Lee Love becomes the 10th fatality in U.S. army aviation history when his Wright Model C biplane crashes near San Diego, California during practice for his Military Aviator Test. On 19 October 1917, the newly-opened Dallas Love Field in Dallas, Texas is named in his honor. Joe Baugher lists the fatal aircraft accident for this date as being Burgess Model J, Signal Corps 18, which dove into the ground killing its pilot.

9 September

Imperial German Navy Zeppelin, L 1, LZ14, pushed down into the North Sea in a thunderstorm, drowning 14 crew members. This was the first Zeppelin incident in which fatalities occurred.

13 October

Imperial German Air Force-Lt. Koening {Aviator # 166} killed in crash near Neuendorf Aerodrome near Berlin. Lts Soren and Rohstadt are injured while taking a flight between Berlin and Stuttgart

17 October

Imperial German Navy Zeppelin L 2, LZ18, destroyed by an exploding engine during a test flight - the entire crew of 28 was killed.

24 November

Lieuts. Eric Lamar Ellington and Hugh M. Kelly of the 1st Aero Squadron, United States Army Aviation Corps, are killed this date in a fall of about eighty feet in a Wright Model C, Signal Corps 14. The accident occurred at ~0758 hrs. across the bay from San Diego, California on the grounds of the army school on North Island. On impact, the engine broke free, crushing the two aviators. These were the eleventh and twelfth Army aviation casualties. Ellington Field, Texas, which opens on 1 November 1917, is named for Lt. Ellington.

7 December

A Royal Aircraft Factory B.E.2a, 235, flown by factory test pilot Lt. Norman Spratt crashed at the Farnborough Aerodrome, pilot surviving.