I daresay most pilots are familiar with the picture. A biplane, possibly a Curtis “Jenny”, has crashed into a tree – the only tree in the area – and is sticking nearly perpendicularly out from it. The caption reads “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.”
A long time ago I’d heard that the picture was taken the day after the crash, and that the pilot – who had broken his leg – climbed back up into the cockpit for the photo.
In my small photo, I am not sure I see the pilot in the aircraft.
The aircraft is a biplane with sort of a “half-heart-shaped” tail, which has vertical vertical blue/white/red stripes, and may (or may not) be a “Jenny”.
The registration number on the fuselage is 38057. (There is no preceding “N” or “NC”.)
I did a google search on “38057” and “Aviation in itself”, but no hits were returned.
Does anyone know when the crash occurred, what kind of plane it is, who the pilot was, and the circumstances of the photo being taken?
No, the Tiger Moth’s tail has a little point on it, and this one is completely round. Also the Tiger Moth’s fuselage is rounded on top, and this one is square.
I’m not an expert on WWI aircraft, but I’m fairly sure it’s a JN-4. The “Jenny” was sold in large numbers on the surplus market after the war, and was popular with barnstormers. The sheer numbers of these aircraft would tend to favour the aircraft in the photo being a Jenny. The tail looks right, and the blue/white/red flash was common on U.S. (ex-)military aircraft.
That picture appears on page 88 in the book “Biplanes, Triplanes, & Seaplanes”, from Thunder Bay Press, edited by Jim Wichester. It doesn’t have that quote with it, and it doesn’t even really have a caption for that picture, just a blurb about barnstorming.
I also can’t see the pilot in the plane - there are three men on the ground, one of them alone on the left and a pair closer to the center, near the tree.
It looks a lot like a JN-4 Jenny, with the distinctive semicircular underwing skids as well as the straight supports directly above them over the top wings, and much shorter lower wings.
Damn, that must’ve hurt like hell. Trees aren’t exactly fragile, and that thing got creamed - a pretty big chunk of it is in a pile on the ground. I’m suprised the plane is as intact as it is. Interestingly, one of the branches seems to be digging into the trailing edge of the lower left wing. I wonder if it hit higher up and slid down a bit. I hope the pilot got out all right, but I bet he was hating life for a while afterwards if he did.