The Crash of the Wingfoot Express, Chicago, IL, July 21st, 1919

After World War One, the future of aviation appeared to be not airplanes but rather blimps or dirigibles (blimps containing rigid framework supported by gas bags and allowing space for passenger compartments). LTA (Lighter Than Air) ships had played a vital part in the war for both American and German forces. Now that the Great Conflict was over, the B. F. Goodyear Company was snorting and pawing eagerly in anticipation of commercial LTA travel.

Goodyear planned a fleet of giant dirigibles for commercial passenger service between Akron, OH, and other cities, including New York and Chicago. The company had bought land near Akron for Wingfoot Lake, a manufacturing site where they began to construct a hangar and airfield. Meanwhile, they had to use a makeshift hangar in Chicago's old White City Amusement Park to build LTA craft.

In the planning stages were dirigibles which would be from 300 to 800 feet in length, carrying from 12 to 100 passengers between major cities where - since dirigibles needed no runways -- they could dock on top of high buildings at stations where passengers could safely disembark in the heart of urban downtown areas. Work continued at the White City and so it came to pass that on a hot, summer day, the Wingfoot Air Express made its debut in Chicago.

Goodyear had been experimenting with ballonettes or individual compartmentalized gas bags inflated with hydrogen designed in such a way that if one were punctured, the others would remain inflated to maintain shape and altitude of the LTA craft. Also experimental was the positioning of propellers in front of rather than behind the two rotary engines. The result of all this research was a non-rigid $100,000 blimp christened the Wingfoot Air Express which was 158 feet long, 34 feet in diameter, and packing 100,000 cubic feet of highly inflammable hydrogen gas on the morning of July 21st as it was tugged by ropes from the White City hangar. On board were 200 gallons of gasoline, more than necessary for the maiden flight from White City to Grant Park, then up the shoreline and back to the park.

At about 9 a.m., the ship's crew took their places with Goodyear pilot John A. Boettner at the controls and mechanics Henry Wacker and Carl "Buck" Weaver in the rear of the gondola. Their only passenger was Col. Joseph C. Morrow, an Army air service pilot. All wore parachutes as the Wingfoot Express took off in a course which paralleled Michigan Avenue and ended at Grant Park Airfield. This first part of the flight was without incident and, after a visual inspection, the craft took off again just before noon to fly further north along the lake shore to Diversey Avenue, returning to Grant Park at about 3 p.m. When they took off a third time, the crew was the same but the passenger list had changed and now consisted of Earl Davenport, publicity manager for White City, and William G. Norton, a newspaper photographer who asked the pilot to deviate from the planned route and fly over the Loop instead so that he could take aerial photographs. Boettner agreed although to fly experimental aircraft over a crowded urban area was a serious compromise of public safety - a dangerous gamble which on this date with destiny would not go well.
　
All Hell Breaks Loose

In those days, any aircraft was a curiosity and the beautiful Wingfoot Express gliding by on this warm summer evening riveted the attention of onlookers in the Loop. People climbed up on roofs and fire escapes to watch the great ship cruise overhead so there was no shortage of witnesses who noticed the Wingfoot Express begin to burn. Irwin A. Phillips later testified that "I saw a little black spot above the equator line on the bag, and then a yellow flame broke out. Then the flame spread up and down and on both sides. I saw the men jump and I saw the bag fall. When it passed from my view the rear end of the bag was (still) inflated." Mr. Phillips further stated that in his opinion there had been no explosion.

It was nearly 5 p.m. when the burning blimp buckled in the middle, jackknifed, and plummeted earthward. Those in the gondola tried to escape with limited success; two of the parachutes were ignited by the blaze and Mr. Davenport was trapped, unable to escape from the flaming destruction as the Wingfoot Express plunged to its death directly over the northeast corner of LaSalle and Jackson.

A Really Bad Day at the Office

Far below, in a two-story building, the employees of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank were wrapping it up for the day. In another five minutes, they would have been safely on their way home. The bank was closed as far as customer service was concerned and its president, John J. Mitchell, had left. The ceiling of the bank's lobby consisted of glass panes ... a field of glass windows framed in iron grille which constituted a great skylight. No doubt this architectural design afforded optimum light and a pleasant atmosphere but what its architects could not have foreseen was the vulnerability of such a roof to wounded aircraft falling from above.

Harriet Messinger, switchboard operator, was at work on the bank's mezzanine floor above the caged rotunda when "There was a shadow, and I looked up to the roof" she would later relate. This momentary shadow passing over the skylight was closely followed by a shattering crash as the dying airship's two heavy, hot engines hurtled through the glass roof along with their fuel tanks which exploded on impact with the floor. A lake of gasoline caught fire, sweeping death and destruction in its path and generating heat which caused windowpanes in the roof to melt, adding a shower of liquid molten glass to the horror. One hundred fifty employees were trapped by high security counters and barred windows. "My God! It's raining hell!" one employee cried.

Despite the immediate response of fire department personnel to a 4-11 alarm and heroic rescue attempts by others, 13 people died and 26 were injured. One young man gently but firmly led an older friend to safety despite the older man's determination to go back and get his cigar.

Norton, the photographer, was one of the fatalities because when he parachuted from the wounded ship he tried to take his photographic equipment and glass plates bearing negatives of pictures he had taken. The weight of all that caused his parachute to swing to one side on the way down, smashing him into the side of a building. In his dying hours, he would occasionally regain consciousness to feverishly ask if his equipment and plates had survived; no one had the heart to tell him they were irretrievably smashed.

The Aftermath

In the investigation that followed, charges and counter-charges resulted in few conclusive decisions but probably as good a guess as any was the opinion of Major C. H. Maranville, head of Army airship instruction and training at Wingfoot Lake, Ohio, who believed that the fire was caused by silk ballonettes rubbing together and igniting the rubber covering. This alone would not have caused such a disaster - after all, the very concept of a test flight is to identify and resolve such engineering problems so as to enhance the ultimate safety of the design.

Two other factors escalated the tragedy - the course of the test flight over a crowded metropolitan area and the blimp being filled with hydrogen, a gas so volatile and explosive that it had transformed the Wingfoot Express into a potential bomb. When the fabric burned through and the flame hit the hydrogen, it had been "Goodbye, Charlie" for the ship and whomever had had the bad luck to be below.

Six hours after the disaster, the Chicago city council convened in the middle of the night and adopted a resolution to draw up an ordinance vesting the City with more control over aircraft flying over its city limits and by 1925, Goodyear had switched from the deadly hydrogen to the use of the safer (and more expensive) helium gas.

The next morning, the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank reopened for business in another building with borrowed office equipment. In later years, it rebuilt and became Continental Illinois Trust & Savings Bank which was ultimately bought by Bank of America, which is in a different building but the same location today. Many Chicagoans don't know about the Wingfoot disaster. My aunt, a banker for 42 years, told me about it and she had heard the story from another veteran banker who years before had been the young man who rescued the old guy who wanted to go back for his cigar.

Sources:

Goodyear Blimps, www.ohiohistorycentral.org
Plan Dirigible Passenger Route, Gettysburg, PA Times, June 18, 1919
Modern Day Airships, www.centennialofflight.gov
The Great Tragedy, The Columns of Illinois Trust & Savings Bank, Chicago, IL - July, 1919
11 Witnesses Say Fire Began in Blimp's Nose, Chicago Daily Tribune, July 26, 1919
The Crash of the Wingfoot Express, Chicago Tribune, June 10, 1979
A List of Local Catastrophes, Chicago Tribune, May 26, 1982