On this day in 2001–New York City is devastated. Again.

We aviation enthusiasts celebrate aviation.  I would argue we do this, rightfully so.  The invention of man breaking the chains that shackled him to earth has been a force for good, right?

Based on one’s perspective and like many things in life, the answer is, “it depends,” even amongst one of our greatest aviation pioneers.  More on Charles Lindbergh in a minute.

Aviation (according to Artificial Intelligence) “has created employment, facilitated trade, enabled tourism, and supported sustainable development all around the world”.  It has spurred many industries and inventions and science including jet engine development, rotorcraft, and space exploration.  We can travel quickly to visit family and friends and attend and celebrate weddings and births that without aviation would be impossible.  We can deliver donated organs to waiting recipients around the country—even the world—and rapidly deliver doctors and scientists to spots they’re needed to heal, investigate, and research. We can rescue people (and animals) who would have surely died otherwise.  We can buy things otherwise in the past unobtainable.  My wife received, believe it or not, a bouquet of tulips that had been shipped from Amsterdam one time.  Until aviation, that could have never happened!  On and on.  Positives abound.

Dog handler Sgt. David Hornsby and partner Liza being hoisted into a helicopter outside of Bagram Airfield.  July 2007. 

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

But so are the negatives.  Perhaps worst, and typical of humankind, we quickly turned aviation into a weapon of war.  And a devastating one at that, almost from the beginning.  As early as just 12 years after the First Flight at Kitty Hawk on 19 January 1915, Germany launched its first Zeppelin airship raid on Britain.

According to author Winston Croom in his book, “The Aviators” (National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 2013, p. 438), “For years after [WWII] Charles (Lindbergh) was haunted by the death and destruction he had seen, the dead, mutilated corpses of Japanese soldiers, the rubble of so many historic German cities.  He regularly prayed for the soul of the Japanese Zero pilot he had shot down and killed.” 

Lindbergh was dismayed that aviation, a scientific endeavor with so much promise for progress that he had helped usher in, could be used for so much death.  So much suffering.  So much destruction.

Charles Lindbergh with the Spirit of St. Louis.  Public domain.

Lindbergh became increasingly, if not anti-aviation, at least pro-environment.  He understood that aviation had a role in humanity’s and the environment’s harm.  Continuing with Croom’s writing in his book (p. 439), “In Lindbergh’s life, flight had meant freedom, progress, a step toward the human good, but the war had changed that for him.  In 1947 he flew over Hiroshima, still flat, prostrated, tens of thousands of people incinerated simply by the push of a button.  He shuddered to think there was a reverse side of science, of flight, that was a pit of dark horror and could be used to wipe out mankind itself.” 

And later in Croom’s book (p. 441), Croom recounts that Lindbergh became a conservation icon and even an officer with the newly formed World Wildlife Fund, declaring, “I would rather have birds than airplanes.” 

Quite a reversal, of sorts, for the “Lone Eagle”, eh?

And, of course, there’s the risk of aviation…even today while safety is far better than in the early days of aviation…to human life.  And that negative perspective of aviation leads us to the topic of today’s aviation history vignette, twenty-three years ago today, when an American Airlines flight crashed into a Queens neighborhood two months after the 9-11 attacks, a crash hard for most of us to recall in the midst of those terrorist attacks that smothered virtually all other news of the time.

I did not remember this tragic crash, did you?  I, like most of us, was still reeling from the loss of life and property from the 9-11 attacks.

According to History.com, “An American Airlines flight out of John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in New York City crashed into a Queens neighborhood after takeoff on November 12, 2001, killing 265 people. Although some initially speculated that the crash was the result of terrorism, as it came exactly two months after the September 11 attacks, the cause was quickly proven to be a combination of pilot error and wind conditions.

“Flight 587 took off at 9:14 a.m., bound for the Dominican Republic with 260 passengers and crew on board. Just ahead of the Airbus 300 jet, also using runway 31, was a Japan Air 747. Even with the standard four-mile distance between them, the 747 created some wake turbulence that hit Flight 587 just minutes after takeoff. As the plane climbed to 13,000 feet, there were two significant shudders and then a violent heave.

“Unfortunately, the pilots of Flight 587 overreacted to the wake turbulence and their subsequent maneuvers put too much strain on the tail section of the plane. The tail, along with the rudder in the rear, broke off completely and fell into Rockaway Bay. Without this part of the plane, Flight 587 crashed to the ground.

“As Flight 587 was in its final moments, Kevin McKeon was in his house on Queens’ Rockaway Peninsula. In an instant, his house virtually exploded; he was thrown out into his yard as the plane fell onto his house. In all, 10 homes were set ablaze, and five people on the ground, as well as all 260 people on the plane, lost their lives. The disaster hit Rockaway especially hard, as the community was still reeling from the September 11 attacks, in which 65 area residents lost their lives.”

So, depending on one’s perspective, Lindbergh was right. Birds are better than airplanes.  But we aviation enthusiasts are right too.  Aviation is worth celebrating.  Along with the good, some bad must follow.  Perhaps aviation will prove to be the savior of mankind (through colonizing another planet via space exploration). 

Onward and upward!

Sources:  Wikimedia Commons, History.com, “The Aviators” by Winston Croom