Airplane No. 56, in charge of Lieutenant Saunders, is stranded on the New Kent side of the Pamunkey over on the Brick House farm, opposite West Point, and for the past thirty-six hours crowds of people have visited it. The airplane was plying between Norfolk and Washington when the gas gave out.

-Richmond Times-Dispatch, 9 February 1919

Only some 16 years after the Wright Brothers first flight this would have been the first sight most civilian residents of New Kent had ever had of an aircraft.