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.

The Hidden Costs of War

The Daily Press(Newport News) tells of the day in the Second World War when two fighters crashed over New Kent.

“All of a sudden, I heard a screeching noise as one of the planes was going into a dive.”

A P47-D

A not particularly well know fact of the war against the Axis from the World War II Foundation . . .

"According to the AAF Statistical Digest, in less than four years (December 1941- August 1945), the US Army Air Forces lost 14,903 pilots, aircrew and assorted personnel plus 13,873 airplanes — inside the continental United States. They were the result of 52,651 aircraft accidents (6,039 involving fatalities) in 45 months."

"Back In '36 There Weren't Too Many Planes Flying…But This One Didn't Make It."

U.S. War Department / August 12, 2014 via the Tidewater Review

I had intended to do a couple of pieces on this sometime soon. But the Tidewater Review beat me to it.

Well, they have a staff and I don't.

Some more facts on the B-10 here

. . . and here with some nice cutaways.

The 96th Bomb Squadron was America's first bomber squadron, and if that and Langley Field bring something to mind, it is because the 96th was the squadron that carried out General Billy Mitchell's experimental bombing of the Ostfriesland in 1920.