Back Story

By RACHEL STONE

Air disasters

A brief history of plane crashes in our neighborhood

Clip via the Dallas Morning News Historical Archives.

Asmall plane made an emergency landing in the middle of Kiest Boulevard recently.

Some power lines were knocked down, along with a speed-limit sign, but there were no injuries and no fire or leaked fuel.

That October incident was the second emergency landing of a plane near Dallas Executive Airport in Oak Cliff this year. A small plane landed at Boulder Park in July.

Neither of the recent incidents resulted in serious injury, but our neighborhood has a crazy history of deadly small plane crashes.

There were at least eight fatal plane crashes in our neighborhood between 1935 and 1950, according to a search of newspaper archives.

In the earliest report, a police officer and his friend died while stunting in an outdated plane in 1935 at Hampton Airport. The pilot couldn’t pull the plane out of a downward spin, and it crashed while his wife looked on.

A similar incident occurred the following year, when a brother and sister died in a “joyride” at Hampton Airport while their family members were watching.

A few years later, in 1942, a Braniff Airlines pilot crashed into a field in South Oak Cliff; he and his passenger both died.

Several times, planes crashed onto the bygone Russell family farm on Red Bird Lane and what is now Polk Road.

It wasn’t just the old Hampton Airport. There was also Hensley Field.

In 1945, a bomber crashed on Eagle Ford Road, killing all 14 U.S. Air Force members on board. Hundreds of people in West Oak Cliff witnessed the “spectacular” crash of the “huge bomber,” which was still a military secret at the time, and pieces of it fell onto people’s homes. The crash just missed a Texaco warehouse with massive gasoline tanks.

On Sunday, Feb. 9, 1964, The Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show, launching “Beatlemania.” At the same time, a single-engine Piper Comanche attempting to land at the former Red Bird Airport got caught in some power lines and crashed in the Brettonwoods neighborhood. The pilot, traveling alone, was killed.

It crashed about a foot from Steve Pollard’s parents’ bedroom window on Jeffaline Lane.

“Luckily, the plane fell away from the house,” he says.

Jonnie England lived nearby in Kiestwood at the time.

“It was memorable because of the rarity of a plane crashing in our neighborhood and because it happened during The Beatles first U.S. TV appearance,” she says.

Twenty-seven years later, in 1990, a Dallas lawyer tried to land his Bellanca plane at Marsalis and Ann Arbor during the middle of rush hour. He and his passenger both died, and miraculously, no one on the ground was injured.

The pilot had trouble with his landing gear and engine, according to news reports from the time.

“As the plane came down, investigators said, it hit several trees and a telephone pole, then flew into a power line and crashed,” a Dallas Morning News story from June 27, 1990 states.

Here’s more from that story:

Witnesses said the plane was flying about 20 feet above morning traffic before it crashed. Drivers frantically tried to get out of its way, backing up or stopping their cars in the middle of the two-lane street. They told investigators that the plane burst into flames immediately after hitting the ground.

Dannatta Catatham, 18, was driving east on Ann Arbor when she noticed the plane flying west only a few feet above her van.

“It was so close,” she said. “If I had not sped ahead, it would have crashed into me.”

Moments later, Ms. Catatham said, she looked back and saw the plane snag the power line and fall to the ground. It then spun around three times before skidding 200 yards along a cement embankment and exploding.

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