Lt. Selfridge was assigned by President Theodore Roosevelt as the official US observer of Alexander Graham Bell’s manned kite experiments in Nova Scotia. This work drew many aviation pioneers together who in 1907 formed the Aerial Experiment Association (AEA), in which Lt. Selfridge was named Secretary. Their first major engineering effort was the Cygnet I, an unpowered manned kite with thousands of tetrahedral cells in a wing having a span of 42 feet. On December 6, 1907, Lt. Selfridge was the first pilot of the Cygnet I on its maiden voyage of seven minutes to 168 feet altitude as it was towed across the Canadian lake known as Bras d’Or.

Efforts in powered flight followed, with Lt. Selfridge serving as both design engineer and pilot. His first effort was the “Red Wing,” so named because of the color of its silk fabric, followed shortly thereafter by the “White Wing,” in which Lt. Selfridge became the first military officer to fly an aircraft in the United States. The third AEA aircraft was the “June Bug,” which won the Scientific American trophy for a flight of over one kilometer. Their fourth airplane, the “Silver Dart,” became the first airplane to be flown in Canada and the foundation for the Canadian Air Force. In August 1908 Lt. Selfridge was reassigned to an Army Signal Corps board, performing acceptance tests on the first US Army dirigibles and making numerous flights aboard this type of vehicle as well.

On September 27, 1908, Lt. Selfridge served on another US Army board, this one to evaluate the incredible, record-breaking 40 MPH two-passenger Wright Flyer. After observing, along with a crowd of 2000, several solo flights of the craft flown by Orville Wright, Lt. Selfridge settled in as a passenger for the third dual-crew demonstration of the day. A new, elongated propeller, never before tested, had been installed on the aircraft prior to that fateful flight. After an impressive and exciting series of laps around the crowd, excessive vibration caused the propeller to strike a guy wire on the aircraft. This tore the wire from its fastening in the rudder and broke the propeller off about 2 feet from the end, sending the aircraft crashing to the ground. Orville recalled later that before he could shut off the engine, he heard “two big thumps, which gave the machine a terrible shaking.” Throughout the flight, Lt. Selfridge had remained silent. The airplane was about 75 feet in the air when it started a nose-dive to the ground. Orville Wright suffered from a broken leg and ribs from which he recovered. Orville heard Lt. Selfridge let out a near inaudible “Oh! Oh!” before the impact, which fractured his skull when his head struck a strut and rendered the US Army officer immediately unconscious.

Lt. Selfridge died later that evening without regaining consciousness, becoming the first casualty in human powered flight. He is buried today in Arlington National Cemetery. In his nine-month career from December 6, 1907, to September 27, 1908, he flew in kites, dirigibles, and several single-seat aircraft of his own design as well as the most advanced multi-passenger aircraft of that time. Despite the accident, flaws in the vehicle which killed Lt. Selfridge were corrected, and it was eventually purchased by the US Army to become the very beginning of American air power.

Lt. Thomas E. Selfridge, United States Army, was the first of many aviators and astronauts to have “the right stuff.”