{"id":1976,"date":"2017-12-26T02:28:25","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T02:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2018-01-23T20:52:35","modified_gmt":"2018-01-23T20:52:35","slug":"airline-disaster-in-lovettsville-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/airline-disaster-in-lovettsville-1940\/","title":{"rendered":"1940 Lovettsville Airline Disaster Archive"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3>Visit the Lovettsville Historical Society website\u2019s <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.us8.list-manage.com\/track\/click?u=505152bd0e6e82e1cbc019d3c&amp;id=689a4a90ca&amp;e=69cf1509ea\" target=\"_blank\"><strong class=\"\">1940 Lovettsville Airline Disaster Archive<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0to watch a documentary film, read the text from several\u00a01940 newspapers, look at newspaper wire photos, and read the final crash investigation report from the Civil Aeronautics Board.<\/h3>\n<div class=\"\">\n<div class=\"\">On August 31, 1940, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Trip 19, a new Douglas DC-3A transport, crashed into a cornfield near rural, sleepy Lovettsville, Virginia, killing everyone aboard.\u00a0\u00a0At the time, it was the most horrific airline accident in United States history, and thrust Lovettsville into the national media.<\/div>\n<div class=\"\">\n<p>PCA Trip 19 was flying from Washington DC to Pittsburgh,\u00a0through an intense thunderstorm at 6,000 feet).\u00a0 Numerous witnesses reported seeing a large flash of lightning shortly before it nosed over and plunged to earth in an alfalfa field along Mountain Road, east of Short Hill Mountain, not far south of Lovettsville.<\/p>\n<p>With limited accident investigation tools at the time, it was at first believed that the most likely cause was the plane flying into windshear, but the\u00a0<a class=\"\" title=\"Civil Aeronautics Board\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Civil_Aeronautics_Board\">Civil Aeronautics Board<\/a>\u00a0report concluded that the probable cause was a lightning strike.\u00a0\u00a0U.S. Senator\u00a0<a class=\"\" title=\"Ernest Lundeen\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ernest_Lundeen\">Ernest Lundeen<\/a>\u00a0from Minnesota\u00a0was one of the 25 people (21 passengers and 4 crew members) who perished.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/191335903\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/191335903\">THE PLANE CRASH by John P. Flannery<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/ithacamanor\">John P. Flannery<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\">Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"\">In 1940, the National Transportation Safety Board as we know it today, did not yet exist.\u00a0\u00a0The then-Civil Aeronautics Board had only been in existence for two\u00a0years.\u00a0\u00a0Crash investigation science was in its infancy.\u00a0\u00a0To this day, questions remain as to whether the investigation was adequate, and whether the crash was a result of weather \u2026 or perhaps politically-motivated sabotage against Senator Lundeen, who was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer?<\/div>\n<p>Lovettsville is the only town or village in Loudoun County, Virginia that has a museum dedicated to preserving its own civic history. If you enjoyed this post from our Archives,\u00a0<strong class=\"\"><a class=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/membership-support\/\">support the mission of the Lovettsville Historical Society &amp; Museum<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>to protect the history and heritage of Lovettsville, the German Settlement, and our unique corner of Loudoun County, Virginia. \u00a0To see these vintage newspapers and wire photos in person, visit the Lovettsville Museum on Saturdays between 1:00-4:00 (next to Town Hall).<\/p>\n<p><em class=\"\">This issue of LIFE Magazine, dated September 16, 1940, was generously donated to the Lovettsville Museum Archives Room by LHS Board member, Judy Virts-Beard Fox.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-771\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1940-09-16-LIFE-Magazine-for-Web-Facebook-1024x819.jpg\" alt=\"1940-09-16-life-magazine-for-web-facebook\" width=\"1024\" height=\"819\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1940-09-16-LIFE-Magazine-for-Web-Facebook-1024x819.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1940-09-16-LIFE-Magazine-for-Web-Facebook-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1940-09-16-LIFE-Magazine-for-Web-Facebook-768x614.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/1940-09-16-LIFE-Magazine-for-Web-Facebook.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Visit the Lovettsville Historical Society website\u2019s 1940 Lovettsville Airline Disaster Archive\u00a0to watch a documentary film, read the text from several\u00a01940 newspapers, look at newspaper wire photos, and read the final&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2050,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions\/2050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}