Eugène Lefebvre (4 October 1878 – 7 September 1909) was a French aviation pioneer. He was reportedly the first stunt pilot,Villard, Henry Serrano, Contact! The Story of the Early Birds, 1968, Thomas Y. Crowell, , retrieved April 9, 2019Corn, Joseph J., The Winged Gospel: America's Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950, 1st Ed., 2002, JHU Press, , retrieved April 9, 2019 the first person to die while piloting a powered airplane, and the second person to be killed in a powered airplane crash.
Biography
The chief pilot for the French Wright Company, Lefebvre was a participant in the first international air race, the Grande Semaine d'Aviation at Reims in 1909, piloting a Wright Flyer.Vorderman, Don. "Hit-or-miss Races That Taught Men How To Fly ", Sports Illustrated, 26 May 1969. He, Louis Blériot and Hubert Latham were selected as France's representatives during the contest for the Gordon Bennett Trophy on 22 August, after poor weather made the morning's planned qualifying run impossible. When the weather lifted around 6 o'clock that evening, Lefebvre was one of the pilots who took to the sky in an exhibition, giving one of the earliest displays of stunt flying. The New York Times described his maneuvers thus: "Lefebvre...came driving at the crowded tribunes, turned in the nick of time, went sailing off, swooped down again till he made the flags on the pillars and the plumes on the ladies' hats flutter, and so played about at will for our applause." He was subsequently fined $4 by the judges for displaying excessive "recklessness and daring." During the running of the race, he placed fourth, behind Glenn Curtiss, Blériot and Latham.
Only nine days after the end of the Reims event, Lefebvre was killed in a crash at Port-Aviation (often called "Juvisy Airfield") at Viry-Châtillon when the plane he was testing dropped to the ground from a height of .Howard, Fred. Wilbur and Orville, Courier Dover Publications, 1998, p. 318. . In doing so, he became the first person to die while piloting a powered airplane,Crouch, Tom D. Wings: A History of Aviation from Kites to the Space Age, W. W. Norton & Company, 2003, p. 132. and the second person to be killed in an airplane crash.Charles Cyril Turner, The Old Flying Days (reprint Published by Ayer Publishing, 1972), p. 225
Legacy Lefebvre is a distant relative of the later film actress Capucine (1928-1990).
See also List of fatalities from aviation accidents
References