On this date in 1940, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19, flying from D.C. to Pittsburgh, crashed amid a severe thunderstorm in Lovettsville, Virginia. The front page of The Washington Post reported that 25 people died, including Sen. Ernest Lundeen (Minnesota).
“The plane was proceeding in the midst of a terrific thunderstorm, with the rain falling heavily and a thick fog obscuring visibility,” the New York Times wrote.
“The doomed plane reported all well at 2:31 p.m., then headed into a squall,” Life Magazine wrote. “At 2:41 it crashed at top speed into a field of alfalfa, ricocheted 50 yards into a cornfield. There it disintegrated completely. Its wings flew off. Its cabin split like a dried pod. Its engines burst from their nacelles. The bodies of a passenger and the stewardess were flung 1,500 feet from the crash.”
In D.C., a calendar-day record 1.98 inches of rain fell.
The Post wrote that the crash, at the time, was “the worst in the history of commercial aviation.”
Here are other notables from the day:
- Average high: 86
- Average low: 69
- Record high: 100 (1953)
- Record low: 49 (1934)
- Record rainfall: 1.98 inches (1940)
