Dakota Datebook: First plane fatality

North Dakota's earliest recorded airplane fatality occurred in August in 1919, when a small plane went down near Sutton.

Piloted by Lieutenant Edward Axberg of Enderlin, the plane was flying at 1200 feet before crashing into a field. Axberg and his friend, nineteen-year-old Brian Karr from Jamestown, had spent the afternoon performing stunts, but when they attempted a tail-spin, Axberg was unable to right the plane. The resulting crash broke Karr's legs and mangled much of his body; he died an hour and a half later, never regaining consciousness. Axberg survived, but was injured. With little understanding of planes at the time, the cause of the crash was blamed on "a failure of the machine to re-adjust itself rightly."

Dakota Datebook written by Jayme Job.

"Dakota Datebook" is a radio series from Prairie Public in partnership with the State Historical Society of North Dakota and with funding from Humanities North Dakota. See all the Dakota Datebooks at prairiepublic.org, subscribe to the "Dakota Datebook" podcast, or buy the Dakota Datebook book at shopprairiepublic.org.