08/30/2026
The Lovettsville Air Disaster - August 31, 1940
The Worst Aviation Accident in the World at that Time
On August 31, 1940, the worst disaster in the history of commercial air travel (up until that time) occurred in Loudoun County. The incident became known as the Lovettsville air disaster, named for the small town near where the Pennsylvania Central Airlines Douglas DC-3 crashed. No definitive cause for the crash ever has been established, but bad weather was the major factor. The flight from Washington DC to Charlottesville was delayed half an hour in order to give the storm time to clear the area. Although thunderstorms still were in the vicinity, the airplane — with 21 passengers and a crew of four — was cleared to take off. Just 23 minutes later the airplane slammed into a clearing 35 miles west of Washington, killing everyone on board.
Farmers living in the area had heard the roar of engines just before the crash. The following day, J.J. “Slim” Carmichael, vice president of the airlines, said both engines of the airplane were apparently “wide open” when it crashed. The DC-3 had hit the ground with such speed and force that many of the passengers had been cut in two by their safety belts. Jerome Lederer, director of the Civil Aeronautics Board’s safety bureau, reported that the aircraft had “struck the ground at a sharp angle on its nose and ricocheted about 100 feet, breaking up as it turned over.” During that high bounce, eye witnesses reported that the ship was destroyed. It was concluded that the airplane was out of control when it made contact with the ground, given that the flat field would have made it possible to make an emergency landing with only minor damage.
On the following day, with a bright sun beating down on the crash site, the clover field was transformed into a “picture of horror”. “Virtually all of the bodies appeared to have been severed. Unofficial observers said the passengers apparently were buckled in their seats and latterly were cut in two by the impact.” “The mangled bodies were scattered over a 25 acre area.”
At about 3AM, Loudoun County officially granted permission for the removal of the bodies to nearby Leesburg, Virginia. Throughout the long night, the ghastly job of removing the victims from the wreckage went on. In the glare of powerful flood lights generated by an emergency unit set up in the field, undertakers and their assistants assembled the mangled bodied in three hearses. Rescue workers labored thru ankle deep mud, hacked down corn stalks in adjoining fields which caught portions of the bodies catapulted, and sorted thru a mass of twisted metal and machinery. A caravan of ambulances and hearses then carried the dead to nearby Leesburg, where a chapel inside Union Cemetery had been converted into a temporary morgue. Among the dead were U.S. Sen. Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota and a number of other government workers, including FBI agents and IRS workers. By afternoon relatives had identified from personal effects about half of the victims. Lundeens body was identified by Martin Hysong of Washington, a personal friend. FBI fingerprint experts were enlisted in identifying others.
Among the scattered remains of victims lay clothing, shoes, hats, handbags, money. Personal effects, and hundreds of bits of metal from the plane’s fuselage and wings, spread out like confetti. Almost in the center of the field stood the plane’s tail assembly; bent and twisted and up-ended, as if it had rolled over and over after breaking loose from the ships main section. To the right and left were the shattered wing portions, and all about lay other pieces of the deluxe $120,000 Douglas airliner. At the base of the slight hill over which Pilot Lowell Scroggins vainly fought to lift the big ship was a huge crater, the spot it was believed the ship struck first.
After the conclusion of the investigation, ground crews of the airline began pulling up wreckage and planned to saturate it with gasoline and set it ablaze. Carmichael said there was no salvage. It was the airlines first fatal accident in 13 years operations, and the nation’s first fatal crash of a commercial transport plane since March 26, 1939, when eight were killed in Oklahoma City.
Airline officials discredited reports that a note had been dropped by stewardess Margaret Carson of Pittsburg, just before the plane struck. Persons first on the scene reported the note said it asked the lines Pittsburg office be notified. (1)
Following the fatal crash of the PCA, Mayor LaGuardia of New York issued a statement on September 2 as follows: “in all likelihood the direct cause of the unfortunate crash will never be ascertained. At the present stage of the art, therefore, it becomes necessary to exercise precaution in avoiding undue risks. Sometime ago I urged before a United States Senate Committee the necessity of placing flights in bad weather under complete control of Federal authorities. I then urged and now again urge that all commercial flights be required to obtain a clearance from a Federal airport director stationed at each licensed airport before taking off. This would completely avoid the competition in taking chances in bad weather.” (2)
In 1940; fourteen years before the invention of the flight data recorder, investigators had to rely on intuition, experience, eyewitness testimony and clues found in the wreckage to help them figure out why an airplane had gone down. In the case of the Lovettsville crash, it was determined that the DC-3 had been flying through a thunderstorm. The fastened seatbelts provided strong evidence that the aircraft had been experiencing heavy turbulence just before it went down. It also was determined that the airplane had nosed over just before heading almost straight down into the ground.
In the end, wind shear, a sudden and powerful change in the direction of the wind, was given as one probable cause of the crash. The official Civil Aeronautics Board determination was that a bolt of nearby lightning had disabled the pilots.
1. Details of the crash compiled from: “1940 Air Crash Took a Toll not Soon Forgotten”, By David Maurer Mar 1, 2009 http://www.dailyprogress.com and from “Gather up Torn Bodies of Plane Crash Victims”, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 2, 1940, http://archives.chicagotribune.com
2. “Disaster in the Air” - By Edgar A. Haine Published by Associated University Presses. 2000 - Fiction - 394 pages
For many more amazing photos and video plus first hand accounts of the crash, visit the Lovettsville Historical Society at -
https://www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org/index.php/recollections-of-allan-w-brown-regarding-the-1940-lovettsville-air-disaster-2015/
