Although that design flaw quite possibly spelled doom for Quimby and Willard, other questions remain unanswered. What tipped the ship into its fatal position? Did Quimby permit the craft to dive too fast and too steeply in the descent from 5,000 feet? Or did Willard move his weight forward for some reason, thus giving the lifting tail a chance to do its deadly work? Or did the controls in fact become fouled, flipping the craft over? Did a downdraft drop the craft in a split second from under the occupants, and if so why didn’t they leave the plane simultaneously instead of a second or two apart?

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Myers accepted without question Ovington’s disputed claim that the controls had become fouled. ‘The Boston Aeronautical Society,’ he wrote, ‘has issued a statement asserting the cause of the accident to be the lack of fore and aft stability to counteract rotation on the center of gravity of the machine. This is no doubt true as a tendency in the present machine, but in this case does not consider the fact of the caught rudder cables.’ Thus did he blithely convert a questionable theory into ‘fact.’

A. Leo Stevens, Quimby’s manager, wrote that he believed the accident had its origin in ‘Willard suddenly straining forward to speak to Miss Quimby.’ Stevens, a friend of the Wright brothers and a famous balloonist, said he had twice warned Willard before the flight not to leave his seat under any circumstances. ‘This warning I was very particular to give;’ he wrote, ‘because I knew him to be a man of sudden impulses. Many a time while talking with him I have known him to suddenly leap from or lean forward in his chair to communicate an idea that had flashed into his mind … I believe that as the flight drew to its conclusion, Willard, enthusiastic over Miss Quimby’s splendid performance, for a moment forgot the danger of moving and suddenly stretched forward to shout a word of congratulation.’

A.A. Merrill, in charge of flying contests the day of the accident, dismissed as useless any discussion of whether anything on the plane broke in the air. He declared that ‘what happened must invariably happen under certain circumstances even with the machine intact. The fault is inherent in all existing machines, but especially in monoplanes.’ He cited three reasons for the accident:

‘First, Miss Quimby dived too abruptly. Second, she was not quick enough in throwing up the rear elevator, and, third, she was flying a machine that had no fore and aft stability and she and her passenger were not strapped in.’ He ended by warning plane builders to ‘wake up to the fact that the flying machine of the present is unsafe and will not be purchased by the public.’

Today we may rightly view the beautiful and vibrant Harriet Quimby as a victim of aviation’s age of innocence. Surely the cards were stacked against America’s one-time ‘Queen of the Air’ and her unsuspecting passenger that sad, summer day nearly eight decades ago.

Whatever the triggering cause — too steep a glide, abrupt shifting of the passenger’s weight, air turbulence, even a fouled rudder wire — no doubt it can remain that this specific Blériot type, with its treacherous lifting tail, was a terribly unforgiving aircraft, even for pilots of far more experience than Harriet Quimby.

Author Frank Delear, was raised in Squanturn,, Mass, a mile or so from the site of the Harvard-Boston air meets held a decade earlier. He first heard of Harriet Quimby from. his parents, who lived in nearby Dorchester at the time of the meets of 1910, 1911 and 1912. Suggestions for further reading include ‘What Killed Harriet Quimby?‘ in Yankee magazine (September 1979); and ‘U.S. Women in Aviation through World War I,’ in Smithsonian Institution Studies in Air and Space (No. 2), by Claudia M. Oakes.

This article was originally published in the January 1991 issue of Aviation History. For more great articles subscribe to Aviation History magazine today!

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