![]() Additionally, she had just started learning to fly helicopters the previous month. She had extensive aircraft experience in general and had held her flying license for 14 years and a flight instructor’s license for 11 years. He had suffered a concussion, a broken back, and a broken right femur.īryan, witness to the crash, was dressed in a cotton blouse, wool scarf, and silk head scarf. Inside, McNiel was believed to have died on impact, and Ryan was rendered unconscious. The left door of the cockpit was heaved open.Īs the blades continued rotating, one of them broke off about 8 feet from the mast, while the other remained intact and continued to rotate. Fuel leaked from the helicopter, smoke issued from its engine, and as the rotor blades continued to hit the runway, the chopper wobbled continuously. The accident broke the helicopter’s skids, shattered its plexiglass bubble-canopy, destroyed the engine cooling fan, and bent the craft’s mast that supported the revolving rotor blades, creating friction in the helicopter’s mechanics resulting in an overheated engine. The helicopter descended to the runway, crashing on its right side with the engine still running and the main rotor blades running at full throttle. Ryan immediately took control and attempted to steady the craft, but it did not respond to his efforts. He then turned the controls over to McNiel who piloted the craft in a southwesterly direction about 200 feet, turning sharply and tilting the helicopter. On the ascent, Ryan piloted the helicopter about 150 feet vertically above the runway. ![]() Ryan was seated on the left, in the pilot’s seat McNiel sat on the right, ready to assist. Ryan and McNiel re-entered the cockpit and readied themselves for takeoff. They went to join Bryan near the doorway of the office to further admire the craft. Two boys, Wayne Watkins, 13, and Gerald Carter, 16, were riding their bikes by the airport and had stopped to watch the helicopter land on the taxiway. She appeared from the office, a single-story frame structure, and went to the pumps to fill the two main and two auxiliary tanks of the helicopter with 51 gallons of fuel. Bryan, a 48-year-old flight instructor and operations partner at the airport, was the only employee on duty. The weather was fair and mild, with only a slight wind.Įvelyn S. There were two gallons of fuel left in the helicopter’s tank. Pilot Ryan and McNiel, a utility manager, were surveying power lines that day, and while Ryan was stationed at the ‘copter’s controls during takeoffs, landings, and hovering for inspections, he was also teaching McNiel how to fly and would turn the controls over to him for training.Īt 1:40 pm, near Morristown, Tennessee, they landed on the graded, unpaved runway at Murrell Airport for gas. McNiel, left Jonesville, Virginia, in a Bell 47G-2 helicopter. Ryan and his Powell Valley Electric Cooperative colleague, 49-year-old Davis L. In the early afternoon of Monday, April 28, 1958, 34-year-old John J. A one-time world record holder for the most recorded flight hours by a female pilot, in 1958 Bryan saved a pilot from burning after his helicopter crash-landed in her airport. Bryan poses for a photo among the loves of her life - airplanes.
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