WWII flying ace, Captain Glasgow was shot down, wounded, captured by the Germans, escaped and walked back across enemy lines. He came stateside and flew in War Bond shows.
He earned a Silver Star, an Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, a Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Flying an experimental XP-55 Ascender* at Wright Field in Ohio, his plane became unresponsive. He managed to miss the bleachers of people but when the plane hit the ground and tumbled, it sprayed burning jet fuel on a pedestrian vehicle that was coming into the air show. In the car were a family of four, husband, wife, two children and a neighbor lady. The neighbor lady was holding the baby, Nina, and threw her out of the car. Nina, five weeks old at the time, was the only one to survive the crash.
The other two pilots in the air show that day attended Captain Glasgow's funeral in Niagara Falls, NY. Within three years, both of them would also be dead in plane crashes.
*Two out of three of these planes built, crashed. The third is in an aerospace museum. They were nicknamed "Ass-enders" because the controls were in the tail of the plane.
From the book "Fighters, An Illustrated Anatomy of the World's Fighters" by Mike Spick:
"Back in 1939, Curtiss Aircraft Company, in an attempt to meet a USAAC specification for a new fighter, developed an experimental plan (the XP-55 Curtis Ascender).
Unfortunately, stall characteristics were poor and the first prototype was lost on November 15, 1943, when it pitched downward through 180 degrees causing fuel starvation for the engine, which cut out. Trials continued until 1945, but it was evident that any advantages of the unconventional layout were not enough to justify further development. Main faults were an excessively long take-off run and poor stalling characteristics. The project was abandoned after the third prototype crashed at a military air show on May 27, 1945."
From the Dayton Daily News:
By Mary McCarty
Staff Writer
Nina Roehm Hampton's first outing in the world very well could have turned out to be her last.
She was only five weeks old on May 27, 1945, when her parents, Wesley and Susan Roehm, took the family out to Wright Field for an air show and war loan rally that drew 70,000 spectators.
Around 4 p.m., in the show's closing hour, an experimental plane crashed near the Roehms' car, spilling burning oil fuel over the vehicle. "Human torches," a local newspaper headline blared.
In the end, Nina was the only one who survived the fiery crash that killed the pilot and four people on the ground — the only civilian deaths in Dayton air show history. It was a tragedy that forever changed air show safety in the United States — and forever changed the lives of three families.
Little Nina Lee owed her life to the quick thinking of close family friend Kathleen Eyre. According to family accounts, the 22-year-old Eyre tossed the newborn out of the car window before she too became engulfed in flames. Only Nina's hands were burned.
Jack Darst of Beavercreek, then a high school student, watched the crash in horror.
"It was a low flyover from the west to the east, and the pilot did a moderate dive and high-speed pull up," Darst recalled. "There weren't any wild gyrations; it just didn't climb. The plane skidded through a fence, and hit close to the Airway Road perimeter. The fire trucks couldn't get through the fence to get to the scene. It was very chaotic."
Nina Roehm Hampton, now 66, lives in Marysville, Ohio. She talked to the Dayton Daily News about her life and of the day it almost ended.
Hampton said her father, an engineer for a Dayton tool-and-die company, spent the day at the air show and had excitedly returned home to bring the rest of the family back with him, including Nina in her first public outing. The car had just gone through the ticket booth and pulled up along Airway Road when the plane burst into flames.
The pilot, World War II flying ace Capt. William Glasgow, was killed instantly. Wesley Roehm, 23, died at the hospital a short time later. Eyre died the next day and Nina's sister, 20-month-old Donna Irene, died two days later.
Susan Roehm lived two more weeks, long enough to express her wishes that her husband's parents, Grace and Vern Roehm, raise her surviving daughter, Nina.
"They didn't tell her at first that my father and sister had died," Hampton said. "She fought and fought, but after she found out the news, she lost her fight."
It is an almost unthinkable tragedy — one that continues to reverberate in the Roehm, Eyre and Glasgow families more than 66 years later. Yet it's also a powerful story of compassion and the staying power of family.
Hampton has been happily married for 47 years to her husband Tom, is the mother of two married sons and the grandmother of five. She shows a surprising lack of bitterness about the accident that claimed the lives of her family. She still has burn scars on her hands and as a child she endured several skin graft surgeries, but she carries no psychological scars. "I've had a wonderful life," said Hampton. "I was raised by loving grandparents. The more I live, the more I realize God's blessings. Because I lived, I have a responsibility to be a blessing to others."
John Culdahy, president of the Virginia-based International Council of Air Shows, said the air show industry came under close scrutiny after the Dayton tragedy. "As a result of that accident, there was a close cooperative effort that developed a comprehensive set of air show regulations and rules that have done quite well at protecting spectator safety," Culdahy said. Among the improvements: greater distances between spectators and aircraft, stringent qualifications for pilots and a prohibition against aerobatics while plane pointed at audience.
Since the new rules were adopted in 1952, not a single spectator has been killed at a North American air show. Air races, he noted, operate under a different set of flying rules. (Eleven people died Sept. 16 at an air race in Reno, Nev.)
None of the survivors has ever blamed the pilot. Glasgow's mother, Margaret, sent baby clothes for Nina. Hampton, in fact, remembers visiting the Glasgow family in their hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How hard it must have been, to get him back safely from the war and then to lose him like that," she said.
Glasgow's cousin, Violet McIntyre, worshipped the war hero who had defied the odds by making it home after flying more than 80 combat missions over Germany.
"He was always a gentleman, and the ladies loved him, young and old," McIntyre recalled. "If you met him for the first time, he could make you feel that you were the most important person in his life."
The church was filled to capacity at Glasgow's memorial service in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Pallbearers included fellow aces Capt. Don S. Gentile, and Major Richard I. Bong, Ace Pilot, who performed at the Wright Field air show alongside Glasgow and tipped their wings in tribute after he crashed.**
**They would both die within three years in individual plane crashes.
He earned a Silver Star, an Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, a Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Flying an experimental XP-55 Ascender* at Wright Field in Ohio, his plane became unresponsive. He managed to miss the bleachers of people but when the plane hit the ground and tumbled, it sprayed burning jet fuel on a pedestrian vehicle that was coming into the air show. In the car were a family of four, husband, wife, two children and a neighbor lady. The neighbor lady was holding the baby, Nina, and threw her out of the car. Nina, five weeks old at the time, was the only one to survive the crash.
The other two pilots in the air show that day attended Captain Glasgow's funeral in Niagara Falls, NY. Within three years, both of them would also be dead in plane crashes.
*Two out of three of these planes built, crashed. The third is in an aerospace museum. They were nicknamed "Ass-enders" because the controls were in the tail of the plane.
From the book "Fighters, An Illustrated Anatomy of the World's Fighters" by Mike Spick:
"Back in 1939, Curtiss Aircraft Company, in an attempt to meet a USAAC specification for a new fighter, developed an experimental plan (the XP-55 Curtis Ascender).
Unfortunately, stall characteristics were poor and the first prototype was lost on November 15, 1943, when it pitched downward through 180 degrees causing fuel starvation for the engine, which cut out. Trials continued until 1945, but it was evident that any advantages of the unconventional layout were not enough to justify further development. Main faults were an excessively long take-off run and poor stalling characteristics. The project was abandoned after the third prototype crashed at a military air show on May 27, 1945."
From the Dayton Daily News:
By Mary McCarty
Staff Writer
Nina Roehm Hampton's first outing in the world very well could have turned out to be her last.
She was only five weeks old on May 27, 1945, when her parents, Wesley and Susan Roehm, took the family out to Wright Field for an air show and war loan rally that drew 70,000 spectators.
Around 4 p.m., in the show's closing hour, an experimental plane crashed near the Roehms' car, spilling burning oil fuel over the vehicle. "Human torches," a local newspaper headline blared.
In the end, Nina was the only one who survived the fiery crash that killed the pilot and four people on the ground — the only civilian deaths in Dayton air show history. It was a tragedy that forever changed air show safety in the United States — and forever changed the lives of three families.
Little Nina Lee owed her life to the quick thinking of close family friend Kathleen Eyre. According to family accounts, the 22-year-old Eyre tossed the newborn out of the car window before she too became engulfed in flames. Only Nina's hands were burned.
Jack Darst of Beavercreek, then a high school student, watched the crash in horror.
"It was a low flyover from the west to the east, and the pilot did a moderate dive and high-speed pull up," Darst recalled. "There weren't any wild gyrations; it just didn't climb. The plane skidded through a fence, and hit close to the Airway Road perimeter. The fire trucks couldn't get through the fence to get to the scene. It was very chaotic."
Nina Roehm Hampton, now 66, lives in Marysville, Ohio. She talked to the Dayton Daily News about her life and of the day it almost ended.
Hampton said her father, an engineer for a Dayton tool-and-die company, spent the day at the air show and had excitedly returned home to bring the rest of the family back with him, including Nina in her first public outing. The car had just gone through the ticket booth and pulled up along Airway Road when the plane burst into flames.
The pilot, World War II flying ace Capt. William Glasgow, was killed instantly. Wesley Roehm, 23, died at the hospital a short time later. Eyre died the next day and Nina's sister, 20-month-old Donna Irene, died two days later.
Susan Roehm lived two more weeks, long enough to express her wishes that her husband's parents, Grace and Vern Roehm, raise her surviving daughter, Nina.
"They didn't tell her at first that my father and sister had died," Hampton said. "She fought and fought, but after she found out the news, she lost her fight."
It is an almost unthinkable tragedy — one that continues to reverberate in the Roehm, Eyre and Glasgow families more than 66 years later. Yet it's also a powerful story of compassion and the staying power of family.
Hampton has been happily married for 47 years to her husband Tom, is the mother of two married sons and the grandmother of five. She shows a surprising lack of bitterness about the accident that claimed the lives of her family. She still has burn scars on her hands and as a child she endured several skin graft surgeries, but she carries no psychological scars. "I've had a wonderful life," said Hampton. "I was raised by loving grandparents. The more I live, the more I realize God's blessings. Because I lived, I have a responsibility to be a blessing to others."
John Culdahy, president of the Virginia-based International Council of Air Shows, said the air show industry came under close scrutiny after the Dayton tragedy. "As a result of that accident, there was a close cooperative effort that developed a comprehensive set of air show regulations and rules that have done quite well at protecting spectator safety," Culdahy said. Among the improvements: greater distances between spectators and aircraft, stringent qualifications for pilots and a prohibition against aerobatics while plane pointed at audience.
Since the new rules were adopted in 1952, not a single spectator has been killed at a North American air show. Air races, he noted, operate under a different set of flying rules. (Eleven people died Sept. 16 at an air race in Reno, Nev.)
None of the survivors has ever blamed the pilot. Glasgow's mother, Margaret, sent baby clothes for Nina. Hampton, in fact, remembers visiting the Glasgow family in their hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How hard it must have been, to get him back safely from the war and then to lose him like that," she said.
Glasgow's cousin, Violet McIntyre, worshipped the war hero who had defied the odds by making it home after flying more than 80 combat missions over Germany.
"He was always a gentleman, and the ladies loved him, young and old," McIntyre recalled. "If you met him for the first time, he could make you feel that you were the most important person in his life."
The church was filled to capacity at Glasgow's memorial service in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Pallbearers included fellow aces Capt. Don S. Gentile, and Major Richard I. Bong, Ace Pilot, who performed at the Wright Field air show alongside Glasgow and tipped their wings in tribute after he crashed.**
**They would both die within three years in individual plane crashes.
WWII flying ace, Captain Glasgow was shot down, wounded, captured by the Germans, escaped and walked back across enemy lines. He came stateside and flew in War Bond shows.
He earned a Silver Star, an Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, a Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Flying an experimental XP-55 Ascender* at Wright Field in Ohio, his plane became unresponsive. He managed to miss the bleachers of people but when the plane hit the ground and tumbled, it sprayed burning jet fuel on a pedestrian vehicle that was coming into the air show. In the car were a family of four, husband, wife, two children and a neighbor lady. The neighbor lady was holding the baby, Nina, and threw her out of the car. Nina, five weeks old at the time, was the only one to survive the crash.
The other two pilots in the air show that day attended Captain Glasgow's funeral in Niagara Falls, NY. Within three years, both of them would also be dead in plane crashes.
*Two out of three of these planes built, crashed. The third is in an aerospace museum. They were nicknamed "Ass-enders" because the controls were in the tail of the plane.
From the book "Fighters, An Illustrated Anatomy of the World's Fighters" by Mike Spick:
"Back in 1939, Curtiss Aircraft Company, in an attempt to meet a USAAC specification for a new fighter, developed an experimental plan (the XP-55 Curtis Ascender).
Unfortunately, stall characteristics were poor and the first prototype was lost on November 15, 1943, when it pitched downward through 180 degrees causing fuel starvation for the engine, which cut out. Trials continued until 1945, but it was evident that any advantages of the unconventional layout were not enough to justify further development. Main faults were an excessively long take-off run and poor stalling characteristics. The project was abandoned after the third prototype crashed at a military air show on May 27, 1945."
From the Dayton Daily News:
By Mary McCarty
Staff Writer
Nina Roehm Hampton's first outing in the world very well could have turned out to be her last.
She was only five weeks old on May 27, 1945, when her parents, Wesley and Susan Roehm, took the family out to Wright Field for an air show and war loan rally that drew 70,000 spectators.
Around 4 p.m., in the show's closing hour, an experimental plane crashed near the Roehms' car, spilling burning oil fuel over the vehicle. "Human torches," a local newspaper headline blared.
In the end, Nina was the only one who survived the fiery crash that killed the pilot and four people on the ground — the only civilian deaths in Dayton air show history. It was a tragedy that forever changed air show safety in the United States — and forever changed the lives of three families.
Little Nina Lee owed her life to the quick thinking of close family friend Kathleen Eyre. According to family accounts, the 22-year-old Eyre tossed the newborn out of the car window before she too became engulfed in flames. Only Nina's hands were burned.
Jack Darst of Beavercreek, then a high school student, watched the crash in horror.
"It was a low flyover from the west to the east, and the pilot did a moderate dive and high-speed pull up," Darst recalled. "There weren't any wild gyrations; it just didn't climb. The plane skidded through a fence, and hit close to the Airway Road perimeter. The fire trucks couldn't get through the fence to get to the scene. It was very chaotic."
Nina Roehm Hampton, now 66, lives in Marysville, Ohio. She talked to the Dayton Daily News about her life and of the day it almost ended.
Hampton said her father, an engineer for a Dayton tool-and-die company, spent the day at the air show and had excitedly returned home to bring the rest of the family back with him, including Nina in her first public outing. The car had just gone through the ticket booth and pulled up along Airway Road when the plane burst into flames.
The pilot, World War II flying ace Capt. William Glasgow, was killed instantly. Wesley Roehm, 23, died at the hospital a short time later. Eyre died the next day and Nina's sister, 20-month-old Donna Irene, died two days later.
Susan Roehm lived two more weeks, long enough to express her wishes that her husband's parents, Grace and Vern Roehm, raise her surviving daughter, Nina.
"They didn't tell her at first that my father and sister had died," Hampton said. "She fought and fought, but after she found out the news, she lost her fight."
It is an almost unthinkable tragedy — one that continues to reverberate in the Roehm, Eyre and Glasgow families more than 66 years later. Yet it's also a powerful story of compassion and the staying power of family.
Hampton has been happily married for 47 years to her husband Tom, is the mother of two married sons and the grandmother of five. She shows a surprising lack of bitterness about the accident that claimed the lives of her family. She still has burn scars on her hands and as a child she endured several skin graft surgeries, but she carries no psychological scars. "I've had a wonderful life," said Hampton. "I was raised by loving grandparents. The more I live, the more I realize God's blessings. Because I lived, I have a responsibility to be a blessing to others."
John Culdahy, president of the Virginia-based International Council of Air Shows, said the air show industry came under close scrutiny after the Dayton tragedy. "As a result of that accident, there was a close cooperative effort that developed a comprehensive set of air show regulations and rules that have done quite well at protecting spectator safety," Culdahy said. Among the improvements: greater distances between spectators and aircraft, stringent qualifications for pilots and a prohibition against aerobatics while plane pointed at audience.
Since the new rules were adopted in 1952, not a single spectator has been killed at a North American air show. Air races, he noted, operate under a different set of flying rules. (Eleven people died Sept. 16 at an air race in Reno, Nev.)
None of the survivors has ever blamed the pilot. Glasgow's mother, Margaret, sent baby clothes for Nina. Hampton, in fact, remembers visiting the Glasgow family in their hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How hard it must have been, to get him back safely from the war and then to lose him like that," she said.
Glasgow's cousin, Violet McIntyre, worshipped the war hero who had defied the odds by making it home after flying more than 80 combat missions over Germany.
"He was always a gentleman, and the ladies loved him, young and old," McIntyre recalled. "If you met him for the first time, he could make you feel that you were the most important person in his life."
The church was filled to capacity at Glasgow's memorial service in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Pallbearers included fellow aces Capt. Don S. Gentile, and Major Richard I. Bong, Ace Pilot, who performed at the Wright Field air show alongside Glasgow and tipped their wings in tribute after he crashed.**
**They would both die within three years in individual plane crashes.
He earned a Silver Star, an Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters, a Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
Flying an experimental XP-55 Ascender* at Wright Field in Ohio, his plane became unresponsive. He managed to miss the bleachers of people but when the plane hit the ground and tumbled, it sprayed burning jet fuel on a pedestrian vehicle that was coming into the air show. In the car were a family of four, husband, wife, two children and a neighbor lady. The neighbor lady was holding the baby, Nina, and threw her out of the car. Nina, five weeks old at the time, was the only one to survive the crash.
The other two pilots in the air show that day attended Captain Glasgow's funeral in Niagara Falls, NY. Within three years, both of them would also be dead in plane crashes.
*Two out of three of these planes built, crashed. The third is in an aerospace museum. They were nicknamed "Ass-enders" because the controls were in the tail of the plane.
From the book "Fighters, An Illustrated Anatomy of the World's Fighters" by Mike Spick:
"Back in 1939, Curtiss Aircraft Company, in an attempt to meet a USAAC specification for a new fighter, developed an experimental plan (the XP-55 Curtis Ascender).
Unfortunately, stall characteristics were poor and the first prototype was lost on November 15, 1943, when it pitched downward through 180 degrees causing fuel starvation for the engine, which cut out. Trials continued until 1945, but it was evident that any advantages of the unconventional layout were not enough to justify further development. Main faults were an excessively long take-off run and poor stalling characteristics. The project was abandoned after the third prototype crashed at a military air show on May 27, 1945."
From the Dayton Daily News:
By Mary McCarty
Staff Writer
Nina Roehm Hampton's first outing in the world very well could have turned out to be her last.
She was only five weeks old on May 27, 1945, when her parents, Wesley and Susan Roehm, took the family out to Wright Field for an air show and war loan rally that drew 70,000 spectators.
Around 4 p.m., in the show's closing hour, an experimental plane crashed near the Roehms' car, spilling burning oil fuel over the vehicle. "Human torches," a local newspaper headline blared.
In the end, Nina was the only one who survived the fiery crash that killed the pilot and four people on the ground — the only civilian deaths in Dayton air show history. It was a tragedy that forever changed air show safety in the United States — and forever changed the lives of three families.
Little Nina Lee owed her life to the quick thinking of close family friend Kathleen Eyre. According to family accounts, the 22-year-old Eyre tossed the newborn out of the car window before she too became engulfed in flames. Only Nina's hands were burned.
Jack Darst of Beavercreek, then a high school student, watched the crash in horror.
"It was a low flyover from the west to the east, and the pilot did a moderate dive and high-speed pull up," Darst recalled. "There weren't any wild gyrations; it just didn't climb. The plane skidded through a fence, and hit close to the Airway Road perimeter. The fire trucks couldn't get through the fence to get to the scene. It was very chaotic."
Nina Roehm Hampton, now 66, lives in Marysville, Ohio. She talked to the Dayton Daily News about her life and of the day it almost ended.
Hampton said her father, an engineer for a Dayton tool-and-die company, spent the day at the air show and had excitedly returned home to bring the rest of the family back with him, including Nina in her first public outing. The car had just gone through the ticket booth and pulled up along Airway Road when the plane burst into flames.
The pilot, World War II flying ace Capt. William Glasgow, was killed instantly. Wesley Roehm, 23, died at the hospital a short time later. Eyre died the next day and Nina's sister, 20-month-old Donna Irene, died two days later.
Susan Roehm lived two more weeks, long enough to express her wishes that her husband's parents, Grace and Vern Roehm, raise her surviving daughter, Nina.
"They didn't tell her at first that my father and sister had died," Hampton said. "She fought and fought, but after she found out the news, she lost her fight."
It is an almost unthinkable tragedy — one that continues to reverberate in the Roehm, Eyre and Glasgow families more than 66 years later. Yet it's also a powerful story of compassion and the staying power of family.
Hampton has been happily married for 47 years to her husband Tom, is the mother of two married sons and the grandmother of five. She shows a surprising lack of bitterness about the accident that claimed the lives of her family. She still has burn scars on her hands and as a child she endured several skin graft surgeries, but she carries no psychological scars. "I've had a wonderful life," said Hampton. "I was raised by loving grandparents. The more I live, the more I realize God's blessings. Because I lived, I have a responsibility to be a blessing to others."
John Culdahy, president of the Virginia-based International Council of Air Shows, said the air show industry came under close scrutiny after the Dayton tragedy. "As a result of that accident, there was a close cooperative effort that developed a comprehensive set of air show regulations and rules that have done quite well at protecting spectator safety," Culdahy said. Among the improvements: greater distances between spectators and aircraft, stringent qualifications for pilots and a prohibition against aerobatics while plane pointed at audience.
Since the new rules were adopted in 1952, not a single spectator has been killed at a North American air show. Air races, he noted, operate under a different set of flying rules. (Eleven people died Sept. 16 at an air race in Reno, Nev.)
None of the survivors has ever blamed the pilot. Glasgow's mother, Margaret, sent baby clothes for Nina. Hampton, in fact, remembers visiting the Glasgow family in their hometown of Niagara Falls, N.Y. "How hard it must have been, to get him back safely from the war and then to lose him like that," she said.
Glasgow's cousin, Violet McIntyre, worshipped the war hero who had defied the odds by making it home after flying more than 80 combat missions over Germany.
"He was always a gentleman, and the ladies loved him, young and old," McIntyre recalled. "If you met him for the first time, he could make you feel that you were the most important person in his life."
The church was filled to capacity at Glasgow's memorial service in Niagara Falls, N.Y. Pallbearers included fellow aces Capt. Don S. Gentile, and Major Richard I. Bong, Ace Pilot, who performed at the Wright Field air show alongside Glasgow and tipped their wings in tribute after he crashed.**
**They would both die within three years in individual plane crashes.
Inscription
Killed on duty in the service of his country in the American area, May 27, 1945.
