page_title: Calbraith Perry Rodgers
section_title: Death
hierarchical_section_title: Calbraith Perry Rodgers / Death
caption_attribution_description: English: Left: Calbraith "Cal" Rodgers at the controls of the Wright CO Model EX "Vin Fiz". Right: The wreckage of the Wright CO Model EX "Vin Fiz". Written above the image, "1st Aviator to Cross the Continent" and written below, "Calbraith Rodgers His fatal wreck - Long Beach"
context_page_description: Calbraith Perry Rodgers was an American aviation pioneer. He made the first transcontinental airplane flight across the U.S. from September 17, 1911, to November 5, 1911, with dozens of stops, both intentional and accidental. The feat made him a national celebrity, but he was killed in a crash a few months later at an exhibition in California.
context_section_description: On April 3, 1912, while making an exhibition flight over Long Beach, California, he flew into a flock of birds, causing the plane to crash into the ocean. His neck was broken and his thorax damaged by the engine of the airplane. He died a few moments later, a few hundred feet from where the Vin Fiz ended its transcontinental flight. The aircraft in this last flight was the spare Model B he had carried in the special train during the transcontinental flight, rather than the Vin Fiz. The Vin Fiz itself was later given to the Smithsonian Institution by Calbraith's widow, Mabel Rodgers, and is now on display at the National Air and Space Museum. According to contemporary records, his was the 127th airplane fatality since aviation began, and he was the 22nd American aviator to die in an accident. He was also the first pilot who fatally crashed as a result of a bird strike.
  Rodgers was interred at Allegheny Cemetery in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
caption: Rodgers in 1912 fatal crash
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