Actual Factual Georgia

—Scott MacLean, Forest Park

A: Two crashes dominated the front page of The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution on Sunday, June 12, 1955. The far more deadly one occurred during the Le Mans road race, when a race car jumped a barrier and exploded in the stands, killing more than 80 people and injuring hundreds more in Paris. Close to home, a U.S. Navy fighter, a World War II-era F4U-4 Corsair, lost power and crashed into a home in Forest Park, one block from City Hall. No one was killed in the accident, not even pilot, Lt. j.g. Paul V. Bigsby, who was credited with guiding the plane away from downtown businesses and homes after he later said, "The motor just dwindled off to nothing." Bigsby, who had 1,500 hours in the air, was a Navy reservist flying in exercises out of the Atlanta Naval Air Station. He said he had not wrecked a plane until his engine lost power on June 11, which was a Saturday. Bigsby knew he couldn't make it to nearby Atlanta Municipal Airport, now known as Hartsfield-Jackson International, and couldn't find an wide-open space to crash land the plane, so he aimed for a clearing near railroad tracks. Trees ripped off a wing before the plane came to a stop on the front porch of a house, where it caught fire. No one was home at the time, and amazingly, Bigsby crawled away from the crash with just sprains, cuts and bruises. Teamwork was involved for this answer. MacLean, who asked the question, had only sketchy details and a photo of the crash. I emailed that picture to Aviation Archeology, a company that researches military plane crashes, and it responded with a date, cause of crash and the pilot's name. Armed with this information, MacLean then filled in more details by visiting the Georgia Archives in Morrow, where he made copies of newspapers from the days after the crash, which provided information for this article.