how did bessie coleman die

Bessie Coleman died in a tragic airplane accident during a test flight on April 30, 1926, in Jacksonville, Florida.

What happened in the crash

• Coleman was preparing for an upcoming airshow and went up in a plane with her mechanic and publicity agent, William Wills.

• She sat in the open cockpit without a seatbelt so she could lean out and scout potential parachute jump sites for the show.

• During the flight, the plane suddenly went into a steep dive and then flipped upside down at a few thousand feet.

• Because she was not strapped in, Coleman was thrown from the aircraft and fell to her death, dying instantly on impact at about 2,000 feet altitude.

• Wills went down with the plane, which then crashed and burned, and he also died on impact.

Official cause of the accident

• Investigators later found that a loose wrench used during engine maintenance had slipped into the control mechanisms and jammed them.

• This mechanical failure meant the controls locked, causing the dive and flip that led to the crash.

• Her unfastened seatbelt is widely cited as the immediate reason she was thrown from the plane, making the accident fatal for her even before the aircraft hit the ground.

Any “latest news” or forum discussion

• Modern articles and biographies continue to describe her death in the same way: an airshow practice flight, a jammed control due to a loose wrench, the plane flipping, and her fall from the cockpit.

• Online forums sometimes speculate about whether there was anything suspicious about the crash, especially since aviation safety standards were poor at the time and she had earlier survived another crash in a different plane.

• However, the documented explanation accepted by historians points to mechanical failure plus lack of safety restraints, not a proven conspiracy.

Why her death is still discussed

• Coleman was the first Black woman and first Native American woman to earn a pilot’s license and a pioneering barnstorming stunt pilot.

• She was working toward opening a flight school for Black pilots, so her death at age 34 is often remembered as a devastating loss to early aviation and civil rights history.

TL;DR: Bessie Coleman died when a poorly maintained plane she was riding in flipped during a test flight, likely because a loose wrench jammed the controls; she was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from the cockpit, and was killed instantly on impact.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.