Famous People in Aircraft Crashes Quiz

Answer: Dag Hammarskjold

Dag Hammarskjold was the second Secretary-General of the United Nations. The plane in which he was travelling crashed into the jungle. There were rumours at the time that a bomb exploded, and even that some of the victims were shot prior to the crash. All 16 passengers and crew were killed.

Answer: Camden, Tennessee

The site of the accident was Camden, Tennessee. The Piper Comanche in which Cline and her two imaginatively named peers departed Dyersburg into the path of a storm. The plane got airborne at 6:07 pm. It entered the bad weather and crashed at 6:20 p.m. This is known to be the the time of the accident as the watch Cline was wearing had stopped.

Two years earlier, Patsy and her brother had been involved in a head on car crash in which Cline was catapulted through the windscreen. She narrowly avoided death on that occasion.

Two days prior to the fatal plane crash, Patsy's final concert was a benefit concert for the family of a recently deceased disc jockey.

Answer: Yes

40 year-old Jim Reeves, a country & western singer, died when the Beechcraft Debonair which he was piloting crashed during thunderstorms into dense woods, just south of Nashville. The wreckage was not located for two days following the accident.

The accident enquiry determined that pilot error was to blame, citing "VFR" (visual flight rules) flight during adverse weather conditions.

Answer: Otis Redding

The cause of the crash that killed Redding was never determined. The Beechcraft in which he was travelling went into a spin and crashed into icy Lake Monona in fog.

Redding, who had recently appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, is remembered for "Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay". It was recorded only three days before his death, and became a U.S. and U.K. number 1.

The Bar-Kays may be best remembered for "Soul Finger", an instrumental that was re-introduced to a younger generation in the Dan Ackroyd-Chevy Chase movie "Spies Like Us".

Valens and Richardson (the 'Big Bopper') had already met their fate on 3 February, 1959 ('the day the music died'), as immortalised in Don McLean's standard "American Pie". McLean survives to this day.

Answer: Mohammed bin Laden

Mohammed bin Laden was killed when his Beechcraft, a company airplane, crashed during an attempted landing at Hamis Musayt, in southwest Saudi Arabia.

A father of 54 children, bin Laden was never to know that his name would become synonymous with plane crashes on a much larger scale.

The other three choices provided in this question are also the fathers of people forever known for their role in society. Anis Ahmed Rushdie is the father of Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 publication "The Satanic Verses" caused a stir in the Islamic community to the point where in February 1989, Iran's leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a 'Fatwa' requiring Rushdie's execution.

Richard Lewinsky is the father of Monica Lewinsky, who presumably needs no further introduction, least of all to Bill Clinton.

Charles Berkowitz is the father of David Berkowitz, New York's infamous "Son of Sam" serial killer. Berkowitz killed six people and wounded others in the late 70's. The nickname was based on information left in a letter by Berkowitz after the sixth victim was shot.

Answer: Rocky Marciano

Marciano's Cessna 172H crashed into a single oak tree in Newton, Iowa. The plane had taken off in rainy weather but failed to climb. The pilot was inexperienced and not IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) qualified. Marciano was returning home for his birthday party.

Born as Rocco Francis Marchegiano in 1923, Marciano remains, as of 2006, the sole undefeated heavyweight champion in boxing history.

Answer: Audie Murphy

At Brush Mountain, near Catawba, Virginia, the Aero Commander 680 in which Murphy was a passenger crashed in a mountainous area during thunderstorms. The pilot was unqualified to fly on instruments and therefore continued VFR (visual) flight into the adverse weather conditions. All 5 people onboard the plane were killed.

A granite memorial was erected near the crash site in 1974 to commemorate Murphy, who was 46 years old when he passed away.

On June 7, 1971, Murphy received a full military honors burial at Arlington National Cemetery. His resting place is Arlington's second most popular gravesite, second only to that of President John F Kennedy.

Born in 1924, Audie Leon Murphy was the most decorated U.S. combat soldier of World War II. He received the Medal of Honor, as well as 32 additional medals. Following his miltary exploits, Murphy went on to become a successful movie actor.

Answer: Francis Gary Powers

Aged 47, and a newscaster at the time of his death in Encino, California, Francis Gary Powers had previously achieved fame as the American pilot of a U-2 spy plane that was shot down over the Soviet Union on 1 May 1960. Powers was subsequently convicted of being a spy and sentenced to jail and hard labour.

In February 1962, Powers and an American student were the Russian half of a prisoner exchange that saw KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher change hands between the two countries.

His passing occurred whilst he was flying as a passenger for KNBC television news, when the Bell 206B Jetranger helicopter ran out of fuel and crashed in Encino's Balboa Park. Powers and the pilot, who was also killed, were returning from covering a fire.

Of the others, they are all famous for their respective roles in aviation history. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian Cosmonaut was the first man in outer space and to orbit the earth, doing so on 12 April 1961.

Chuck Yeager was the first man to break the speed of sound, doing so on 14 October 1947 in an experimental aircraft, the Bell X1-A.

Orville Wright became the first man aloft by means of powered flight, on 17 December 1903, at Kill Devil Hills, in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The aircraft was understandably named 'The Flyer'. It would have been impossible for Orville to have been the answer to the above question. Had he still been alive in 1977, he would have been 105 years of age. He had died in 1948, however.

Answer: Twilight Zone: The Movie

Vic Morrow, perhaps best known for his starring role in the television series "Combat!", was 57 when the freak accident took his life and that of the two children.

Filming for "Twilight Zone: The Movie" was taking place in Valencia, California, when a Bell UH-1B Huey helicopter crashed onto them as the result of shrapnel from a special effects explosion hitting the tail rotor. Morrow and one of the children were decapitated, the other was crushed. The occupants of the helicopter were unhurt.

Answer: Kyu Sakamoto

Kyu Sakamoto was born Hisashi Oshima, in 1941. 43 at the time of his passing, he was a Japanese singer and actor. He was known around the world for his song "Sukiyaki", which topped the U.S. charts in 1963.

On that fateful day in 1985, Japan Air Lines flight 123, a Boeing 747, crashed near Ueno Village, Japan, after the aircraft's tailfin broke away, leaving the plane virtually uncontrollable. To the flight crew's credit, they managed to keep the plane aloft for a long period of time by varying the engine thrust and manipulating the flap angles.

The cause of the accident was eventually identified as pressure bulkhead failure, which had been improperly repaired 7 years earlier following a landing where the tail section impacted the runway. Sakamoto was not alone in his plight. 520 of the 524 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft were killed.

Answer: John Denver

Flying his Rutan Long EZ experimental aircraft over Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove, California, 53 year old Denver lost control and sent the plane into a dive when he reached behind himself in order to turn a fuel transfer switch. He accidentally depressed the right rudder pedal in the process. Usually, a plane's fuel selector switch is located between the pilot's legs.

Denver's injuries were so bad he was unrecognisable, but he was eventually positively identified by his fingerprints.

Answer: John F Kennedy Jr

In the latest (at that time) of a seemingly endless run of tragedy to befall the Kennedy clan, 38 year old John Jr, son of President John F Kennedy, died when his Piper Saratoga II crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Martha's Vineyard is the location of the Kennedy family's vacation house. Kennedy and his wife were en route to the wedding of cousin Rory Kennedy, which was subsquently postponed.

Kennedy, who was piloting the aircraft, was not IFR (instrument) qualified, and on a hazy night lost reference with the ground. His wife and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, were also killed.

Answer: Payne Stewart

Golfer Payne Stewart was killed whilst travelling from Orlando to Texas in a Gates Learjet 35. The accident investigation concluded that the plane's occupants suffered a gradual loss of cabin pressure early in the flight and then subsequently died of hypoxia, which is a lack of oxygen.

The aircraft continued on autopilot for 1500 further miles before crashing into a field at Mina, a town ten miles west of Aberdeen, South Dakota. Six passengers and crew were killed.

Air National Guard fighter planes tracked the Learjet during its unattended flight. President Bill Clinton advised that the Learjet should be shot down if it presented any danger to a heavily-populated area. As things transpired, the plane was allowed to continue flying until it eventually ran out of fuel.

Answer: Skyhooks

Graeme Strachan, 49 years old at the time of his passing, was an Australian television and radio personality. In the 70s (and for a short lived comeback in the 90s) he was the lead singer of Skyhooks, one of the locally based bands that finally matched and surpassed anything overseas could throw at Australian music.

Known as "Shirley" for his curly locks, Strachan lost control of the helicopter he was piloting during severe turbulence, causing it to crash into rugged mountainside. Strachan was the sole occupant of the aircraft.

Answer: Albert Hammond

Albert Hammond wrote "I Don't Wanna Die In An Air Disaster" and released it in 1973. The untimely death in a plane crash of Jim Croce in September of the same year also saw the song's chances of being a hit plummet, as radio stations pulled the song from their playlists.

"Well I'm young and I'm pretty ,and I wanna stay that way
Wanna be desirable 'til my dying day
I don't wanna be bed-ridden, an old and bitter sage
Have the nurses saying I'm young for my age

Oh Lord don't let me go that way
Lord oh Lord don't let me go that way
No, don't let me go like a fading chorus
Don't let me fade like a song

Lord have mercy on me
Lord oh Lord have mercy on me
'Cause I don't wanna die in an air disaster
And I don't wanna die in a freeway pile-up
And I don't wanna go like a fading chorus
And I don't wanna die for no good reason

And I just wanna go on and on"

Don't we all...