DeLloyd Thompson

DeLloyd Thompson
Born	1888 Buffalo Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania
Died	1949

DeLoyd "Dutch" Thompson was a pioneering aviator in the early 20th century.

He was born in 1888 and grew up in Buffalo Township, Washington County, Pennsylvania. As a pilot, he was part of the tradition of "exhibition" pilots, travelling throughout countrysides and entertaining with their aeronautical feats.

On August 6, 1914, Thompson set the flight altitude record by flying to a height of 15,256 feet (4,650 m) over Overland Park, Kansas in his Day-Gyro plane. Because of the coldness at that altitude, he wore a sheepskin suit. When the plane ran out of fuel, he executed a spiral glide maneuver to return to earth. This feat, which placed him at the altitude of modern turboprop planes, happened only 10 years after the Wright brothers' first flight. However, because of the advances in flight technology, the record did not last long.

In 1916, during the run-up to American involvement in World War I, he tried to raise American awareness of the aerial warfare and to encourage greater protections for the East Coat, by launching pyrotechnics over Washington, D.C. . He dropped packets reading "This "Bomb" is Harmless. Suppose it had contained Nitro-Glycerine and was hurled by the enemy instead of by DeLloyd Thompson, who flies the American Flag? WAKE UP AND PREPARE"

That same year, he broke the air speed record over Long Island by traveling 108.4 mph. He was the second American to loop an airplane. He invented the undertaker's drop, a famous airplane maneuver. He was the second aviator in the world to sky-write with an airplane.

In 1937, developed and constructed the DeLloydCabinaire, a 2 seat monoplane, but that venture failed, due in part to the continuing Great Depression, and only 2 were ever built. That year, his last flight was a demonstration of that plane.

Following his aeronautical career, he made an unsuccessful bid to become mayor of Washington, Pennsylvania in 1939. He also became the owner of a coal mine and worked as a construction contractor He was in an automobile accident on U.S. Route 40 in Pennsylvania 1945. He died in Washington 1949 from heart failure.

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