A pioneer of flight... Aurel Vlaicu died on September 13, 1913 near Câmpina, while attempting to be the first to fly across the Carpathian Mountains in his now aged A. Vlaicu Nr. II. He was expected to participate in the ASTRA festivities in Orăștie, near Binţinţi, in Transylvania, Austro-Hungary, now in Romania. He was buried in Bellu cemetery, in Bucharest and was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy in 1948. The cause of Vlaicus crash remains unsolved. Vlacus friends Giovanni Magnani and Constantin Silisteanu dismissed claims of sabotage, the two being among the first to inspect the wreckage as they were following him in an automobile. The most plausible cause of Vlaicus death was that the airplane stalled while landing with the engine off - as was common practice at the time, landings were made with the engine off, however this made it difficult for the pilot to abort a misjudged landing. Aurel Vlaicu was born in the village of Binţinţi (renamed Aurel Vlaicu in 1927) near Geoagiu in Transylvania, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now in Romania. He attended a Calvinist high school in Orăştie (renamed Liceul Aurel Vlaicu in his honor in 1919) and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902. He was a high school colleague of Petru Groza, and in Sibiu became friends with Octavian Goga. Vlaicu furthered his studies at Technical University of Budapest and Technische Hochschule München in Germany, earning his engineers diploma in 1907. Between 1907 and 1908 Vlaicu served in the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and on September 1, 1908 he took an engineers position with the Opel car factory in Rüsselsheim.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 06:00:12 +0000