Norton, Massachusetts – November, 25, 1934
On November 25, 1935, a 32-year-old pilot was stunt flying over the town of Norton, Massachusetts, with his younger brother and a female friend as passengers. The plane was at 2,200 feet when the pilot put it into a tail spin, and then went into a power dive. Just as the plane straightened out a wire holding a wing strut broke and the strut bent. A section of wing fabric tore loose and began trailing behind the plane, before the wing suddenly broke away causing the plane to crash. There were no survivors.
It was reported that the pilot had survived an earlier plane crash in an apple orchard about ten years earlier.
Source:
The Bridgton News, “William P. Melcher Killed In Plane Crash At Norton”, November 30, 1934
Updated January 27, 2026
Another account of this accident states that the pilot and a 22-year-old female passenger perished in this accident, with no mention of a third passenger.
In this account, William P. Melcher, (36), took off from Mansfield Airport in a Waco biplane with 22-year-old Ruby Rand of Norton, Mass. as a passenger. While putting the plane through some aerobatics the left wing broke away and the plane went down in a swampy wooded area in Mansfield almost at the Norton town line, about 3/4 of a mile from the airfield. It took searchers about an hour to find the wreckage. Both the pilot and passenger were found to be deceased.
Source:
Attleboro Sun, (Ma.), “Bodies of Ruby Rand, Pilot Melcher Found In wreckage In Brush”, November 26, 1934.
