Jorge Newbery
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Newbery at his planecirca 1912-1914. |
Jorge Alejandro Newbery (1875-1914), better known plainly as
Jorge Newbery, was an
Argentine pilot of
fixed-wing aircraft. Along with
Alberto Braniff and
Jorge Chavez. among others, he was one of the first
Hispanic aircraft pilots in history. Newbery was also an
engineer.
On
April 9,
1909, Newbery wrote the first
newspaper article on
aviation in Argentina. Titled "Aeronautica", the article was featured in
El Nacional newspaper.
At the time, Newbery was an expert
aerostat pilot, having flown these machines four times across Argentina. Newbery, however, had not been in, or seen, an aircraft before he wrote that article.
Jorge's brother, Dr.
Eduardo Newbery, was also an aviation pioneer in Argentina, and he was a member of the Argentine
Aero Club. During the middle and late 1900s as well as the 1910s, aero clubs were common, and many countries had at least one of them. Jorge Newbery found out that the Argentine aero club was facing financial trouble when his brother was a member. In 1908, Dr. Eduardo Newbery died in an aerostat accident, becoming one of the first two accident casualties in Argentine aviation history. One month after Eduardo's death, on
November 24, Jorge Newbery married
Sarah Escalante.
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Newbery at the Military Aviation School |
Newbery had been promoted to second vice-president of the aero club after he decided to join it to help it come out of its crisis, but his brother's
death affected him so much emotionally, that he decided to renounce to his post immediately after. He did, however, remain a member of the aero club.
Newbery flew an aerostat round trip for the first time on
January 24,
1909, making his second round trip flight on
April 2. Ironically, on
April 27, eighteen days to the date that he published his article, he was voted president of the same aero club to which he had previously renounced as second vice-president. Newbery accepted, with the hope of turning around the club's dire situation.
Newbery had made a promise both to his mother and his wife that he would not attempt to fly after the death of his brother; the article that he wrote in 1909 made it evident to his family that he had broken that promise, resulting in his
divorce from Escalante soon after. The couple did procreate a son.
By 1910, aircraft began to arrive in Argentina, and Newbery became interested in them. When Argentina became the first
Latin American country to have a
militarized air force in 1912, Newbery was one of the driving forces behind it.
Jorge Newbery, like his brother Eduardo, lost his life during an air crash in 1914, not too long before the fixed-wing aircraft would become one of the most efficient ways of attacking in
World War I.
Buenos Aires' second largest
airport, the
Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, is named after him. Mainly a domestic airport, the Jorge Newbery airport is an international airport actually with
Pluna's flights to
Uruguay.
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Some information on Newbery's life (in Spanish)
