(Editor’s note: One in a series)
The year 1928 looked to be stellar for aviation in Chattanooga. Previously, in October 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh flew into Marr Field and joined a highly publicized motorcade for a trip downtown and waved to bystanders along the route while Eagle Scouts guarded “The Spirit of St. Louis.”
The flier was welcomed by Mayor Ed Bass and the City Council, spoke to the crowd of several thousand for five minutes, and returned to Marr Field via motorcade. The whirlwind visit lasted only an hour from touchdown to takeoff. Those who saw the most famous aviator of the 1920s vividly remembered their glimpse of the event.
But 1928 would be the beginning of the end for Marr Field.
On Christmas Eve 1928, the headline in the Chattanooga Daily Times shattered the local holiday spirit: “Four Killed as Airplane Crashes, Strikes Building, Breaks Aflame in Take-Off from Marr Field.” The report noted that at 8:23 a.m. on Dec. 23, a six-passenger Fairchild cabin monoplane owned by Interstate Airlines Inc., and committed to establishing the new air mail route between Atlanta and Chicago, crashed into a home one-half mile south of the field.