Air Museum Chief Dies in Glider Crash

The head of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum was killed Tuesday when the glider he was in broke apart and crashed, authorities said.

Killed along with Donald Engen, 75, was William Ivans, an internationally known pilot from La Jolla who was piloting the motorized glider.

The cause of the crash was under investigation.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Lance Modispacher said witnesses reported seeing the glider breaking apart and falling to the ground near a dirt road. There were no apparent weather disturbances at the time.

The area is a mecca for glider pilots because of wind conditions that allow for long, high-altitude flights, but it can be dangerous.

“The same conditions that produce world-class gliding can challenge you as well,” said Larry Sanderson, president of the Soaring Society of America.

Sanderson said another glider pilot who witnessed the crash said Ivans’ Nimbus 4DM appeared to be “nose down with the wings flexing greatly” before breaking apart about 5,000 feet above the ground. The glider hit near a dirt road, away from any structures.

Sanderson said both victims were top pilots in “an extremely well-built aircraft. So it had to be a very unusual set of circumstances that stressed the aircraft.”

“They died together doing what they were doing when they first met,” he added. The two men had started flying together in the mid-1980s.

Engen, a Navy dive bomber pilot who sank a Japanese ship in World War II and received his service’s highest decoration, the Navy Cross, took over as chief of the Air and Space Museum in the wake of a controversy over its display of part of the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan.

Air and Space is one of 16 museums and galleries operated by the Smithsonian Institution, and is the most visited museum in the world.

Engen had been director of the museum in Washington since 1996. He also was administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration from 1984 to 1987, and earlier served for two years on the National Transportation Safety Board.

Engen retired from the Navy as a vice admiral in 1978. He also was a test pilot for many years and had served as general manager of Piper Aircraft Corp.

At the FAA, Engen levied a series of fines against airlines, including a $9.5-million penalty against Eastern Airlines for safety violations.

He also revised the way the FAA kept track of near-collision reports to make it more accurate. But critics said that under Engen, the FAA continued to react to safety issues instead of being on top of them.

Engen was born in Pomona on May 24, 1924. He was married with four children and lived in Arlington, Va.

Both Engen and Ivans, 79, were top officers in the Soaring Society of America.

Ivans, 79, was considered a soaring pioneer who had won top awards for high-altitude flights. He also was a former president of the International Gliding Commission, part of the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which in 1950 had awarded him the Lilienthal Medal--the top soaring award in the world.