Test pilot’s plane broke in flight

ATLANTA – The wreckage of famed test pilot Scott Crossfield’s single-engine plane indicates it broke apart during a severe thunderstorm, according to a National Transportation Safety Board report.

Crossfield, who in the early 1950s was the first person to fly at twice the speed of sound, died April 19 while en route from Prattville, Ala., to his home in Manassas, Va., in his Cessna 210A.

The 84-year-old pilot was the only person aboard when the plane crashed into mountainous terrain in northern Georgia.

The NTSB report, released Thursday, said Crossfield checked in with Atlanta air traffic controllers and shortly after 11 a.m. and asked to turn to the south because of bad storms in the region.

Radar contact was lost at 11:10 a.m. when the plane was at 5,500 feet, just after it entered a Level 6 thunderstorm, the most severe type, the report said.

According to the report, debris from the aircraft was found in two areas about a mile apart.

“The wreckage distribution was consistent with a low-altitude in-flight breakup,” the report said.