TNT History Archives: First Ottoman Fliers Crashed En Route to Egypt (1914)

türkçe links to original Turkish article by Prof. Dr. Ural Akbulut

(Milliyet Newspaper, 8 February 2019)


                                  Captain Fethi Bey

Captain Fethi Bey, whose name was given to Fethiye, a district of
Muğla province, was Turkey's first pilot to die on duty.  Fethi Bey
attended the Bahriye Çarkçı Ameliyat Mektebi (Maritime Engineers
School) and graduated in 1908.  After duty as a first lieutenant in a
military factory and on the cruiser Hamidiye, he was sent to England
in 1912 to obtain training as an aircraft machinist.

While in England, Fethi Bey's pilot capabilities were noticed and he
was steered toward that profession.  But the outbreak of the Balkan
War cut short his pilot training and Fethi Bey returned to Istanbul for
pilot duty in the Ottoman army.  He became the first Turkish pilot in
war to drop bombs from an aircraft and conduct night-flights, for
which he received the Liyakat medal.

With the realization that air power was so militarily important, work
began to increase the number of aircraft.  One person who supported
this effort was a music teacher named Belkis Şevket Hanım.  She was
a member of the Ottoman Women's Rights Defense Association
founded in 1913.  The association collected donations to support the
acquisition of planes and Belkis Hanım flew together with Fethi Bey
over Istanbul on 2 December 1913, dropping cards with a plea for
donations to the ground below.


                             Fethi Bey and Belkis Hanım

Fethi Bey became a captain in 1914 and was assigned to pilot
one of two planes from Istanbul to Alexandria, Egypt, as a
morale boost for the public shaken by defeat in the Balkan War.
In addition, the government wanted to use the flights to prove
its ability to reach distant Ottoman provinces, as anti-Ottoman
sentiments began to grow in the Middle East.

On 8 February 1914, Fethi Bey took off from Istanbul in a Bleriot
aircraft and Lieutenant Nuri Bey piloted  a Deperdussin plane.
Fethi Bey was accompanied by navigator Sadık Bey and they
reached Damascus on 19 February, after making 7 landings en
route.  A week later, the two fliers headed for Jerusalem but
crashed on 27 February near Lake Teberiye (in today's Israel)
because of a broken wing spar, killing both of them.  The two
fliers were buried near the Emeviyye Mosque in Damascus.


 Map shows flight paths and the crash sites of each plane.


The other pilot, Lieutenant Nuri Bey, and his navigator Captain
İ. Hakkı Bey, continued on to Yafa from Damascus.  However,
on 11 March, their plane crashed in the sea after taking off from
Yafa, killing Nuri Bey.  Navigator İ Hakkı Bey was rescued.

To honor Fethi Bey's memory as Turkey's first pilot to die on
duty, on 26 March 1914, Ottoman Sultan Reshad gave the name
"Fethiye" to the town of Meğri, whose name came from Roman
times, on the Mediterranean coast of southwest Anatolia.  That
same year monuments were placed at the site where Fethi Bey's
plane crashed and in Istanbul.

In 2001, the Turkish Air Force and national broadcaster TRT
had copies of the two planes made in rememberance of the
lost fliers.  The planes took off on 15 May 2001 and flew the same
route all the way to Alexandria.  TRT produced a related documentary
and a monument was dedicated in Fethiye in 2004.


Fethiye is in the far lower-right corner of the map.