minutes into the flight at an altitude of about 100 feet (30 m), a propeller split and shattered, sending the Flyer out of control. Selfridge suffered a fractured skull in the crash and died that evening in the nearby Army hospital, becoming the first person to die in an aeroplane crash. Orville was also seriously injured. Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps The American military pioneered naval aviation, with the first take-off from a ship being made on 14 November 1910 by Eugene Ely using a Curtiss biplane flown from a temporary platform erected over the bow of the light cruiser USS Birmingham. Two months later, on 18 January 1911, Ely landed on a platform on the armoured cruiser USS Pennsylvania. The earliest recorded use of explosive ordnance of any type from an aircraft occurred on November 1, 1911, when Italian pilot Giulio Gavotti dropped several, grapefruit-sized cipelli grenades on Ottoman positions in Libya – Gavotti's raid caused no casualties, functionally only resulting in the earliest known case of air-delivered harassing fire—but marked the first known use of an aircraft for military combat purposes. The first actual use of aircraft in a war was carried out by Italy during the Italo-Turkish War of 1912, where aircraft were used for reconnaissance (including taking aerial photographs of enemy positions) and bombing. Aircraft were also used in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. See also Notes References 20th-century aviation