Leonard Warden Bonney
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Leonard Warden Bonney (December 4, 1884 – May 4, 1928) was a pioneering aviator with the Wright brothers.
He was born in Wellington, Ohio in 1884, possibly as Warden Leonard Bonney [1] He attended Oberlin College. In 1910 and 1911, he flew for Wright Exhibition Team and was the 47th licensed pilot. In 1912 he worked for the Sloan Airplane Company, and in 1913 he was a test pilot for test pilot for the Amas Airplane Company, in Washington, DC and by 1918 he was the general manager for the company. In 1914 and 1915 he was a military aviator for the Mexican government under General Carranza. During World War I he became an Army instructor at Garden City, New York, and a naval instructor at Smith's Point, New York. In 1925 he married Flora MacDonald. The same year started designing and constructing a novel plane with duraluminum folding gull-like wings, and a side-by-side cockpit. He called the plane the "Bonney Gull", and the manufacturing was in Garden City, New York. He was killed on the maiden flight of his aircraft in 1928.
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- ^ World War I draft registration as "Warden Leonard Bonney" with the 1884 date. Other sources use 1885.
- New York Times; May 5, 1928, Saturday; Curtiss Field, Long Island, May 4, 1928. Leonard W. Bonney, pioneer aviator who learned to fly under Orville S. Wright in 1910, was fatally injured this afternoon in the first flight he had ever made with his Gull.Template:Ohio-bio-stub
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