Jimmy Angel and the crash landing on top of the world's tallest waterfall

Jimmy Angel, a Missouri-born barnstormer, crash-landed his monoplane on top of a 3,000-foot mesa in the Venezuelan jungle in 1937 — and in doing so, brought the world’s tallest waterfall to international attention. The falls, plunging 3,212 feet from the lip of Auyán-tepui, now bear his name: Angel Falls.

Who Was Jimmy Angel?

Born in Springfield, Missouri, around 1902, Jimmy Angel learned to fly during the barnstorming era of the 1920s, cutting his teeth on Curtiss Jennys at county fairs. He was a skilled pilot, but restless — five-dollar joyrides over farmland weren’t going to hold him for long.

Sometime in the late 1920s (the exact year remains disputed), Angel claims a prospector named McCracken hired him to fly deep into Venezuela’s Gran Sabana region. The landscape there is surreal: flat-topped mountains called tepuis rise straight out of the jungle, with sheer cliff faces exceeding 3,000 feet and their own isolated weather systems. According to Angel, McCracken led him to a river on top of one of these tepuis, where they scooped 75 pounds of gold from the streambed.

Whether the gold expedition happened exactly as Angel described it is uncertain — McCracken died, and Angel could never relocate the river. But the experience hooked him on the tepuis, and on one mountain in particular.

What Is Auyán-tepui?

The Pemón people called it Auyán-tepui — Devil Mountain in their language. Hanging off its side was a ribbon of white water falling so far that most of it vaporized into mist before reaching the ground.

Angel first spotted the waterfall from the air and became obsessed. He told anyone who would listen: a waterfall taller than anything ever measured, dropping 3,212 feet from lip to base — more than half a mile straight down. For comparison, Niagara Falls stands roughly 167 feet tall. Angel’s waterfall was nearly twenty times higher.

Nobody in the outside world believed him.

The Crash Landing on Top of Devil Mountain

Angel spent years flying across Venezuela — for mining companies, oil operations, even revolutionaries — crashing airplanes at a rate that would end most careers. But he kept returning to Auyán-tepui, making flyovers and taking photographs, refining a plan that was equal parts brilliant and reckless: he would land on top of the tepui.

On November 18, 1937, Angel loaded his Flamingo monoplane, a high-wing metal aircraft registered as El Río Caroní, with three passengers: his wife Marie, his friend Gustavo Heny, and Heny’s gardener, Miguel Delgado. Four people in one small airplane, aimed at the summit of Devil Mountain.

They identified a marshy area on top that appeared flat enough for a landing. Angel brought the Flamingo in. The wheels touched what looked like solid ground — and sank straight through. The tepui’s surface was a thin crust over deep bog. The aircraft nosed over, the landing gear collapsed, and the propeller bent backward. They were stranded on a 3,000-foot mesa in the middle of the Venezuelan jungle, with no working radio and no possibility of rescue.

Marie Angel was wearing heels.

Eleven Days to Survival

They spent the first night beside the wrecked airplane. The next morning, they started walking. It took eleven days to climb down the sheer sides of Auyán-tepui and hack through dense jungle to the nearest Pemón settlement. They endured rain, leeches, snakes, and terrain that challenged every step. Marie completed the entire descent — in those heels, at least until they disintegrated.

When the group finally reached a Pemón village, word of their ordeal spread, and with it, the story of the waterfall.

How Angel Falls Got Its Name

The crash landing turned Jimmy Angel’s unbelievable claim into front-page news. Explorers and journalists took notice. In 1949, American journalist Ruth Robertson led the first expedition to the base of the falls, confirmed the measurements, and the name became official: Angel Falls — Salto Ángel — the tallest waterfall on Earth, named after the barnstormer who crashed on top of it.

What Happened to the Airplane?

El Río Caroní sat on the summit of Auyán-tepui for 33 years, rusting in the wind and rain on the roof of the world. In 1970, the Venezuelan Air Force removed it by helicopter. The aircraft was restored and is now displayed at the Aviation Museum in Maracay, Venezuela, where visitors can walk up and touch the same fuselage Angel flew into the clouds.

Jimmy Angel’s Final Years

Angel died in 1956 following a landing accident in Panama that left him with injuries from which he never fully recovered. He was approximately 53 years old. His ashes were scattered over Angel Falls — the mountain he spent his life trying to return to became his final resting place.

In 2009, the Venezuelan government officially renamed the falls Kerepakupai Merú, honoring the indigenous Pemón name meaning “waterfall of the deepest place.” The Pemón knew about these falls long before Angel ever pointed a Flamingo at them. But in aviation circles, they remain Angel Falls — because the story was never really about the water. It was about a pilot who saw something impossible, couldn’t convince anyone it was real, and decided the only way to prove it was to land on top of it.

Key Takeaways

• Jimmy Angel crash-landed on Auyán-tepui on November 18, 1937, stranding four people on a jungle mesa for eleven days
• Angel Falls drops 3,212 feet, making it the world’s tallest waterfall — nearly twenty times the height of Niagara Falls
• The aircraft, El Río Caroní, remained on the tepui for 33 years before being airlifted by the Venezuelan Air Force and restored for museum display
• Ruth Robertson’s 1949 expedition provided the first confirmed measurements of the falls from the ground
• The falls were officially renamed Kerepakupai Merú in 2009, though the name Angel Falls persists internationally