On July 7, 1946, she and her husband were in their house in Beverly
Hills, California, when an aircraft crashed into the roof of the house
next door, and its wing cut through the roof of her house and landed in
the bedroom, where she and her husband were. The plane, an experimental
model called the XF-11, had experienced mechanical problems after
taking off from the airport at nearby Culver City. It was piloted by
Howard Hughes, and finally came to rest after crashing through the wall of
the house of another of DeCamp's neighbors and exploding. Hughes was
rescued from the cockpit by a bystander and, although receiving several
broken bones, burns and gashes, was not severely injured and eventually
made a full recovery. He paid for the damage to the houses in the
neighborhood out of his own pocket.