Video: 'EDWARD KENNEDY CRASH - NO SOUND'

(Friday, June 19, 1964, shortly after 11:00 p.m. EDT) — U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the 32-year-old younger brothers of the late President John F. Kennedy — assassinated just seven months ago — and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was badly injured tonight when the private Aero Commander 680 airplane he was flying in crashed into an apple orchard in the western Massachusetts town of Southampton on the final approach to the Barnes Municipal Airport in Westfield.

The pilot and Edward Moss, one of Kennedy’s aides, were killed.

Video: 'Senator Edward Kennedy In Air Crash (1964)'

Kennedy — on his way from Washington to the Massachusetts Democratic Convention in West Springfield — was pulled from the wreckage by fellow U.S. Senator Birch Bayh, and spent months in hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding.

He suffered chronic back pain for the rest of his life.

Video: '1964: Sen. Kennedy's plane crash in Southampton'

Kennedy took advantage of his long convalescence to meet with academics and study issues more closely, and the hospital experience triggered his lifelong interest in the provision of health care.

His wife Joan did the campaigning for him in the regular 1964 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, and he defeated his Republican opponent by a three-to-one margin.