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.