Unsettling May Have Occurred: Occasionally Uncomfortable Obscure True Stories from Human History

by Damn Interesting Editors, The

  As Calloway trained the gun on Sanders, Peterson lunged from the side and grabbed the spear that protruded from the end of the gun. He yanked it to point it away from his crew mates.

  "I'm gonna kill you!" Calloway shouted, "Hey, hey! I'll kill ya!" Sanders seized the opportunity to grapple their attacker. The flight crew now had the advantage of numbers, but Calloway had the advantages of weapons, martial arts expertise, and an unbruised brain.

  Hearing the telltale grunts of violent reciprocation, Tucker pulled back on his flight yoke and put the plane into a sharp climb. The FedEx co-pilot had once been a combat flight instructor, and he was intimately familiar with the effects of g-forces. His tactic succeeded in throwing Calloway off balance and back into the galley. Sanders and Peterson stumbled in pursuit. With waning strength the men attempted to wrestle the weapon from Calloway, but they were locked in an apparent stalemate. Without intervention, the crew was likely to lose the fight due to attrition.

  Jim Tucker, hearing that the struggle was still underway, leveled out the airplane's climb and cranked the flight yoke hard to the left to roll the plane onto its side. The female voice of the DC-10's autowarning system began to chant "bank angle" to warn the crew that their maneuver was outside of normal operating parameters. The skirmish in the rear tumbled over to the left side of the aircraft.

  "Get him, get him, get him, Andy," Tucker shouted from the cockpit. "I got the airplane!" He continued to roll the plane until it was almost entirely upside-down. In the galley, the bloodied mass of men fell down onto the ceiling. Calloway managed to regain a grasp on one of his hammers that was rattling around the galley like a loose coin in a clothes dryer, and he freed one arm long enough to land another skull-cracking blow to Captain Sanders' head.

  Jim Tucker, continuing his tactical application of inertia, pulled back on the yoke to send the belly-up DC-10 into a steep upside-down dive. Calloway, Sanders, and Peterson were forced against the back wall. The DC-10 airspeed indicator pegged at maximum as the cockpit filled with the sounds of roaring wind, the urgent "overspeed" chant of the autowarning system, and the groans of flight surfaces which were not designed to withstand such punishment. The plane was traveling at more than 600 miles per hour, well above the safe maximum speed of the airframe. Much to his alarm, Tucker was rapidly losing all feeling and motor control on the right side of his body. He decreased the throttle--which had been at full power since takeoff--and began the process of pulling out of the dive and correcting the inverted aircraft.

  In the galley, the situation was deteriorating. Sanders took yet another hammer blow to the top of his head, and he nearly blacked out. Peterson's compromised temporal artery left him with a dangerous deficit of blood and strength. Having returned the DC-10 to level flight, Jim Tucker called in the emergency.

  Tucker to Center: Center, Center, emergency!

  Center: Aircraft with emergency, go ahead. (Pause) Aircraft with emergency, say again.

  Tucker to Center: Center listen to me! Express 705, I've been wounded, we've had an attempted takeover on board the airplane, give me a vector please, back to Memphis at this time, hurry!

  Center: Express 705 fly in zero niner five, direct Memphis.

  Tucker to Center: Keep me advised, where is Memphis?

  Center: Express 705, flighting of zero niner zero and the airport is at 43 miles twelve o'clock.

  Tucker to Center: Say my direction to Memphis.

  Center: Express 705, you're eastbound at this time, and it'll be about twelve thirty, one o'clock.

  Tucker to Center: Look, just keep talking to me, okay?

  Sanders: JIM!

  Tucker to Center: Yeah, we need an ambulance and we need, uh, armed intervention as well. Alert the airport facility.

  Following instructions from Memphis tower, Tucker began to descend below 10,000 feet as a precaution against explosive decompression. Meanwhile, in the galley, Calloway had found his second wind and renewed his resistance. Sanders and Peterson were running low on blood pressure and useful consciousness. "Put it on autopilot!" Peterson shouted to Tucker from the galley. "Help, the son of a bitch is biting me!"

  "Andy!" Tucker shouted from the co-pilot seat. "Keep him back there guys, I'm flying!" He rolled the plane hard to the left then back to the right in an attempt to keep Calloway off balance.

  "Hurry up, Jim!" Peterson urged as Sanders got a firm grip on a framing hammer and gave Calloway a brief brow-beating.

  "Put it on autopilot and come back here!" Sanders seconded. "Hurry, Jim! COME BACK HERE NOW!"

  Jim Tucker engaged the autopilot, unbuckled his seatbelt, and struggled from his seat despite nearly complete paralysis in his right limbs. As the radio squawked with urgent requests for a response from Air Traffic Control, Jim Tucker stumbled into the galley to see a barely conscious Andy Peterson lying atop the hijacker as Captain Sanders held the barbed spear to Calloway's throat. Blood was smeared and spattered upon every visible surface, and dislodged detritus littered the room.

  Jim Tucker relieved his captain from guard duty, and Pilot Sanders returned to the cockpit. Via radio, Sanders reiterated the need for security upon their arrival. When asked if the situation was under control, he responded, "Well, it's sort of under control." He had suffered considerable blood loss from several head wounds, he was blind in one eye, and his right ear was nearly severed. And his glasses seemed to have gone missing.

  Sanders adjusted course to head back to Memphis. The plane was still nearly full of fuel, putting it well over the recommended safe landing weight, but the veteran pilot had little choice. He selected the longest available runway to allow maximum stopping distance.

  A few minutes outside of Memphis, as the plane descended, Calloway suddenly lashed out again with renewed vigor. He dragged his handicapped captors across the galley as they struggled to regain the upper hand. Using his thumbs, Calloway attempted to gouge Jim Tucker's eye out. Andy Peterson finally found purchase on a hammer handle from the floor and made eye contact with co-pilot Tucker.

  "You've got to hit him," Tucker said. Peterson hit him.

  Flight 705 landed heavily on Memphis runway 36 about half an hour after their original departure. Despite the excess fuel weight Captain Sanders managed to stop the DC-10 with no blown tires and a few hundred meters of tarmac to spare. As emergency vehicles converged on the parked plane, Sanders emerged from the little room in the front of the plane where the pilots sit and opened the emergency escape chute.

  Paramedic David Teague was the first to clamber up the ladder into Flight 705's open doorway. No one on the ground knew anything about the emergency beyond the fact that there had been an attempted takeover. The scene that met the paramedic atop the ladder was strange and gruesome. Every horizontal and vertical interior surface of the DC-10's small galley was spattered with crimson. There were bloody footprints on the walls and ceiling, and the upholstery had somehow been peeled entirely from the jump seat. Papers, packages, hammers, and brutalized FedEx employees were scattered around the plane. David Teague handcuffed the tenderized would-be hijacker, and the semiconscious crew disembarked via the inflatable escape slide.

  At the hospital, Captain Sanders' dangling ear was stitched back into proper position, and he was treated for multiple lacerations to his head and a dislocated jaw. Flight engineer Peterson's skull had multiple fractures and his temporal artery had to be repaired. Co-pilot Tucker suffered severe skull fractures, including a hole larger than a golf ball. He would require months of physical therapy to regain full motor control in his right arm and leg, and a lifetime of anti-seizure medication. He was also partially blinded in his gouged eye. As for Calloway, his injuries were less severe, but his original fear was realized: FedEx elected to terminate his employment.

  An FBI search of Auburn Calloway's apartment turned up a suspiciously fresh Last Will and Testament lying on his bed--a dead giveaway. They also found a note listing the names of the flight 705 flight crew, and another note listing the weapons he had b
rought with him on the plane. At Auburn Calloway's trial the defense pleaded temporary insanity. The judge did not agree, and he told them so. After the defense failed to impress the court with other arguments regarding technicalities, a petit jury convicted Calloway of attempted aircraft piracy and sentenced him to life in prison with no possibility of parole. He is presently jailed in a federal prison near Atwater, California. For a while he maintained his innocence via www.auburncallowaysupport.com, but the site is no longer online. Near the top of the page it proclaimed in an enlarged typeface: "When justice fails and hope grows cold / though it may not outwardly show / bitterness simmers in the soul / and hate begins to grow."

  On 26 May 1994 the crew of flight 705 was honored with the Air Line Pilots Association's Gold Medal Award. The organization recognized the men's heroism in withstanding the surprise bludgeoning, overpowering an armed martial arts expert, and saving the lives and property that would have been destroyed if the plane had crashed. Sadly, due to their injuries none of the men are medically fit for commercial piloting anymore. However David Sanders and Jim Tucker successfully acquired private pilots' licenses and enjoy recreational flight from time to time.

  In total, Auburn Calloway's attempted hijack/suicide cost FedEx an estimated $800,000. The aircraft involved in the incident was repaired, and it still flies in the FedEx fleet as of 2011. It has been upgraded from a DC-10 to an MD-10; a revised model which eliminates the need for a flight engineer.

  Considering his apparently selfless concern for his children's futures, Auburn Calloway's actions almost seem to have a tiny nucleus of noble intentions, yet his actions were clearly misguided. Additionally, he demonstrated cunning in his use of blunt instruments to simulate crash trauma, yet he left an orgy of damning evidence in his home. One wonders whether his mind was dulled with madness, or if perhaps he wanted the world to know what he had done once it was all over. Chances are we'll never know exactly what was going through Calloway's head before he boarded flight 705.

  Originally published 05 January 2012

  http://dam.mn/aches-on-a-plane/

  Half Science and Hafnium Bombs (1998 AD)

  In the latter half of 1998, a small clutch of researchers and students at the University of Texas embarked upon a groundbreaking experiment. Within a large outbuilding marked with a slapdash sign reading "Center for Quantum Electronics", the team powered up a makeshift x-ray emitter and directed its radiation beam at an overturned disposable coffee cup. Atop the improvised styrofoam platform was a tiny smear of one of the most expensive materials on Earth: a variation of the chemical element hafnium known as Hf-178-m2.

  The researchers' contraption-- cobbled together from a scavenged dental x-ray machine and an audio amplifier-- bombarded the sample with radiation for several days as monitoring equipment quietly collected data. When the experiment ended and the measurements were scrutinized, the project leader Dr. Carl B. Collins declared unambiguous success. If his conclusions are accurate, Collins and his colleagues may have found the key to developing fist-sized bombs which can deliver destruction equivalent to a dozen tons of conventional explosives. Despite considerable skepticism from the scientific community, the US Department of Defense has since spent millions of dollars probing the physicist's findings.

  Hafnium-178-m2 is a nuclear isomer-- an atomic state where the particles of the nucleus are "excited" by higher than normal amounts of energy. Most such isomers are unstable and extremely short-lived, instantly ejecting their excess energy as gamma radiation in order to return to the ground state. But a handful of varieties such as hafnium-178-m2 have a constitution which prevents this release from occurring immediately, which places them in the category of nearly-stable.

  This interesting property causes nearly-stable isomers to act as "energy sponges", allowing them to absorb a massive amount of energy which bleeds out very slowly. Hafnium-178-m2 has a half-life of thirty-one years, meaning that it takes a little over three decades for half of the isomer's stored energy to be emitted as gamma rays. Hafnium is also notable for having the highest excitation energy among the nearly-stable isomers; half a teaspoon of pure Hf-178-m2 contains about the same amount of potential energy as one ton of TNT.

  The purpose of Dr. Collins' experiment was to explore the possibility of wringing all of the energy from these isomers on demand. He theorized that properly applied x-rays might prompt the nuclei to dump all of their energy at in a short amount of time, a process referred to as induced gamma emission (IGE). To test this theory a few of Collins' enterprising students procured a second-hand dental x-ray machine, married it to a commercial-grade stereo amplifier, and trained the radiation-emitting apparatus upon a precious smudge of hafnium-178-m2 for several weeks. Dr. Collins then digested the data and logged his conclusions.

  According to the paper Collins published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters, his experiment successfully "triggered" the hafnium isomers into an enhanced decay rate. His sensitive instrumentation had apparently registered a small yet unmistakable increase in gamma ray levels during the test. The implications were clear: if one can accelerate the energy release rate of an isomer to a small degree, it follows that there is probably some set of conditions where the atoms can be coaxed to belch all of their energy very rapidly.

  Dr. Collins' credibility was soon battered by a storm of skepticism and ridicule. Many scientists were uncomfortable with his outlandish claims and his experiment's large margin for error. Indeed, his findings were somewhat at odds with the laws of physics given that nuclei are thought to be practically unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. However a small minority of researchers were moved to curiosity by the unorthodox idea, prompting a series of independent efforts to reproduce the findings.

  The concept also piqued the Pentagon's interest. Since an isomer bomb would represent a new class of non-fission weapons, it would neatly circumvent the limitations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968. Furthermore, a working hafnium device would tend to deluge its target area with absurd amounts of penetrating gamma radiation during the explosion, liquefying the flesh of any persons nearby-- even those protected by bunkers. But the most appealing aspect of isomer triggering was its potential to shoehorn yet more death and destruction into convenient "fun size" packages.

  Sometime in the late 1990s a rash of "I believe in isomers" buttons began to appear on defense department lapels. Peter Zimmerman-- the chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency at the time-- had been exposed to absurd notions of isomer triggering while earning his PhD in nuclear physics, so he was reluctant to dignify the farfetched idea with funding. But it was his responsibility to ensure that the US stayed abreast of emerging technologies. To address his dilemma, Zimmerman opted to consult "the Jasons." Named for the mythical hero of ancient Greek fame, the Jason Defense Advisory Group was established in 1960 to advise the government in matters of scientific controversy. The panel consists of physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists who are hand-picked by existing members from among the nation's best and brightest.

  After a very brief investigation, Jason's assessment of the isomer triggering efforts was far from favorable. The circumspect group of elite scientists concluded that the x-ray experiment had not successfully demonstrated an enhanced decay rate. In addition, the Jasons determined that a successful triggering event would not start the necessary chain reaction due to energy dissipation. Isomer enthusiasm was further diluted by the observation that such weapons would require bulky shielding to protect handlers from the be extreme radioactivity of hafnium.

  Even as Collins continued to report success in his experiments, physicists at the Argonne National Laboratory employed their own powerful x-ray emitter in an attempt to squeeze the stored energy from a dab of hafnium-178-m2. During the test the fourteen Department of Energy scientists detected no increase in gamma radiation, a failure which Dr. Collins blamed on their x-ray emitter's energy l
evel. Though skeptical, the Argonne scientists repeated the experiment within the designated parameters, yet once again their tests yielded nothing. The steadfast Collins again ascribed the problem to experimental minutia.

  In spite of the Jason findings and the Argonne results, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) poured millions of dollars into various hafnium experiments amidst rumors that foreign governments were conducting their own isomer weapon research. The Pentagon's Military Control Technology List even described hafnium-178-m2 as having the potential to "revolutionize all aspects of warfare." But their Stimulated Isomer Energy Release experiments found that even under the best of circumstances, the coveted isomers would cost approximately $1 million per gram assuming a minimum $30 billion investment in production facilities. The investigations also underscored the fact that radioactive hafnium would not be totally consumed even by a successful triggering-- so any such bomb would produce a profoundly "dirty" detonation by scattering radioactive material over the blast area.

  Even with all of the setbacks, the prospect of using induced gamma emission as a weapon has not fizzled altogether. A few subsequent experiments have indicated that hafnium triggering may actually be possible. An x-ray test at Louisiana State University appeared to corroborate Collins' results, and an independent team at DARPA called TRiggering Isomer Proof (TRIP) reported their experiment as "successful." Some non-bomb weapons concepts are also under investigation, including a device which could funnel the deadly gamma radiation into a coherent death ray: a gamma-ray laser. Nonetheless, DARPA cut much of its future funding for hafnium-baked weapons research in 2004 due to lack of confidence in the technology.