by D. W. Carter
Two and a half miles away, at 13th and Waco Street, twelve-year-old Barbara Frederickson was sitting in class at Holy Savior Catholic Church when the children dashed toward the window, frightened by an awful roar outside. “I saw smoke trailing from the rear,” said Barbara, “then the plane dropped out of sight. I saw a bright glare that hurt my eyes.”51
Nearly a mile and a half away, a shopkeeper working at 21st and Market Street recalled the front door to his business being swiftly blown open with a gust of wind and his walls shuddering from a quick vibration.
Ruby Brown, who lived five blocks from the crash site, said she was awakened by a high-pitched “whistling and spitting” that sounded like a monster outside of her bedroom window. “It was just like an earthquake. The floor trembled beneath me. I’ve been in an earthquake before,” said Ruby, “and that’s just what it felt like.” Ruby ran to her front door and discovered that “everything was all black as if somebody had blotted out the sun. The smoke had an awful smell, and it began to choke me, so I closed the door and watched from my window.”52 Just beyond the wall of smoke and fire, her neighbors were fighting for their lives.
Two blocks away, ten-year-old Victor Daniels was stirred by a terrible rumble overhead and the ground shaking violently. Running toward Piatt Street to find out what happened, he encountered chaos, panic and grisly images—Victor’s father, grandmother and three cousins were inside of 2037 North Piatt, now consumed with implacable fire.53
Mildred Hill was working in her small carryout restaurant a block and a half away from the impact point. A thick, steel door located at the back of her business was thrust wide open by the vehement force of Raggy 42’s collision. “I had a kitchen knife stuck in the door by the lock to help hold it shut. It snapped that kitchen knife in two like it was a matchstick,” said Mildred. The heat wave that followed felt “just like you were standing right up against a hot stove…I had to hold the door shut to keep it out or I wouldn’t have been able to stand it,” she remembered.54
Aerial view of Piatt Street burning. Kansas Firefighters’ Museum.
One block southwest of the impact point, at 1950 North Minnesota, Mrs. Edward Johnson was drinking her morning coffee in her kitchen when a three-foot-long slab of metal from Raggy 42 pierced the roof, nearly decapitating her.55 One of the wings from Raggy 42 sheared off and cut the Allens’ residence at 2065 North Piatt in two—slicing through the front room and bedroom but, amazingly, leaving the occupants unharmed.56
A sixteen-year-old boy, Stu Markey, working as a carryout only yards away at Razook’s supermarket, described the terrifying scene he witnessed while putting groceries into a car:
I was walking back to the store when I happened to look up. I didn’t hear anything, but I saw this huge plane barely above the rooftop. The plane was banking to the left, and smoke was pouring out of the midsection. I looked at it again and dived behind a car. The concussion was so strong it rocked the car. When I looked up again, it seemed as if the whole ground was on fire with flames shooting higher than I’ve ever seen. I ran back to the store.57
Some thought it was an earthquake; others thought there was an explosion at the Derby Oil Refinery nearby. Many witnesses remembered hearing what sounded like a tornado just before the impact.58 The heat wave and concussion from the fallen tanker were far-reaching. Window glass on cars and houses instantly shattered for several blocks. The large display windows at Razook’s supermarket burst almost immediately.59 Automobiles were flipped upside down like pancakes, trees were uprooted and straightaway torched, lampposts became twisted metal wires and houses were violently pockmarked by flaming debris hurled from the wreckage. Homes once full with furniture and people were now scattered. “Stoves, refrigerators, hot water tanks, and even the bathing facilities…the bath tub, shower stalls and toilet stools, were completely blown clear out in the backyard,” recalled witnesses.60
Fragments from the tanker shot out like missiles, ripping through walls and ceilings, while the shockwave carried by the explosion hurled residents from their beds and across their living rooms. As Cora Belle Williams at 2048 North Piatt remembered, “The explosion picked my chair up off the floor, tumbled me out of it and threw me across the floor.” The window she had been peacefully gazing out of only seconds earlier was now in pieces. “I grabbed my daughter and ran out the back door, I tried to get into the front yard, but the heat was too much,” said Williams.61
Ola M. Sanders, who was relaxing inside her home at 1627 North Ohio when the crash occurred, described the frightful morning:
We were indoors, watching television, drinking coffee. All of a sudden there was a “whomp!” and the windows and doors bowed in and out, like they’d sucked in a deep breath and let it out. We ran outside to look, and to the north, we could see this huge cloud rising. We thought the Russians had dropped a bomb on us…we saw all the people standing around and the houses on fire. It was like everybody was in a state of shock, just standing there.62
Death and destruction claimed Piatt Street that morning. Few made it out alive. At 204 South Main Street, above Wichita’s original 1892 City Hall Building, the lofty clock tower read the time: 9:31 a.m. Four minutes had passed since Raggy 42 departed the McConnell runway.
4
FIRE ALL AROUND
Scorched and flaming, fateful jet,
While upon a homeward flight;
Lost control, nosedived into the earth;
Leaving fuel clouds black as night!
—Ellen Anderson, 196563
What many thought to be an earthquake or massive bomb exploding was in fact the earsplitting crash of Raggy 42 smashing nose-first into the area of 20th and Piatt. The plane buried itself fifteen feet—the height of an average one-story home—into the ground, leaving an enormous impact crater similar to that of a meteor strike. Over “300,000 pounds of steel, fuel and flesh” spiraled down all at once with tremendous force.64 It crashed so quickly that most felt only the impact and then saw an eruption of red flames bursting in all directions. The thick steel structure of Raggy 42 crumpled like tin foil as it cut into the city street. The booming sound of oxygen tanks, pressure tanks and hydraulic lines exploding caused many to think ammunition had been aboard the aircraft (a rumor the air force would later dispel).
The worst part, however, was the fifty tons of jet fuel that erupted into a five-hundred-foot-high fireball, permeating the tiny homes on Piatt Street. Ten-year-old Sharon Johnson, who lived a half a mile away at 1842 North Pennsylvania, remembered seeing the gigantic fireball as she looked out her kitchen window. Watching the plane smash into the ground and then ignite into a monstrous inferno—covering nearly five acres—was too overwhelming for the young child. She fainted.65
Delwood Coles, thirty-four years old, had just climbed into his car at 2047 North Piatt to pick up a friend. But as he leaned forward in his front seat to turn the ignition, the KC-135 hit. The torrid jet fuel incinerated Delwood in his vehicle so rapidly that he was unable to react—a situation reminiscent of Pompeii in AD 79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted, scorching unprepared victims in place and leaving their bodies frozen in ash. Delwood was later found by firemen, in mid-turn of the key, his skeleton still leaning forward within the burned-out car frame.66
Clarence Walker, fifty-five years old, was preparing to take a bath inside his home at 2101 North Piatt when his living room exploded with fire. His wife screamed in terror as their television, pictures, furniture and family heirlooms melted beneath the scathing heat. They staggered about, frantically looking for a way out of what had suddenly become a death trap. Clarence darted back into the bathroom, trying to escape through the window, but found it sealed shut. “[T]hen the oxygen got so low I couldn’t breathe,” he remembered, “and I got down on my hips in the bathtub and said, ‘Lord, here I am. I’m ready to go!’” Much to his surprise, Clarence was given another chance:
Then a vision came to me and said, “You’ve got a few more seconds,” then I saw the clothes hamper in the
bathroom and I got up and rammed it through the bathroom window, and I followed immediately out the window.67
Cut severely by shards of glass as he leapt out the window naked, Clarence landed in a puddle of flaming jet fuel while his wife escaped on the other side of the house through the blown-out back door. Their entire backyard “was boiling in fire,” and the engulfed home collapsed seconds later as they desperately ran from the sea of flames.68 Twenty-two-year-old James Glover, asleep in the front bedroom, never made it out. “He was completely demolished,” said Clarence. “I don’t think he had ever got up considering the way they say they brought him out.”69 His remains were later found, still in his bed.
Robert Jackson, only twelve years old at the time, was walking to the grocery store just before the plane hit. Attempting to outrun the tanker bearing down on him, he quickly found himself rolling in the dirt to smother the flames that were melting his thin jacket onto his skin.70 “I ran and ran and ran,” said Robert, “and the plane came lower and lower and the engine got louder and louder.” Hospital officials at St. Francis stated, “But for the synthetic fiber jacket, he would have received severe burns on his back.”71 Robert, although in the vicinity of the plane when it fell, had miraculously survived the crash. He was the exception.
The merciless hellfire scorched everything in its path—houses, cars, trees, front lawns, pets and human beings. No one was safe, and no one in the immediate area of the gushing jet fuel was spared. It was, as one reporter noted, “like a small Hiroshima,” with carnage, fire and smoke everywhere you looked.72 The impact of the crash imploded windows in homes, allowing the flaming jet fuel to creep inside and burn the occupants to death. “We could hear our neighbors screaming,” a survivor said. “[M]ost of them were still asleep or just eating breakfast.”73 A horrid lake of fire raged on as awful moans of agony shot out from those trapped inside the blue and orange flames. “No one tried to save any of the trapped,” claimed a reporter first arriving on scene. “It was too late. Most of the homes had been flattened and all were burning.”74
The small number that attempted rescues, such as the Reverend J. E. Mason, encountered ghastly sights. Mason ran through the thick smoke on Piatt Street trying to hustle disoriented neighbors out of the area. “I went into one house,” he told reporters, “and saw a 5-year-old boy burn to death with his hands up in the air. There was nothing I could do at that house.” As people were “crying and struggling to get into the burning houses for their relatives,” Mason grabbed several hysterical victims and kept them from the futility and probable self-demise of entering the ferocious blaze.75
Entire families were swallowed up by the inferno (the Daniels, the Warmsleys, the Boldens, the Maloys), children were burned alive in their beds and others were incinerated trying to escape in their cars. The screams of men like Joe Martin, who lived at 2031 North Piatt, could be heard among the panic and chaos: “My boys in there! My boys in there!…Oh, my Lord, oh my Lord, both my boys burned up.”76 Joe was seen staggering about the neighborhood in a daze wearing only an unbuttoned shirt—the loss of his sons too great to comprehend.77 Ellison W. Brown, an airman stationed at McConnell, was later found sobbing amidst the wreckage of what was once his friend Albert Bolden’s home. Albert was to have been Ellison’s best man at his wedding. The charred ruins and fumes of smoke were all that remained. Albert and Wilma Bolden, along with their nine-month-old daughter, Leslie, all perished inside.78
Some, too, would never forget the morbid sight of children on fire in their front yards like “stick[s] of wood.”79 The most accurate description came from a reporter a month later, who described the area of impact as looking like a “[t]ornado pushing fire ahead of it had passed through.”80 Destruction of this kind had never been seen before in Kansas.
For Sonya House—not yet thirty years old—who saw the plane crash sixty-seven feet away in front of her living room window, the sight was indescribable, too awful for words. Sonya recalled, “I didn’t know what happened…It was burning like hell, and that’s what I thought it was. That’s all I could see was fire.”81 Her father, Robert, was violently thrown against the doorframe by the explosion as he desperately raced inside to help gather his family. Fortunately for some, the fire was so concentrated in the area of 20th and Piatt that it either killed the residents instantly or left them unharmed.
Piatt Street engulfed in flames. Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.
As Sonya rushed out onto her front porch, she saw what looked like a warzone. “The fire was everywhere, and it was rolling down the street. It looked to me like everything in the world was on fire,” she recalled.82 A wall of flames the size of a city block burned hundreds of feet high as frantic residents scattered in all directions. “It was burning up the grass under our feet as we ran,” survivors remembered.83 A lake of fire was all around. Some witnesses, like Bill Friesen, a civil defense director at the time, described the scene as “rivers of fire…running from curb to curb,” with flames gushing like a “volcano” and “running down [gutters] to 13th Street.”84
Fourteen homes were burning in a three-block radius, and sixty-eight others were riddled with damage. Thirty automobiles and countless personal possessions—everything that a person would acquire in life—were now gone.85 The greatest loss, however, was that of human life. Nearly half of those killed on the ground were children under the age of twelve. Hundreds of onlookers stood “motionless, their eyes fastened on the blazing wreckage of homes,” while others sobbed, gazing in shock.86
As the piercing sirens of fire trucks and police cars drew closer, the horrors—concealed just beyond the thick, black smoke—would soon be discovered by those heading into the tempest of flames.
5
GOING INTO HELL
…[I]t should have been titled “Twenty-five Minutes of Hell for Wichita Firefighters” because, gentlemen, that is exactly what it was.
—Tom McGaughey, Wichita Fire Chief, 196587
For rescue workers entering the fray, the horrors came in three: the smell, a pungently noxious stench of burning flesh and debris mixed with jet fuel; the sound, piercing sirens and a crescendo of agonizing screams and cries for help within the flames; and, most dreadful, the sight, the charred bodies of human remains, the fire-engulfed homes and the weary, tearful faces of helpless onlookers. The Piatt Street crash tortured the senses, as well as the memories, of all who encountered its fury.
The video footage captured by KAKE News shortly after the fire contained vivid scenes of panic and bewilderment. Ghostly images of firemen, their faces smeared with black soot and fatigue, emerged from smoldering wreckage carrying out lifeless bodies. Cars were burned down to their frames, leaving nothing but seething shells. Pools of thick, green jet fuel were scattered here and there. Flame-gutted houses were rubble and ash. Stiff corpses—still smoking and simmering from the intense heat—lay beneath blankets in an open field, marked only by makeshift cardboard tags with the house number from which they were recovered. Victims staggered like disembodied zombies, their hands stretched out in front of them, feeling their way through the dense smoke and tripping over debris, airplane parts and bodies as they went. Just a few steps from the impact point, a tattered officer’s garrison cap with lieutenant bars—a gruesome reminder of the airmen—was found beneath the scorched remains of a tree.88 For those directly touched by the disaster, it was as close to hell as one could come on earth.
Rescue workers search the remains of a home, looking for victims. 22nd ARW History Office.
Firefighters search through burning wreckage for victims. Larry Hatteberg, KAKE TV.
CHIEF MCGAUGHEY
Wichita Fire Chief Tom McGaughey. Kansas Firefighters’ Museum.
Fire Chief Tom McGaughey joined the WFD in 1933 and became its chief in 1960. He was described by those who knew him as a “fireman’s fireman,” “first-rate,” a man who not only led but also led by example.89 He pushed for pay increases for firemen, encouraged his men to pursue thei
r educations and meticulously studied firefighting techniques to better train firemen and save lives. A hardworking man like his father, he labored on railroads during the Great Depression for one dollar a day and was a part of the “Greatest Generation”—which persevered through drought, deprivation, crime and war. He suffered serious burns to his shoulders and back in 1936, when the roof at McClellan’s Store on East Douglass Street collapsed on him during a fire. He nearly drowned trying to save a victim at the bottom of Santé Fe Lake, east of Wichita, in 1937. By 1965, when he was well into his fifties, he was still charging into fires alongside the rookies; he was the first in and the last out.90 He had iron in his soul; his men adored him, and there was no question that he was in charge.
But Chief McGaughey’s greatest test was about to begin that Saturday morning. Unaware of the chaos the day would bring, he had intended to play golf with his friend, Deputy Fire Chief Bob Simpson. Realizing it was much too cold out, Chief McGaughey canceled his plans, choosing to stay home instead.91 The relaxing Saturday he envisioned never came. Speaking to a large audience at a Fire Department Instructors’ conference in Memphis, Tennessee, sometime after the crash, Chief McGaughey entitled his speech “Fire from the Sky Over Wichita,” but as he quickly explained to his audience, “Perhaps it should have been titled ‘Twenty-five Minutes of Hell for Wichita Firefighters’ because, gentlemen, that is exactly what it was.”92
That day, Wichitans would realize, if they hadn’t before, the true meaning of a firefighter as they watched dozens of Wichita’s finest hurl themselves into the flames to preserve life, limb and property. Sonya House put it bluntly, “I learned what a firefighter was. They were fighting the fire, and that fire was fighting them back.”93 Chief McGaughey—arriving nine minutes after the plane hit—described the pandemonium: