by D. W. Carter
Firefighters carry a crash victim from the accident site. 22nd ARW History Office.
Firemen spray flaming wreckage. Larry Hatteberg, KAKE TV.
All hell broke loose when the plane exploded upon impact—scattering fuel mixed with mud like napalm bombs over homes as far away as two thousand feet with the force of the blast. The speed and weight of the aircraft sent one of the motors crashing through the asphalt concrete street and six feet of soil to rupture an eight-inch water main and a three-inch natural gas line at the bottom of a crater approximately ten feet in diameter.94
The firemen and emergency responders heading into the blaze, without question, faced a warzone.
DISASTER PLAN
When it was confirmed that the emergency responders had a catastrophe on their hands, on a scale never before seen in Wichita, the disaster plan went into effect. According to Chief McGaughey, the first company arrived at 9:32 a.m. and radioed back to the firehouse, “There’s a block and a half of houses burning; you had better make it a double.”95 The first alarm came in at 9:30 a.m., the second at 9:32 a.m. and the third at 9:38 a.m.—which alerted the off-duty firemen to respond as well. Chief McGaughey also called for all of the available ambulances and the coroner to head to the scene, while checking with dispatch to make sure the disaster plan was initiated.96
The initiation of the plan meant that all police and fire reserves were activated; the American Red Cross was notified; hospitals, ambulance crews and medical personnel were put on standby; second alarm companies were sent out; and the Heavy Rescue and Fire Reserve were alerted.97 The Boeing and McConnell Fire Departments were already rushing to the scene after they were notified of Raggy 42’s mayday call and saw the smoke billowing from northeast Wichita. Meanwhile, calls from frantic citizens began to light up the switchboard reporting the inferno.
Nearly two hundred homes were blacked out by power loss when the plane hit. Wichita firemen—a few blocks away at 17th and Grove Street—quickly discovered they were trapped inside Fire Station 10, the heavy garage doors immobilized by the power outage. They had to pull the pins on the giant doors and lift them manually just to get the engine out.98 Arriving in the area a few minutes later, they faced the lake of fire on Piatt Street caused by broken water mains and burning jet fuel floating on top. The blazing liquid extended for nine hundred feet in the immediate area, making it nearly impossible for the firemen to access homes. The debris of four houses, scattered across Piatt Street, further obstructed the path of the fire engines.
Firemen search rubble. Larry Hatteberg, KAKE TV.
Firefighters search through wreckage. Larry Hatteberg, KAKE TV.
To add to these obstacles, downed power lines electrified many of the wire fences surrounding backyards, shocking anyone who touched them. Firemen became “jumping jacks” as they straddled the fences and were jolted with electricity.99 Residents hastily retrieving their cars, sightseers and crowds blocked other ways of entry. Those left alive who were suffering from burns, lacerations from flying debris or shock were treated by the emergency responders.
After the impact, the force of the explosion was pushed southwest of the 20th and Piatt intersection. Most of the homes there were constructed of wood, which fueled the consuming fire. As Chief McGaughey explained, “[A]ll homes on the west side of the street were wood frame; homes on the east side were all brick veneer,” which allowed the flaming jet fuel not only to swiftly torch the exterior but also to push its way inside “as if from a giant atomizer,” melting the interior.100 The firemen dousing the five-hundred-foot-high flames noted how, when they breathed, “it almost tasted like [they] were drinking jet fuel.”101 Deputy Chief Simpson, remembering the conflagration, commented:
I have never seen so much fire in so many places. It just licked every place up and down the street. There was no way of telling just how many houses were on fire. It appeared to me that the fire was in the houses, burning from the inside out, rather than so much fire on the outside of the houses. I guess this is because the fuel was sprayed into them, and, of course, the contents of the building had ignited.102
The homes in the impoverished neighborhood, most of which cost no more than $10,000, never stood a chance.
RESOURCES
In 1965, twenty-seven companies located in thirteen fire stations made up the WFD with approximately 100 firefighters on duty each day. One district chief oversaw three response districts. Wichita firefighters worked sixty-six-hour workweeks then, alternating between twenty-four hours on and twenty-four hours off.103 Chief McGaughey called in as many men as he could to do battle with the fire along with their hulking equipment. The WFD used a total of “11,000 feet of 24-inch hose, 2,000 feet of 13-inch hose, 42 on-duty personnel and 136 off-shift firemen” to address the warzone at 20th and Piatt.104 Equipment response included: seven engine companies from WFD, including one aerial company and the emergency bus that was used as a command post; one engine company from Fire Reserve; two engine companies from the County Fire Department; five units from Heavy Rescue; a tanker and foam truck from McConnell Fire Department; and one Boeing semi-trailer tanker that produced foam from two blabbermouth nozzles mounted on top of the unit.105 It took an army of men and equipment to combat the blaze, and the determination of the firefighters was nothing short of amazing.
A 1965 map of the Piatt Street crash showing damaged homes (retyped for clarity). U.S. Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico
Chief McGaughey and his men made their attack from the perimeter and marched toward the center of the fire. It was a portrait of combat—with the chief leading his men in a coordinated strike against a ferocious enemy. They waged war on the blaze from all directions in a synchronized effort to jostle the flames “back toward the impact point,” recounted Chief McGaughey, so that they could start drenching the burning houses. When the McConnell and Boeing equipment arrived, they blasted the fire with foam, while county pumpers swept the adjoining streets and area, putting out “grass and roof fires caused by flaming chunks of mud saturated with JP4 (much like napalm)” that had been blown over the entire area. For the firemen, it was warfare.106
The community also fought against the fire. Two off-duty captains and firefighters who lived in the area of 20th and Piatt assisted from their homes to direct the incoming firemen. Volunteers helped clear victims from the area, and neighbors assisted in manning hose lines, causing Chief McGaughey to realize that, “although many people were in a state of shock, we had so much citizen help that 24-inch hose lines were moved about as if they were booster lines [much smaller and lighter hoses].”107
The citizens in the immediate area who were not assisting the firemen were moved back by the police for their safety. Fourteen Wichita police officers initially responded, just minutes after the plane hit. That number quickly ballooned into hundreds of law enforcement personnel, including the Wichita Police Department (WPD), Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Office, Kansas Highway Patrol, McConnell military police officers, National Guard and Army Reserves. Chief E. M. Pond, of the WPD, dispatched one WPD officer for every three military police officers from McConnell. The first perimeter established by the WPD stretched south from 21st Street to 13th Street (one mile) and from Hydraulic Street east to Grove Street (one half mile).108 Although there was a need for crowd control to prevent onlookers from contaminating the scene or removing evidence, no arrests were made on January 16. Chief Pond would later praise how “local residents participated in traffic control and lessened spectator congestion, easing the difficulties of apparatus in getting to the scene.”109 Cooperation between the community and law enforcement was seamless.
CONTAINMENT
The enormous firestorm was under control by 9:55 a.m., twenty-four minutes after it began.110 In forty-five minutes, electrical service was restored, thanks in part to utility companies that labored intensely to restore electrical and gas service, recover downed power lines and seal off an eight-inch water main severed by the plane on im
pact.111 Although firemen would continually soak the wreckage for several hours after the crash, it was at least contained at that point by the steady flow of foam and water pouring out from fire trucks in all directions.112
Aerial photo of crater. Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum.
Burned-out car frames and houses on Piatt Street. Kansas Firefighters’ Museum.
Because of the potential for such a disaster in the “Air Capital”—nicknamed because of the many aircraft corporations founded there in the late 1920s and early 1930s—all of the fire departments that responded were trained in unique rescue procedures involving military aircraft crash firefighting. Having been trained in these special types of hazards, they were efficient in extinguishing the fire in a timely manner. Despite an initial lack of communication among the departments concerning location and placement after arriving on scene (later criticized by Chief McGaughey), these intense training sessions, as McGaughey commented, “paid off…knowing what to do and how to do it…”113
In the end, this miraculous effort of disaster containment was made possible because of the unparalleled, quick response of firemen from Wichita, Boeing and McConnell. The ability of the community to bind together and aid the emergency responders, however, was also a large factor in the success of the firefighting efforts. Everybody pitched in. Extinguishing a fire of that magnitude, that quickly, was a superhuman feat. Of course, it took equipment, proper training and one and a half million gallons of water, but the actions of the brave men and women who selflessly assisted the firemen saved many lives.114 It was a collective community effort in an otherwise segregated community, something rarely seen in 1965.
6
THE KC-135
Peace Is Our Profession
—USAF, Strategic Air Command Motto, 1946-1992
The rationale of military necessity has provided fodder to countless heated debates. And three days later, on January 19, 1965, the Wichita Beacon posed the inevitable question that lingers on to this day: “whether the plane should have been flying over a congested urban area when it was loaded with nearly [thirty-one thousand] gallons of highly volatile jet fuel.”115 There is no simple answer.
The conception of airpower theory, the purpose of the KC-135 and the vision of an Italian artilleryman—a vision that was birthed before World War I and later matured under SAC following World War II—provides, to some degree, an insight into why Operation Lucky Number not only existed but was also necessary.
THE ITALIAN
He was laughed to scorn for several of his ideas. He was considered irrational, insubordinate, a charlatan, a caviler, a loon, a far-fetched dreamer—who was eventually court-martialed for his criticisms of the Italian army, imprisoned, vindicated, released, promoted to general and then retired to write the world’s first theory of air war in 1921: The Command of the Air.116 He then became a visionary, the father of modern air warfare, a man who theorized the strategic use of the airplane within barely a decade after its invention. Although it was once considered preposterous to use an airplane as a strategic weapon in warfare, he knew better.
Giulio Douhet, the Italian general and great airpower theorist of the twentieth-century, said, “Victory smiles upon those who anticipate the changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur.”117 Douhet was of the belief that “airplanes, like warships and armies, should be massed against the decisive point” in order to defeat the enemy.118 The only problem with this theory was that it had yet to be seen or tested, since the technology needed for some of Douhet’s anachronistic theories did not exist. Nonetheless, Douhet, though highly criticized and considered controversial, successfully developed a doctrine for the strategic use of airpower in the 1920s that would soon revolutionize warfare.119
JET BOMBERS
Twenty years later, while America was fully engaged in World War II, the use of strategic bombing—Douhet’s “irrational” idea—was now being deployed. Posthumously, Douhet was vindicated, again. Following the strategic bombing campaigns on Germany and Japan in World War II—which led to the economic breakdown of the Axis powers, the detonation of two atomic bombs and essentially ended the war—U.S. military leaders came to realize the need for planes with capabilities of flying greater distances to bomb the enemy and then return home. Jets needed to become efficient ordnance carriers in order to match the range and payload capacities of propeller planes.120 This would soon be the case.
Created in 1946, SAC’s mission was to “conduct long range offensive missions in any part of the world.”121 With the beginning of the Cold War and the looming threat of a Soviet attack following World War II, the subsonic B-52 (Stratofortress) heavy bomber was the jet-powered strategic bomber military commanders were looking for. Becoming operational during the period of 1955 to 1962, the B-52 had a range of 10,000 to 12,500 miles and was fully capable of aerial refueling. It was adept at carrying multi-megaton free-fall bombs or two deadly “Hound Dog” missiles (earning their nickname from Elvis Presley’s hit song) and could travel up to 600 miles per hour at fifty thousand feet.122 It was the ultimate war machine.
B-52 taxiing. 22nd ARW History Office.
B-52 taking off. 22nd ARW History Office.
B-52 crew running “on alert.” 22nd ARW History Office.
B-52 on ground. 22nd ARW History Office.
During the 1960s, the B-52 made up a substantial portion of the U.S. military’s strategic bomber force and was a proud display of American military prowess. “A B-52 can fly from the United States to the Soviet heartland with a 10,000-pound bomb load and return without refueling,” noted Jeremy J. Stone, an expert in foreign policy and former president of the Federation of American Scientists, in a 1964 article entitled “Bomber Disarmament.”123 Accordingly, if the U.S. deterrence-oriented military policy failed and the Cold War developed into a hot war, Stone’s assessment might have become a reality.
A NEW TANKER
Superior bombing capability required aerial refueling, and the B-52 needed a colossal tanker to replenish its fuel.124 Originally, the air force had been using the KC-97 tanker to refuel its B-47s, Boeing’s first jet bomber. But the propeller-powered KC-97 was slow and had a low operational altitude, which created multiple problems with the refueling operations. The faster, jet-powered B-52s had to lower their flaps and rear landing gear just to slow down enough to be refueled by the KC-97.125 Eugene Rodgers, in his book Flying High: The Story of Boeing and the Rise of the Jetliner Industry, highlights the various problems that arose with the aerial refueling of jet bombers:
The most compelling need was for jet tankers. Flying together in a refueling operation was difficult for the jet B-47 and a propeller-driven tanker; there was a serious mismatch in speeds. The highest speed that the tanker could fly was not much more than the slowest speed that a B-47 could fly without losing lift. The situation would be even worse when the Air Force started flying bigger, faster B-52s in a few years…the Air Force would soon see the necessity for hundreds of jet tankers.126
With the “Jet-Age” fully underway after World War II, there was an obvious need for a new jet tanker. Abandoning the more cumbersome and time-consuming procedures for aerial refueling, Brigadier Generals Clarence S. Irvine (SAC) and Mark E. Bradley (Air Materiel Command), along with Cliff Leisy (Boeing), developed a new method for aerial refueling called the “flying boom.”127 The flying boom completely transformed in-flight refueling. The revolutionary new flying boom system was described by air force historian Walter J. Boyne in Beyond the Wild Blue as consisting of “a long telescoping transfer tube with two V-shaped control surfaces, called ‘ruddervators.’”128 The process for refueling, according to Boyne, meant that the refueling plane would fly, “above and in front of the receiver, which flew in close formation, permitting the boom operator to fly the boom into the receiver’s receptacle.”129 The flying boom allowed jet fuel to be transferred expeditiously because of its high pressure, greatly reducing refue
ling times. This would later become the standard method used throughout the air force in the 1960s.
B-52 on flight line with crew. 22nd ARW History Office.
KC-135 refuels a B-52. 22nd ARW History Office.
THE UNVEILING
On Saturday, May 15, 1954, just two days before the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision was handed down by the Supreme Court, desegregating public schools in America, the Dash-80 was unveiled by Boeing Aircraft Company at its factory in Renton, Washington.130 The air force had expressed an interest in a jet tanker, and the Dash-80 was the prototype for the commercial 707 and the KC-135. After its first flight on July 15, 1954, by test pilot Tex Johnston, it was clear that the Dash-80 prototype was going to be a success.131
With the end of a brief contract dispute concerning which company would be allowed to build the new tanker for the air force, the Pentagon finally announced it would give the contract to Boeing in March 1955. The air force ordered three hundred KC-135s to be built at a total cost of $700 million.132 At last, the air force would have the jet tanker that could meet its future and present needs. A commanding sight, weighing 297,000 pounds, the massive KC-135 had four P&W J57 turbojet engines with 13,750 pounds of thrust, a wingspan of 130 feet and ten inches, and a top speed of six hundred miles per hour with a range of approximately five thousand miles. It could accommodate four crew members and eighty troops with its large cargo deck. But most importantly, the KC-135 could transport more than thirty-one thousand gallons of jet fuel (double what the KC-97 tanker ever could) and deliver it with its telescoping flying boom.133 It was the most efficient and capable refueling machine ever made up to that point, an impeccable force multiplier. As historian Steven L. Rearden noted, when SAC gained the advantage of acquiring three hundred KC-135 jet tankers to refuel the B-52s, it “could claim a truly global reach.”134