Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  “Not sure when I’m returning. Just book it one-way.”

  “One-way?”

  “One-way. I said one-way, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, sir, you did. And your name please?”

  “Payne, William Harrison Payne. Address, Scott Bar, California. I own a lodge up there.”

  A few minutes later Payne confidently struts away with a $175 one-way economy-class ticket to Honolulu aboard Romance of the Skies, departing late Friday morning.

  Huang thinks it is a bit unusual that Payne does not want a return ticket, but it is none of his business, and he greets the next customer in line as Payne fades away into the busy crowd.

  Payne tucks Pan Am ticket number 261-211662 into his coat pocket, stops momentarily to light up a cigarette, and looks around the ticketing area until he spots what he most needs next: a trip insurance vending machine.

  “Airline Trip Insurance. Follow These Simple Steps . . . $62,500 Coverage. Only 10 quarters.”

  Payne buys two policies with twenty quarters and strolls away with $125,000 in accident life insurance.

  Life is going to get better very soon for the Payne family.

  Halfway across the country, business executive Hugh Lee Clack and his wife, Ann, herd their four children through the busiest airport in the world—Chicago’s Midway International. Their United Airlines flight from Midland, Michigan, has just arrived, a few minutes late, and they have walked out of the airplane into a cloudy, cool Illinois morning. The roar of arriving and departing aircraft deafens the chatter of the excited children as they enter the busy terminal and head to the gate for their flight to San Francisco, where they will spend a few days before flying on Romance of the Skies to Honolulu and ultimately to their home in Tokyo.

  Clack adjusts his glasses and clutches two-year-old Mariko between his left arm and his chest as he rushes toward their gate. He holds a navy-blue Pan American carry-on bag in his right hand and walks briskly past the newspaper racks, without even noticing the front-page story in the Chicago Tribune about the mysterious egg-shaped flying objects seen by dozens of people in Texas, or another page-one story, about the Russian launch of the Sputnik 2 satellite and its canine passenger into space.

  He urges Ann and the children to hurry; they must make it to their gate on time, and there’s not a minute to spare. It’s been a nice vacation, but it’s time to get back to work.

  Arroyo Drive in Santa Clara is a quiet, straight asphalt-paved street with a few new houses in a rapidly developing subdivision in what recently was farmland and plum orchards. It’s perfect for what I am trying to do, made even more perfect by the fact that my father’s right hand is on the back fender of my Schwinn bike to guide me and keep me safe.

  “You’re doing fine, Kenny. Just keep pedaling. Don’t worry. Keep your eyes straight ahead,” he urges as I pedal a little faster now, swerving less and feeling more and more confident.

  I turn my head slightly around and see Daddy fading away in the distance, clapping his hands in the air and smiling proudly.

  “You’re doing it, son! You’re doing it!”

  Daddy’s right. I am doing it.

  I am flying on my own now and it feels wonderful.

  Pan American master mechanic Norvin B. Fortune arrives at San Francisco International Airport and is assigned to perform a predeparture walk-around inspection of N90944, Romance of the Skies. The gigantic, double-decker airplane has been parked at a Pan Am maintenance base wash rack station about two miles from the main terminal since it arrived from Honolulu on Wednesday afternoon.

  For some reason the graveyard shift has not yet serviced the aircraft, and only the number three main gas tank has been fueled. This perturbs him, because Friday mornings are always busy for Pan American, and this one is not only shaping up to be busy, but is putting an extra strain on the morning ground crew to prepare the plane for an on-time departure, something their very jobs depend on.

  It’s the thirty-one-year-old Fortune’s responsibility to methodically check everything on the inspection list before the plane is taxied to the new passenger terminal area for its late-morning flight to Honolulu. He finds that all items are normal except for the right nose gear tire, which has gone flat, and he orders that the tire and the entire wheel assembly be replaced. Ground crewmen Lewis Mucca and Joe Alamorong take care of that duty, then fill the Stratocruiser with fuel and oil.

  Flight servicemen Hugh P. Greene and Bo Bowen join several other ground crewmen and begin to load overseas airmail and cargo, which includes two heavy pieces that pose an unusual problem. After several failed attempts, they are unable to fit one piece of cargo—a huge IBM 305 RAMAC computer with 3.75 megabytes—through the cargo door, so it is finally carted away to be shipped by sea to Japan. The world’s first hard-drive computer, it weighs more than a ton. The other IBM computer, weighing a whopping 600 pounds, takes a lot of effort but is eventually stowed away in the forward cargo compartment near barrels of movie film.

  “Good morning, San Francisco! It’s forty-nine degrees here at the ‘World’s Greatest Radio Station’ and there’s a soupy morning fog outside, but the weatherman promises a nice day with cloudy skies and a high near sixty-four. So, get out of bed, grab a cup of coffee, and get on with the day! Up and at ’em. Thank God, it’s Friday!”

  KSFO radio morning man Don Sherman continues to chirp mercilessly as Gene Crosthwaite rolls out of bed.

  He looks at the beige, plastic RCA Victor alarm clock radio beside his bed, shakes the previous night off, then mentally plots the rest of his morning. He has so much to do and there is not a minute to waste. He pats himself on the back for having had the foresight to pack his bags last night, even though the booze had made it hard for him to focus.

  The five-foot, eight-inch Crosthwaite takes a quick shower, squeezes into his Pan American purser’s uniform, and downs two prescription pills with a cup of ink-black coffee. As he is about to walk out the front door, stepdaughter Tania crosses his path, and he makes it a point to ruin her day with an angry, crinkled face and some hateful, worrisome words—words that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

  He is bullying her again and he loves it.

  Tania shakes her head and nervously darts away, wondering again what she has done to make him so mad.

  He knows his cruel words are inflicting pain and worry, and that gives him a weird, sadistic satisfaction. He doesn’t hug her. He doesn’t bother to say goodbye. He never does. He’s going to have the last word and this little bitch will just have to live with the consequences.

  He walks outside, sucks in a breath of the fresh hillside air, and remembers those early dreary days in the TB sanatorium, when getting a decent breath of anything was hard as hell. But that was then; this is now. Oliver Eugene Crosthwaite is in charge today and that brings a slight smile to his otherwise gloomy face

  He gets behind the wheel of his sedan and drives north on Highway 9, past Green’s Service Station, then turns right onto Mount Hermon Road and ultimately enters the busy Santa Cruz Highway. He weaves in and out through the morning traffic and about an hour later parks his car along San Mateo’s Fifth Avenue, feeds a nickel into the parking meter, and walks briskly into the law office of Hugh Mullin. He checks his watch: 8:45 a.m. This will have to be quick or he will be late for the mandatory flight briefing.

  “I’m Gene Crosthwaite, and Mr. Mullin is supposed to have my will ready. Him and me already worked it out,” he says to the receptionist.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Crosthwaite. I remember you. Just a minute, please,” she says pleasantly, ignoring his atrocious grammar.

  A few minutes later the secretary returns with some legal documents that she hands him to review. She points to a nearby couch.

  “Why don’t you sit over there and look these over, Mr. Crosthwaite, and see if everything’s in order? I believe you’ll find that we’ve taken care of everything you requested. If anything is out of order, I’ll get Mr. Mullin. If not, all you have to do is sign and
I’ll notarize it. Then you can be on your way.”

  Crosthwaite nervously checks his watch again. Time is becoming an obsession, and he has only an hour until check-in for his flight to Honolulu. If there are any problems with the will, it could throw his timing off.

  Crosthwaite sits down on the couch and begins to read:

  “LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF OLIVER EUGENE CROSTHWAITE

  I, Eugene Crosthwaite, being of sound mind and body . . . ”

  A few minutes later Crosthwaite walks over to the secretary, places the will on her desktop, and steps back.

  “This looks good. Want me to go ahead and sign it?”

  “Sure, I’ll witness it and then we’ll be done. Do you have a flight today?”

  “Yeah, I’m off to Honolulu in a couple of hours.”

  “Lucky you. I wish I were going. I’ve always wanted to visit Hawaii, especially this time of year.”

  “Yeah, I guess it’s OK, but it don’t do much for me anymore. It’s just a job. It kinda gets old after a while.”

  Crosthwaite pulls a Paper Mate ballpoint pen from his pocket and scrawls his signature. His hand slightly shakes as he dots the “i,” and he stuffs the pen back inside his uniform coat. The secretary walks away and returns a few minutes later with a warm, Thermofaxed copy of the will inside an oversized envelope.

  Crosthwaite mutters a half-assed “thank you” and walks outside.

  “There, that’ll let her know who’s the damn boss,” he mutters to himself as he puts the envelope containing his last will into the glove compartment and slams it shut. He pulls out into traffic and heads north on Bayshore Freeway. Minutes later he parks his car at Beacon Storage on Broadway Avenue in Millbrae before taking a taxi to the San Francisco International Airport, less than a mile away.

  10:30 a.m.

  Romance of the Skies is taxied to spot thirty-two in the main terminal area, where master mechanic Fortune and flight engineer Albert Pinataro begin their joint inspection of the blue-and-white-over-silver aircraft. Pinataro has logged 1,596 hours in the air, all of them in Boeing 377 Stratocruisers, or “Super Strato-Clippers,” as Pan Am has recently begun calling them, and he has flown on this particular plane many times prior to today. He loves his job with Pan Am, and although he is the youngest of the cockpit crew, he goes about his job with the kind of methodical professionalism of much older, more seasoned engineers. Pinataro celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday a week ago and recently told a relative that if he died tomorrow, he would die a happy man because he enjoys his job so much.

  Pretakeoff procedures are already thirty minutes behind schedule because of the IBM cargo problem, but Pinataro and Fortune cut no corners in ensuring that the plane is airworthy. Pinataro, a former US Air Force mechanic, soon discovers that the number one engine turbosupercharger is down about a half-gallon of oil from its capacity and orders that it be filled to the brim. Pinataro rechecks the oil level after it is filled, then he and Fortune climb onto the wings to check the fuel level of each gas tank. The tanks are measured with a long dipstick, and each has the specified level of fuel required for the flight. Pinataro also removes all the oil caps and ensures that each engine has the maximum twenty-seven gallons of oil. Oil is the lifeblood of any engine, and although the plane has a fifty-six-gallon oil reserve system in its belly, Stratocruiser engines are notorious for guzzling and dripping oil. Many Stratocruiser captains are so concerned about the oil problem that they personally watch as oil is added at each stop along a flight path.

  After examining each of the sixteen propeller blades, and the exterior inspection is complete, Pinataro thanks Fortune for his assistance, enters the flight deck from the lower-right cargo door, climbs up into the cockpit, and begins his engine prestart checklist at the engineer’s station. While every member of the crew has an important role to play today, Pinataro realizes that the finicky Stratocruiser engines will require his full-time attention, and he will have to monitor everything from engine temperatures and fuel consumption to the intricate electrical and cabin pressurization systems. Although the engines are precisely crafted, experts agree that they seem to have minds of their own, and flight engineers like Pinataro need to “think like an engine” to keep them operating efficiently.

  While Pinataro runs through his checklist, Captain Gordon Herrick Brown conducts the required emergency briefing for the rest of the flight crew that has gathered inside the base. Using a paperboard mock-up of the Boeing 377 that depicts the interior layout, Brown issues paper “tags” to each crewmember. The tags list emergency equipment on the plane, and he requires every crew member to show where their tags and equipment are located on the plane. Brown then briefs the crew on details of the flight and asks them to recite their duties in case of an emergency. It’s all routine, but everyone realizes the importance of the briefing, especially considering that just a year earlier a sister Stratocruiser had ditched mid-Pacific and that the military version of the planes are having troubles in flight.

  Flight dispatcher James Murray then conducts a weather briefing with Captain Brown and his cockpit crew—a briefing that includes forecasted weather conditions not only in the air but also for the airport in Honolulu.

  “You’ll encounter some moderate frost immediately off the California coast, but the weather on into Honolulu is clear for the entire route,” he informs the crew. “It’s a perfect day to fly.”

  Copies of the forecast are stapled to the plane’s flight paperwork, and after signing off on the documents, Captain Brown puts on his cap, cocks it slightly to the lower left of his forehead, and walks outside to board the aircraft. He immediately takes in a whiff of the distinctive exhaust of aviation fuel that drifts across the tarmac and, like many of his colleagues, considers it an almost addictively fine smell.

  Purser Crosthwaite boards immediately after the briefing and ten minutes before passengers begin to take their assigned seats. He checks to see if sufficient food, snacks, and booze—especially booze—have been loaded for the flight. As purser, he is the senior cabin manager, responsible for supervising the stewardesses and ensuring that passengers are safe and comfortable. He’s also in charge of the below-deck horseshoe-shaped cocktail lounge, his favorite duty.

  He is aware that service supervisor Jack King is on today’s flight, but that really doesn’t bother him. Crosthwaite has never let a supervisor rattle him up or make him nervous. King, a last-minute addition to the crew, volunteered to fill in for a sick colleague. However, he might also be on the plane to keep an eye on Crosthwaite because of recent complaints about his work performance and lingering allegations that he may have been stealing liquor from the airline. Crosthwaite also is unaware that Pan American has suspected him in the past of smuggling goods from Hong Kong but has never been able to prove it. And one more thing: crews have been complaining recently about the abrasive, irritable purser. They say he is a “blowhard” and a “braggart” and not well-liked by either employees or passengers.

  Crosthwaite knows his job is in jeopardy, but he shrugs it off. Today, he is in his element and he won’t let anything, or anyone, bother him. He loves to criticize others, but criticism has no effect on him. He always makes up an excuse for his failures at work and at home. That’s just who he is. He really doesn’t give a damn what others think of him, and he’s quick to let everyone know that, even more so since he spent those six miserable months in the TB sanatorium.

  He is known as a prickly man who walks around with what seems to be a permanent chip on his shoulder, but today he has a different attitude. Today, he is the man in charge of what happens next in his life.

  The passengers on today’s flight are a cross section of a rapidly shrinking world. They range from hourly wage workers and enlisted military men to senior corporate executives, high-ranking government and military officials, and highbrow socialites. There are housewives, missionaries, doctors, and entire families on the flight manifest. One passenger is a Free French Air Force ace from World War II.
It is the “Golden Age” of American aviation, and the men are dressed conservatively in coats and ties; the ladies in fashionable dresses.

  Their reasons for boarding today include impending marriages and recent family deaths, business trips and vacations.

  Before the day is done, they will have one common purpose: to stay alive.

  Recently promoted US Navy Commander Gordon Cole of Alexandria, Virginia, is among those boarding the Stratocruiser for the trans-Pacific flight. Cole is about to realize his lifelong dream of commanding his own destroyer and is headed to Hong Kong, where he will become executive officer of the USS Lenawee. He is scheduled to take command of a destroyer within six months, and the thirty-five-year-old father of one is well suited for the task.

  Cole already has led an adventure-filled life, and has the scars, aches, and pains to prove it.

  He spent a year as a second mate on a tramp steamer on a New York-to-South America run before serving as a navigator on an attack carrier in the Pacific during World War II. After the war he returned home to Michigan, where he opened a record shop in Muskegon and commanded the local naval reserve unit on the side.

  In 1950 he made headlines when he crossed the Atlantic in a forty-five-foot sailboat with four other men. The perilous thirty-one-day voyage from New York to Bergen, Norway, was full of challenges and daily hardships, from drift ice off the Grand Banks to a four-day gale off the coast of Scotland. The 3,697-mile journey made the tough, determined Cole even better prepared for life ahead.

  Cole was recalled to active service during the Korean War and while serving aboard the destroyer USS Frank Knox in the Sea of Japan was severely injured during a violent storm. A twenty-foot wall of water slammed Cole into the ship’s steel infrastructure while he supervised securing the ship and its depth bombs. He suffered leg and shoulder fractures, a severe cut on his leg, and a dislocated shoulder.