Flight 7 Is Missing
Page 17
“This is Clipper Nine Four Four. Come in, please. Does anyone read me?”
I pretend to wrestle with the controls of an airplane that is losing altitude over the ocean, and I look down at the fast-approaching shark-filled sea. It is a menacing sight.
Jerry quietly sits on the floor a few feet from the closet-cockpit and listens closely to the urgent plea coming from the airplane. He is planning what he knows he must do next, planning what he will do time and time again over the next couple of months as we reenact the last minutes of Flight 7.
“Mayday! Mayday! This is Clipper Nine Four Four. Come in, please,” I shout urgently into the microphone. “We’re going down. Middle of the Pacific. Someone help us, please! Mayday! Mayday!”
I scream and make some gurgling, crashing sounds as the plane hits the ocean, and then I tumble out of my closet-cockpit onto the hard terrazzo floor.
That’s his signal, and Jerry swings swiftly into action. He rolls over onto his stomach and begins swimming frantically to reach the plane before everyone drowns. He battles waves and bloodthirsty sharks, twisting his head back and forth before he finally reaches me and drags me across the ocean-bedroom to safety.
We both shout with joy. Daddy is alive! Everyone has been saved!
Frankfurt, Germany
Wednesday, December 10, 1954
Dear Mom & Boys,
Imagine my surprise today when I came back from a trip of almost a week to find a letter. I had concluded that you had broken both hands and couldn’t find anyone to write for you. I still don’t know when I’ll get home.
One union man said that I could go home when my two months were up. The office here says the end of the year, and I saw a wire from New York saying that they would keep the local people informed. I am ready to come now but they have me scheduled for 95 hours this month. I suppose I can use the $200 overtime that I would make because it seems that there will be another furlough next year about Christmas time.
I still haven’t gotten my October overtime, and when it does come, I know it will be wrong. I didn’t even get my first officer’s pay in the regular check. They are getting real chicken shit here. They made one captain pay $50 because he took off with the pins in the gear and they called a co-pilot in and reamed him because he had made too many calls from the field. It had cost the company about 36 cents.
Our chief pilot is on vacation and we have little pricks trying to be big pricks now. Even the German secretary looks way down while she speaks to us, and co-pilots have been forbidden to speak to the dispatcher. If we have anything to say to him, we tell the captain and he can tell the dispatcher. It isn’t too bad, though. I have the new camera now and the light meter, and they still give me a check twice a month.
I hope we will have enough money in February to take a vacation down south. You had better not plan on me being there for Christmas. I will be there if I possibly can, but no one will give me much encouragement here.
I like the flying here very much because I get to fly a lot. They had a vacancy here and I bid it. I’m going to bid just about everything that comes up to try to get out of New York. I don’t want to be a navigator. Even Columbus could do that in 1492.
I’m glad my boys are well and happy and that they miss me a little bit. I miss them, too, and want to see them very much. Hope they stay well and grow big and strong before I come home soon. I will see you before so very long now. If I came home the 22nd it is just 11 more days and if they keep me until Jan. 1st it is only 20 days. If they should try to keep me beyond Jan. 1st, I’m sure they will send you over. I don’t think they will do that because it would cost them even more than 36 cents!
Please don’t think I am bitter. I just want to grumble a little. I’ll write again tomorrow and then wait until I hear from you before I write again. I hope it is not a week.
Remember Dad loves all of you ALL DAY. I miss you and love you very much.
Love,
Dad
On Friday, January 10, 1958, members of the Civil Aeronautics Board executive staff and investigative team in Washington, D.C., make final plans for next week’s public hearing in San Francisco. As they work on the agenda, a CAB spokesman puts the finishing touches on an overwritten press release intended for the Sunday newspapers.
The release is unusual for a couple of reasons: First, it promises that the hearing will provide a “dramatic story” about the missing airliner and why it plunged from the sky to the bottom of the ocean. Second, and more importantly, it discloses for the first time that excessive levels of carbon monoxide had been found in fourteen of the nineteen bodies recovered, and that the gas was “possibly disabling” to both crew and passengers.
“Why did a Honolulu-bound airliner fly to destruction last November near the end of a year in which the US commercial airlines chalked up a safety record otherwise never surpassed?” the release asks in its opening paragraph.
“If we find the answer it will be a product of modern technology and an estimated 9,500 man-hours of plain, hard work. If we do not succeed, it will be because the mute evidence of 19 bodies and 72 pieces of wreckage, the largest of which was a 4 x 7 piece of bulkhead, simply did not tell the story.”
Sunday, January 12, 1958
Published today in the “Poet’s Corner” of the Oakland Tribune is this from area resident Warren W. Sullens:
Romance of the Skies
For Hawaii’s palm-lined shore
Rose a Clipper plane to soar
High and mighty in her flight
Gliding through the velvet night.
Skimming through the clouds above,
Guided by her pilot’s love,
Resting on her perfect luck,
Suddenly disaster struck!
Down she plunged beneath the wave,
Settling to her common grave
Shared by all the ships of yore
Slumbering on the ocean floor.
Far below her native haunt,
Torn asunder, long and gaunt,
Fame shall mark her long demise:
Fallen “Romance of the Skies!”
Sunday-morning newspapers across the country dutifully report the impending CAB hearing at the same time an executive with the Southwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company in Albuquerque, New Mexico, dictates a telegram to the CAB in Washington:
“This is to inform your agency that Mr. Russell Stiles, chief investigator for our company, has been assigned to look into an insurance claim for a passenger aboard Pan American Flight 7 which crashed last November.
“We look forward to cooperating with you in any way. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to call.”
That unnamed passenger is lodge owner and former Navy frogman William Harrison Payne.
On Thursday morning, January 16, 1958, the Empire Room of the twenty-one-story Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square is filling up with representatives of the media, labor unions, victims’ families, Pan American, Boeing, engine maker Pratt & Whitney, and prop manufacturer Hamilton Standard, plus dozens of others, all gathering in anticipation of what the CAB has promised will be the unfolding of a “dramatic story.”
Board member Harmar D. Denny gavels the room to order at 9 a.m. and makes an opening statement informing the audience that the hearing is a board of inquiry for the sole purpose of obtaining facts. He outlines the rules and procedures for the hearing and says the board is “not permitted to express any opinion as to the probable cause of the accident.” He explains that after the board has examined each witness, certain parties to the investigation, such as Pan Am, union representatives, and others, will be allowed to question that witness “solely for the purpose of developing a factual record of the accident. Cross-examination in the legal sense will not be permitted.”
Denny wants to make clear to everyone present that the hearing is an administrative, fact-finding venture, but the admonition against the cross-examination of witnesses will severely limit the scope a
nd findings of the public investigation over the next two days.
“There are no adverse parties and no adverse interests. No one has been made a defendant or respondent.”
Not yet anyway.
He says that after the facts have been gathered, the full CAB and its expert staff will make a full report on what they have learned and will issue a report on a probable cause with the intent of preventing any recurrence of similar accidents in the future.
In the coming days there will be testimony that seems to indicate a probable cause for the crash, followed by conflicting testimony that discounts it.
With the official opening out of the way, presiding officer Robert W. Chrisp begins the task of conducting an orderly meeting, examining witnesses and trying to determine why N90944 crashed. This will be a monumental undertaking because many of the witnesses are here to cover their own asses or the corporate asses of their companies and superiors. Pan Am wants to direct blame at anything or anyone other than its own planes and maintenance practices. The pilots want to blame anyone other than the crew; the union wants to blame Pan Am; Boeing and other manufacturers want to blame anything but their equipment.
The families of the victims just want to know the truth.
As the hearing progresses, Chrisp tends to push the testimony away from any blame on Pan Am or its suppliers and manufacturers. Time and time again he redirects questions or rejects them altogether when someone tries to drill down on Pan Am’s maintenance practices. Far from being the promised “dramatic story,” the hearing is relatively boring, except for a few tense exchanges between mechanics’ union representative Phil Ice and Chrisp. Ice, intent on pressing the union’s case against Pan Am, zeroes in on maintenance inspection documents that he asserts were not properly signed off on by licensed mechanics or certified inspectors. He also gets a witness to admit that a required inspection of N90944’s spar webs (main structures that support the wings) had not been done as mandated after two unexplained hard landings several months before the crash. The inspection protocol required the removal of a surface cover on the wings to allow for inspection of the wing spar webs.
Several times a witness makes a statement that demands a follow-up question or detailed examination. That rarely happens; if Ice doesn’t ask it, the question usually goes unasked. A prime example is when CAB Bureau of Safety engineer and investigator Martyn V. Clarke testifies about a strange fluid that was found on some of the floating debris, which included pieces of insulation saturated with what everyone initially thought was hydraulic fluid. That insulation was subsequently tested by the FBI’s laboratory in Washington, which concluded that it was some kind of petroleum-based product, though not the kind used by Pan American.
If the fluid was not used by Pan American, why was it in the aircraft? What type of petroleum-based product was it?
Again, no question.
“Are any additional tests planned to determine the nature of this fluid?” Clarke is asked by a hearing officer.
“Not at the present time. The purpose of the test was really more of an academic interest than in trying to determine what it was,” Clarke states. He adds that many pieces of insulation were burned on both sides, not just to the waterline. That would indicate a fire after the plane hit the water.
That should lead to another question: If some of the debris was burned on both sides, does that mean there was a fire before the plane hit the water?
That question is never asked. And there is no follow-up.
Clarke testifies that “it didn’t seem too pertinent to really try to pin down” what the unknown petroleum product was.
And that is that.
Another evidentiary clue also receives little attention, although it had been the subject of intensive examination by experts before the public hearing: a small section of an engine ring cowl, embedded in a scorched pillow that was floating at the crash site, hinted that a thrown propeller might have ripped through the cabin and disabled the aircraft. A few questions are asked, but little more.
Much of the hearing centers on the unexplained presence of carbon monoxide in fourteen of the nineteen bodies recovered. A much-anticipated witness is Dr. Vernie Stembridge, a pathologist with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, who sheds some light on the carbon monoxide poisoning, and provides important information about the victims, including the fact that all were likely knocked unconscious by the crash and thus incapable of attempting to survive. Because the only recovered cockpit crew member’s body with carbon monoxide was that of Captain Brown there is the distinct possibility that the three other men in the cockpit also had high levels of carbon monoxide in their systems before the crash. However, their bodies were not recovered so there is no way to establish that.
CAB engineer Isaac Hoover spends a great deal of time discussing his investigators’ findings about possible causes of the carbon monoxide poisoning, including a thrown propeller tearing through the fuselage. He testifies that a propeller failure is one of the best possible explanations, because the prop likely would have come through the fuselage, disrupting electrical wires, radio equipment, hydraulic and oil lines, control cables, possibly even heater fuel lines. That would have been followed by engine loss and serious control problems with the airplane.
But Hoover contradicts himself and says that propeller failure was unlikely because the troublesome hollow-steel blades used in the past had been replaced in all Stratocruisers by solid aluminum props with pitch locks to prevent engine speeds in excess of 3100 RPM, and problems like those caused by the hollow-steel blades had not been an issue since that time. All the props on Romance of the Skies were well within their lifetime operating ranges. They had been inspected prior to takeoff and were in good condition.
“There is no record of any of the propeller blades having ever been damaged,” Hoover states. “Records also indicate that none of the propellers had been involved in overspeeding.”
He testifies that each propeller had been inspected visually by mechanics and by flight engineer Albert Pinataro during the predeparture inspection, and a separate sign-off was made for each propeller.
Moving past the prop issue, Hoover suggests other possibilities for carbon monoxide poisoning, including a cabin-heater fire, an engine fire that could have spread quickly into the cabin, and smoldering movie film in the cargo.
The board doesn’t question the fact that a CAB investigator took the shipper’s word for it that the movie film in the forward cargo area was of the “safety type,” and not cellulose-nitrate, which is extremely dangerous—easy to ignite and difficult to extinguish. It can ignite in temperatures as low as 38 degrees Fahrenheit and produces hot, intense flames and poisonous gases.
Hoover’s experts have ideas about why the plane went down, but because there is so little physical evidence remaining, they draw no conclusions.
Hoover testifies that passengers in the tourist section near the cockpit had the highest levels of carbon monoxide in their bloodstreams. Strangely, those in the rear, first-class section had little or none. Did that mean that a fire of some sort broke out near the cockpit and the tourist-class area?
“The stewardess who was recovered occupied a first-class seat and had a relatively low carbon monoxide concentration,” he says. Hoover states that a smoldering fire in the forward cargo compartment or the cockpit might explain why those in the rear of the plane had lower levels of the deadly poison.
Under questioning from John Miner, a Pan Am pilot and Air Line Pilots Association representative, Hoover also acknowledges that carbon monoxide could have leaked into the cockpit or have been maliciously introduced there. Miner points out that although Captain Brown and three tourist passengers had high levels of carbon monoxide poisoning, none was wearing a life jacket, suggesting they had no indication the plane was going down.
Also unanswered is this critical question: can carbon monoxide be produced by a decomposed body? In other words, could the bodies that were plucked from the sea have be
come poisoned with carbon monoxide after the crash? That question will have conflicting answers in the years to come.
The hearing goes on for two days, and not a single word is uttered about two primary suspects: purser Crosthwaite and passenger Payne. In fact, the possible “human factor” in the crash is never even discussed.
Nothing is mentioned about the huge IBM machine that could have broken loose from its straps, torn into the cabin heater, and caused problems for the crew, despite a statement from lead cargo ramp man Coraino Carvalho, who admitted that “loading in the forward compartment was done a little too fast.” The forward cargo compartment is where the IBM computer was placed.
There is no testimony about gobs of tarlike substances that were found on some of the debris. Although the substances were analyzed by labs, the results were inconclusive, just as in the case of the unknown petroleum product found in the insulation debris.
N90944’s master-engine logs are entered into evidence, but no one asks any questions specifically about them. That is especially strange because engine number three had had repeated problems in the two months leading up to the flight, involving the loss of oil and fluctuating oil pressures. Also unmentioned is a problem with the engine’s sheltered air door, even though pilots had repeatedly complained about it not operating properly—or at all.
Pan Am’s Ross Butler, the pilots’ representative at the hearing, who by his own description is an “idealistic young man,” is disturbed, because he expects the officers and witnesses to be trying to determine the cause of the crash. Instead, he believes, they are “looking out for their own rear ends.”
Butler would acknowledge many years later that Pan Am’s inspection and maintenance standards “were getting pretty sloppy. Those guys were under a lot of pressure.”