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The Story of Flight
853
Following information is presented
with the permission of the author,
Dan McGlaun
and does not necessarily represent the
views of this web site or webmaster.
Visit
http://www.mcglaun.com/1969.htm
for updates to this document.
Setting the Stage
The Scene
Flight 853 from Boston
Flight Plan
The Planes
The Pilots
The Passengers
The Controller
Impact
The Crash
A Miracle of Misunderstanding
The Investigation
Memorial
The Trial
Setting the Stage for
September 9, 1969
What was going on in the
world?
Judy Garland had died on June 22.
The Jets, led by Joe Namath, had upset the
favored Baltimore Colts, 16-13, in Super Bowl III on January 16.
On Broadway, Andrew Lloyd Webber had
another hit: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Woodstock had been less than a month ago.
Bud Collyer, the emcee of "Beat the Clock"
and "To Tell The Truth", had died the previous night.
The Godfather and Slaughterhouse
Five had just been published.
The Beatles had released Abbey Road.
Ringo Starr was in the hospital with a
serious intestinal problem.
Well-respected Senator Everett McKinley
Dirksen (R-IL) had died on 7 September.
Rocky Marciano, the great boxing hero, had
been killed in a plane crash on 31 August, just 9 days prior to the crash.
The New York Mets, traditional
cellar-dwellers of baseball, had beaten the Reds on 8 September, moving up
to within 1½ games of first place in the standings. The day after the
crash, they would sweep a doubleheader from the Expos to capture first
place on their way to becoming World Series champions.
On 21 July, 51 days before the crash,
Apollo 11 had landed on the moon, fulfilling President Kennedy's promise
to the world, and filling every American with a huge sense of pride.
The Who had released their smash album,
Tommy, and had recently performed most of it at Woodstock (though the
movie would not follow until 1975).
In the predawn hours of 19 July, Mary Jo
Kopechne had been killed at Chappaquiddick by Senator Ted Kennedy. He was
charged only with leaving the scene of an accident.
On Saturday morning TV, shows making their
debut were Penelope Pitstop, The Pink Panther, and Scooby
Doo.
In Southeast Asia, President Johnson's
legacy continued to haunt Americans, as more men died every day in the
pursuit of whatever goals the bureaucrats decided to come up with each
week
Ho Chi Minh had died only the previous
Wednesday, on September 3.
Just before Woodstock, over the weekend of
August 8-10, the Charles Manson murders took place in Los Angeles.
Songs that were popular at the time:
Marmalade - Obladi Oblada
Dusty Springfield - Son Of A Preacher Man
Stevie Wonder - For Once In My Life; My Cherie Amour; Yester-Me
Yester-You Yesterday
Martha and The Vandellas - Dancing In The Street
Nina Simone - To Love Somebody
The Supremes and The Temptations - I'm Gonna Make You Love Me
Glenn Campbell - Witchita Lineman
The Tymes - People
Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Dean Martin - Gentle On My Mind
The Hollies - He Aint Heavy He's My Brother
Joe South - Games People Play
Desmond Dekker - The Israelites
The Beatles - Get Back; The Ballad Of John and Yoko; Something
The Temptations - Get Ready
Fleetwood Mac - Man Of The World; Oh Well
Frank Sinatra - My Way
Simon and Garfunkel - The Boxer
Tommy Roe - Dizzy
Fifth Dimension - Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In
Jackie Wilson - Higher and Higher
Smokey Robinson and The Miracles - Tracks Of My Tears
Jethro Tull - Living In the Past
Elvis Presley - Living In The Ghetto; Suspicious Minds
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Proud Mary; Bad Moon Rising
The Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Woman
Zager and Evans - In The Year 2525
Bobbie Gentry - I'll Never Fall In Love Again
Bob Dylan - Lay Lady Lay
The Archies - Sugar Sugar
Johnny Cash - A Boy Named Sue
Kenny Rogers - Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To
Town
Crimson and Clover
Crystal Blue Persuasion
Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye
Take a Letter Maria
Build Me Up Buttercup
Time of the Season
Good Morning Starshine
Other "Highlights" from 1969:
Paul McCartney marries Linda Eastman
John Lennon marries Yoko Ono
Jim Morrison arrested in Miami for exposing himself during a Doors
concert.
Disaster at Rolling Stones concert at Altamont. Hell's Angels run riot
and kill a member of the audience.
Beatles make their last appearance together on the roof of Apple
building.
'Paul is dead' rumors are rife . Many clues in pictures and lyrics are
said to support claim.
John Lennon refused visa to USA on grounds of a previous drug
conviction.
At the moment of the crash, the TV networks
were at their 3:30pm break between programs. This is what was on:
| |
ABC |
NBC |
CBS |
| 3:00 |
General Hospital
|
Another World
|
Secret Storm
|
| 3:30 |
One Life to Live
|
You Don't Say
|
The Edge of Night
|
The
Scene
Tuesday, September 9, 1969 dawned bright
and clear at 6:19am. There had been no clouds in the sky all night, and it
was looking like it would be a beautiful day. There had only been a couple
of days recently that had been good for flying (the day before had been
perfect!), and Bob Carey wanted to get his last few requirements in before
he took his private pilot checkride the next week. The forecast was for
some clouds to move in later today, but they'd be high enough that a
flight in a small plane, especially a required cross-country such as this,
wasn't going to be thwarted!
There were no clouds as Bob went to work at
0800 that morning, and the visiblility was >15 mi (it stayed that way all
day). A light breeze was blowing from the northwest, as it would all day,
and his plans for the day were set: finish up the job this morning, lunch
at home, then on to the airport for the flight! Bob saw the relative
humidity, which had been hovering around 95% all night, start to drop as
he went to work. It would be a cool morning, with temperatures in the low
50s, and, as they began to climb into the 60s, by 0900 there was some
low-level cumulus beginning to form. The cloud cover was 3/10s of the sky
at 1400' by 1000, which wasn't too bad, but it didn't move throughout the
morning. In fact, by 1200, the scattered stuff at 6000' had become broken
at 2700', with that scud still down there at 1400'. Maybe this wasn't
going to be the day for a flight after all.
The low-level stuff went away while Bob was
eating lunch, though, and by 1300, a measured ceiling of 2900' broken
(3700' MSL), with 8/10s cover, was all that was left. That was enough to
be legal, because with the terrain elevation at 650' to 800' along the
intended route of flight, Bob could guide his Cherokee 140 along at about
2500' MSL, have great cloud clearance, and still enough altitude that he
felt the flight could be conducted safely. The forecast was for the
weather situation not to deteriorate, and he needed to get this flight in.
He'd planned for it, he wanted to get his check-ride in as scheduled, and
it was weather an advanced student like him could handle.
At 1500, the sky conditions were measured 3500' broken (4300' MSL), 5000'
overcast, and forecast to stay that way, so Bob got the Cherokee fired up
and ready. He was wheels up at about 1511. (The ceiling at Bakalar AFB in
Columbus at that time was estimated 2900' broken, or 3550' MSL. Still OK,
but cutting it a little closer.)
NOTE: As a result of further research, I've
learned that Mr. Carey's original intentions that day were to go to Purdue
University airport in Lafayette, IN, then on to Kokomo, with a return to
Brookside. This route lay to the northwest, and had even worse weather
forecast. The decision to go to Columbus was a very last-minute thing, but
was prudent given the weather conditions. During the subsequent
investigation, it was implied very heavily that Bob should not have made
the flight that day at all, due to the weather. This biased
second-guessing is open to heavy interpretation, though, which will not be
gone into here. See my section on the Trial below for further details.
Flight 853:
Boston - Baltimore - Cincinnati - Indy - St. Louis
Scheduled departure from Boston was 1200. The crew reported at 1100. The
flight was due to go first to Baltimore, then to Cincinnati, on to
Indianapolis, and finally, to St. Louis. In Cincinnati, 64 people were
waiting on TWA flight 69 from New York. It was due into CVG at 1445, but
wasn't going to be on schedule. TWA offered its passengers the option of
transferring to Allegheny 853, and 38 people took the offer. Therefore,
with the delay while these passengers transferred, 853 was supposed to
leave at 1457, but didn't leave until 1516. Flight 853 was scheduled to
arrive in Indy at 1536. 26 passengers chose to stay behind and wait for
TWA 69, which came in at 1545, half an hour after the Allegheny
flight departed.
The flight plan of the jet was to fly V97
at 390kt to the Shelbyville (IN) VOR at 10000'. (The airway V97 is defined
between the Cincinnati and Shelbyville VORs, and is still in use today. It
departs Cincinnati on a 306° heading, and arrives at SHB on a 304°
heading. The distance between the two VORs is 64 nm.)
Flight Plan
Carey flew most of the summer of 1969 at
Brookside Airpark, under instructor Robert Kiesel. See his
sample flight plan here.
Carey had flown extensively with Mr. Kiesel (who, as it turned out, was
also a plumber!), and solo in the weeks before the accident. On September
9, however, Mr. Kiesel was not at the airport, and it was chief flight
instructor Robert Rice who signed Bob off for his final flight. See the
Trial section below for more detail.
The Planes
Go here to
see pictures of the two involved aircraft
Allegheny Airlines
DC-9-31, reg. # N988VJ, put into service 8/7/68, 3170 Total Time at time
of the accident.
Piper Cherokee PA-28-140, reg. # N7374J, put into service 7/26/68, 803
Total Time at last 100hr (8/29/69)
This aircraft, serial # 28-24730, was
certified on 8/7/68.and purchased by the Forth Corp. on 8/13/68, for
$12,527.20. The flight school had made 12 payments of $208.78 prior to the
accident.
The
Pilots
Bob Carey loved to fly. His brother Kenneth had
welcomed him to Indianapolis in August of the previous year, when the
entire Carey family had moved there from Manchester, NH. Carey had begun
flying a J-3 Cub in New Hampshire, accumulating 15 hours or so (enough to
have been able to solo), and, after settling into Indianapolis and finding
employment in his field (plumbing) had once again resumed his training on
March 6, 1969. He had flown 39 hours in the PA-28, had passed his FAA
written examination, and was in the home stretch toward obtaining his
private license. (Go here to view his
flying history at Brookside.) His medical certificate, dated March 13,
1969, showed him to be a wearer of corrective lenses for vision.
Mr. Carey was a Korean War Veteran, and had
served in the US Air Force from 1953-1956, attaining the rank of Airman
2nd class (he served as an aircraft mechanic, not as a pilot). He had
always had a love of flying, and his wife and family were very supportive.
He had, in fact, taken some of his children flying with him, and had taken
a second job to ensure that his family was well-provided for. Lorraine
Carey stated that "the only thing he loved more than flying was his
family".
Carey was described by his instructor,
Robert Kiesel, as "a very personable individual, and I mean by this a very
happy personality, a big man. He had a ruddy complexion, it seems to me,
and he seemed quite enthusiastic from the very first day I met him." He
went on to describe his attitude toward flight training: "I wish all
students that I have ever had or ever hope to have would be as
enthusiastic."
Carey had spent the previous day working.
That evening at home, he had read, ate, and retired at about 9:30. He had
worked the morning of September 9 from 0800 until 1200 (he worked for
William Steck Plumbing and Heating, at 54th & College in Indianapolis),
had eaten lunch at home and then gone to the airport in his 1967 Ford
Country Squire for the flight he'd planned. He had a dentist appointment
scheduled for later that afternoon.
Labor Day in 1969 had been on the first of
the month, so the school year had already started for the kids. He would
have eaten lunch with his wife and two youngest children, and then, as was
his custom, Bob would have kissed his wife and told her that he loved her
before leaving.
Mr. Carey had no health problems other that
his wearing glasses, and the slipped disc he had suffered in January of
1967.
The couple's children were: Michael, 11; Thomas, 9; Darlene, 8; Kathleen,
6; Charlene, 4; Lisa, 8 months. Michael was in junior high, and the rest
(except Charlene and Lisa) were in Elementary School.
James Elrod was an experienced pilot, and one of the best. He had
become a commercial pilot in 1945, and had served with Allegheny Airlines
for 19 years. His ATP certificate was loaded with type ratings, for the
DC-3, DC-9, and Convair 240/340/440. His first-class medical had been
re-issued only 36 days prior to the crash, with the only stipulation being
that he wear glasses for his nearsightedness while flying. He had 900
hours in the DC-9, a staggering 23,813 hours total time, and an
outstanding reputation of respect from his peers and supervisors.
William Heckendorn, the first officer, was 26 years old. He had
been enamored by flying from a very young age, and had taken it up
immediately after leaving the U.S. Army. He had progressed rapidly, and
had been hired by Allegheny Airlines after only a few years flying a
corporate twin. His credentials were impeccable, his certifications
completely up to date, and he was rapidly working his way toward becoming
a full Captain. His 2,980 hours are small in comparison to that of Capt.
Elrod, but nevertheless show tremendous piloting experience, and are
absolutely in line with what one would expect for a professional pilot of
his standing. His 651 hours in DC-9s further prove that an extremely
well-qualified pilot in type was in the right seat. He had been home in
Newville, PA, the day before his final flight. His father gave me
remembrances of Bill leaving the house in the afternoon to go to the
airport, and how one of his little 2-year-old family members had been
especially adamant that day that Bill not leave.
This crew had spent the previous evening in Boston, having arrived there
at 2219. As they were not scheduled to report for duty until 1100 the next
day, they had had plenty of opportunity to get the required rest they
would need for Tuesday's schedule.
The Passengers
In Cincinnati, many people were waiting to board
TWA flight 69 to St. Louis, and then on to Los Angeles. As it was not
known how long this flight would be delayed, passengers were given the
option to board Allegheny 853 if they desired. 38 passengers accepted this
offer, and flight 853 was held 15 minutes for these passengers to
transfer. 26 others decided to wait for their TWA flight, which arrived
only an hour behind schedule. How many "what if"s are there in this
scenario? If the flight hadn't been delayed, if the offer to switch hadn't
been made, if they hadn't held 853 because of that offer,....
That having been said, though, I have been
contacted by one of the gate agents who was in Cincinnati for flight 853,
who took the tickets from each of the doomed passengers, and who himself
had originally made the decision to hold the plane. Thirty years later, he
is still struggling with that decision. Though the airline offered none of
its employees any of the counseling sessions so commonplace today, the
decision to hold the plane was the right one. Without the hub-and-spoke
feeder systems used by airlines today, it was imperative that as many
seats as possible be full when each flight took off. On-time standards
were not so tight as today, and so it was very common for gate agents to
hold flights for passengers, even for passengers connecting from other
airlines. From personal experience, I can tell you that doesn't happen
today. But still, by all rights, holding the flight was the correct thing
to do.
The Controller
Merrill McCammack was working quite a bit
of sky. The task of handling arrivals from the east and west were usually
split between two controllers, but on this day, he was responsible for
both areas of sky. This didn't present much of a problem for a veteran
controller, and was completely within legal guidelines for Air Traffic
Control workload, and it wasn't a busy enough day that these thoughts
would even have entered anyone's mind. McCammack was just doing his job.
The equipment in use at Weir Cook Airport
in Indianapolis at that time was not much different than that used today,
except for the fact that the radar wasn't selective enough in what it
displayed to the controller. Ground clutter was picked up so frequently
and to such a distracting extent, that it was very customary for the
radar's sensitivity to be set on "low" power. This had been done on
September 9, 1969. (The power setting turned out not to be a factor,
however, as subsequent test flight showed the radar to be unreliable for
picking up the small plane from that distance, even at a high power
setting.)
The Cherokee had filed a VFR flight plan,
and so, controllers knew it would be in the sky after 3:00. Being VFR,
though, that flight would not be required to talk to anyone at
Indianapolis' control tower, it was not required to have a transponder,
and its position would not be tracked as diligently (if at all) as would a
large jet on an IFR flight plan. Mr. Carey did not request "flight
following" from ATC (though he did activate his flight plan), so there was
no way ATC would see him except on their inadequate radar.
In fact, controller McCammack had Allegheny
flight 853 on his radar scope, and was tracking its progress as he did
every day at this time. In preparation for a visual approach to runway 31
left (which means the plane will be landing toward the northwest), with
the plane to the southeast of Indianapolis, he cleared the flight down to
2500' and gave it a westerly heading in order to bring it directly to the
southeast of the runway. (Pilots would call this "entering a 45° right
base for 31L".)
The crew of 853 acknowledged this
clearance, and the plane descended. Breaking out of the clouds somewhere
around 3000', Captain Elrod would have had his attention totally fixed on
the instruments, while co-pilot Heckendorn was monitoring the radio,
ensuring the plane was complying with clearances, and beginning the final
pre-landing checks.
Unseen on the radar scope was Bob Carey's
Cherokee, flying south at 2500'. Post-crash tests determined that, even
had the radar's sensitivity been turned to its highest level, the small
plane would not have shown up. Because of the distance between the
Cherokee and the tower, the radar in use at that time (the technology
existed for more powerful radar, and the controllers had requested it, but
Weir Cook was not using it), and the fact that the Cherokee was not
position reporting (due to the flight being of such short duration),
McCammack had no way of knowing what was about to happen.
He heard the crew's acknowledgement of the
clearance, then turned his attention to another screen to handle an
arrival from the west (Allegheny 820) and to look at the clock to write
the hand-off time on 853's flight strip. (His notation was "29", meaning
the time was 3:29pm.) Tapes showed him off the east screen for no more
than ten seconds, but it was enough. When he looked back to 853, there was
no return on the screen. The plane was gone. Even if he had seen it
disappear, though, he would have had no way of knowing what had happened
to it.
The
Impact
The two aircraft converged at an alarming rate,
each completely oblivious to the other's presence. The angle of the flight
paths, and the determination of the Cherokee's pre-impact speed and
heading (from the NTSB's examination of body damage) allows us to
calculate that the two aircraft were converging at a relative speed of
approximately 350 mph! (Diagram
here.)
Only in the last second or so would the "blossom" effect have allowed each
crew to see the other, and by then it was definitely too late. Witnesses
reported that no pre-impact diversions were attempted by either ship, and
this observation was backed up by the FDR on the DC-9. Though any evasive
control inputs made by the pilot would have taken some time to manifest
themselves visually, the accelerometers aboard the plane would have
recorded some tenths of a G change, had those inputs occurred.
There is some evidence that Capt. Elrod did see the Piper, because the CVR
records him saying "I'm going down" as the impact is happening. He begins
the statement 0.7 sec before impact, then the impact occurs, then he
finishes the statement within another half-second. The reasons for his
taking so long to utter such a simple phrase may well be his mental
preoccupation with the immediate task of seeing the other plane,
recognizing that it indeed was another plane, and beginning to apply an
evasive control input. His brain was most likely too occupied at that
point to worry about finishing a sentence quickly, especially one that was
most likely uttered half to himself, just to confirm what he was already
in the process of doing! (Remember, Mr. Heckendorn had just given an
altitude to him, and off-hand comments like "I'm going down" are often
thrown out between crew members, as in, "Yes, we are in fact descending",
kind of a thinking-out-loud between the crew.)
Mr. Carey, in the Piper, most likely never knew what hit him. He was
probably performing that all-too-necessary task of advanced student pilots
on cross-country flights: verifying his position. He was absolutely right
on course, and certainly would've intended to stay that way. Small planes,
when set up properly, do fly themselves straight and level quite well, and
pilots often take a few seconds away from the window to look at a map,
make a time notation, recheck fuel calculations, switch fuel tanks, or
just re-tune the radio to the next point of contact. That these actions
can take ten seconds or more is not evidence of unsafe flying skills, it's
just the way flying is. Let's face it, mid-air collisions are rare, and if
tunnel-vision-style devotion to collision-avoidance scanning were
performed constantly by all pilots, not only would no one ever want to fly
again, but flying would not be as safe as it is! People would get
lost, and seriously overstressed pilots would tend to become even more
lax in their collision-avoidance duties.
In the final one or two tenths of a second, Mr. Carey would have seen the
large plane pass right in front of him. Because of the relative motion of
the two craft, his plane would have been in one instant pointed right
toward the cockpit of the DC-9, about 50 feet away. Then, in the next
instant, it passed directly over the large right wing (30 feet), then
above the engines (10 feet), and then…. When this sight hit his eyes,
though, his brain would not have had time to react by sending a message to
his arms to yank on the control wheel. He would not have had time to say
anything, or do anything, or probably even think anything. If he had been
looking down at a chart, he would've merely looked up from it -- into
blackness. More likely, the blackness came as his head was turned away.
Was his the easiest death, or the worst? He died instantly, without even
being able to have the comfort of a last thought for the wife and children
he loved so much.
Surely, though, there had to have been a passenger on the starboard side
of the DC-9 who was looking out their window at just the right instant.
They would have seen the Piper down and to their left, not moving in the
window, but growing slightly larger. Then, in those last tenths of a
second, the blossom of the small plane would have coincided with the
beginning of its rapid relative motion upward and toward the right side of
their window, and they would have vaguely recognized it, but only as
something that was definitely not supposed to be there. Then, the impact.
While everyone else on board was wondering what in the world that jolt
could have been, and why they were turning left, and then, why they were
going inverted, and then, why the pilot wasn't doing anything about it,
well, our unlucky passenger would have been the only one, as the
realization dawned of just exactly what that thing out there had been, who
understood it all.
The two aircraft slammed into each other at a relative speed of 350mph.
The initial point of impact, as determined by the NTSB, was at the top
front right section of the DC-9's vertical stabilizer, just underneath the
horizontal stabilizer. There had to have been some relative motion in the
vertical plane, because the airliner was descending, but the NTSB
investigation did not reveal enough to report this. On the Piper, the
impact point was on the front left side of the plane, just forward of the
left wing root. This is just inches in front and to the left of where the
pilot sits.
The little plane was cut in half by the
collision, the vertical stabilizer of the DC-9 slicing it cleanly in two
at a 45° angle right across the cockpit. From cuts and scratch marks on
both planes, the NTSB was able to determine that the engine, propeller,
engine compartment, and right wing of the Piper continued on past the
vertical stabilizer, the path of that assembly having been "wrapped
around" it just slightly, and shot across the underside of the left half
of the DC-9's horizontal stabilizer. The propeller still spun a couple of
times, as evidenced by several cut marks in the stabilizer's underside
skin. The rest of the small plane, including the left wing, fuselage, and
about ¾ of the cockpit (including the body of the pilot, who had been
instantly killed), scraped along the underside of the right half of the
horizontal stabilizer.
The combined force of this huge impact
completely sheared off the entire tail assembly of the DC-9. Though the
fuselage's integrity was most likely compromised (witnesses reported
seeing objects they thought were passengers falling from the plane), no
one on the airliner was ejected. Whether anyone was killed in the impact,
by the huge forces snapping their heads to the side, will never be known.
That is unlikely, though, because the pilots, being as far away from the
plane's CG as the impact point was, would have felt a similar
instantaneous snapping torque in the opposite direction, and we know from
the CVR that they were conscious following the impact.
The
Crash
The remains of the small plane fell to the
ground, along with the tail of the DC-9. When the Cherokee was beheaded,
all of its aerodynamics were severely compromised. What the huge tail had
begun, air resistance finished, and the forward momentum that the plane
had had was gone. Investigators are fairly certain that the spot where the
fuselage of the 140 landed was almost directly beneath the point of
impact.
The right wing and engine of the Piper, some of its momentum still intact,
fell to the ground a couple of hundred feet to the south. The tail of the
DC-9, likewise, fell somewhat closer to the west. Though the fuselage
carrying Mr. Carey fell more rapidly, witnesses described the other pieces
of both planes as "fluttering" to earth, taking seemingly quite a while to
fall.
Mr. Carey's body, still strapped into his seat, was the only body that was
found intact. No autopsy was performed, because it was obvious what had
killed him. His body had sustained tens of thousands of Gs, and though
applied only over a very short time, these forces were enough to provide
fatal trauma to most of his internal organs and fracture his neck.
What happened to the DC-9 is somewhat a matter of academic conjecture. The
NTSB, as well as the coroner who was on the scene, both state assuredly
that the plane must have crashed inverted. Witnesses to the crash itself
vary in their descriptions; some say the plane "nosed over" and went into
the ground, some say the plane "spun in", and there was one description of
a "barrel roll". The NTSB is at odds with witnesses on other points,
though (most notably the time of the event), and they are the ones who
reconstructed the fuselage. To attempt to affirm any observation through a
study of the aerodynamics involved would be pointless, because tests of
this sort have never been performed. A likely scenario, but one which must
remain conjecture, follows:
The Piper hit the jet both behind and above the large plane's center of
gravity, underneath its horizontal stabilizer, after having passed
directly over its right wing. That passage over the wing would not have
imparted any aerodynamic influence on the flight path of the airliner,
because of the relative sizes of the planes and the short amount of time
such influence would have had between its inception and the planes'
subsequent impact. The impact itself was enough to impart a torque on the
jet in all three of its axes, and cause it to begin a movement consisting
of downward pitch, right yaw and left roll. The impact would also have
slowed the large plane some small amount. Here is a summary of the CVR
from the DC-9:
1) 1529:13 [FO] "Out of thirty-five for twenty-five"
2) 1529:14.3 [P] "I'm going down" (completed at 1529:15.9)
3) 1529:15 Sound of objects striking metal
4) 1529:16 Landing Gear warning horn
5) 1529:17 Stall vibration
6) 1529:18 Landing Gear warning horn stops. Noise level low.
7) (no time report) Items impacting the cockpit ceiling. [Unidentified]
"…tail must be…"
8) (no time report) Noise level begins to increase. [FO] "What'd ya hit up
there?"
9) 1529:27.1 Huge increase in noise level as the recording stops.
This sequence can be interpreted as follows:
1) The First Officer acknowledges ATC's direction to descend to 2500'. He
would most likely have been looking at the altimeter to make this
verification, and in any case, Allegheny procedures required him to stay
on the altimeter for call-outs to avoid busting the clearance (descending
below 2500').
2) Either the pilot saw the Cherokee, and began this statement prior to
impact, or it was just a simple statement that, yes, in fact, we are
definitely descending. If he saw the other plane with seven-tenths of a
second to go, though, why wasn't some evasive force registered on the
accelerometers? Would he have made such a banal, off-hand comment as an
acknowledgment of a descent that was already in progress? Or, consider
this scenario: The plane was in a steady descent, and so the plane was
experiencing slightly less than 1G. Could the pilot have seen the small
plane, reacted by beginning a pull-up, and just as the planes hit and the
accelerometer trace ended (showing 1.0G as its last reading), the
acceleration had increased to the 1G that registered? We would have to
know the readings during descent to be able to calculate the likelihood of
this happening, but it is possible.
3) Impact.
4) The jet must have slowed down slightly. The landing gear warning horn
is activated when the airspeed drops below a certain threshold, when the
landing gear aren't extended. This is to remind the pilot to put the gear
down, if by some unbelievably small chance he's overlooked it.
5) The speed has decreased to where the stall buffet actually starts,
though stall characteristics of aircraft in this unusual (sans
tail) predicament aren't too well documented. Keep in mind the plane is
banked and level at this point, which would in itself cause the stall
speed to rise.
6) The plane has banked; with no down force from the tail, and no rudder
to check the yaw, it proceeds into a nose-low attitude. The airspeed
begins increasing, and so the horn cuts off.
7) The airplane has gone inverted, and is beginning to increase its
nose-low attitude. Objects hit the ceiling, and the plane dives for the
ground. The lack of a tail makes the situation worse (when inverted, a
plane naturally wants to nose down, even with a tail), and the
pilot, who has neither yaw nor pitch control, realizes something is wrong
with the tail.
8) The plane is in a shallow dive. (From the cockpit, though, it must look
as if it's headed straight in -- with nothing they can do to stop their
impending death, this is about as helpless as I believe it's possible for
a human to ever feel. It's one of the reasons that the most common last
words heard on fatal CVRs are not screams, but merely a completely ho-hum,
totally resigned, this-is-how-it-all-ends, "Oh, Shit.". The noise level is
the ram air driving the engines past their normal speed, and the copilot
throws out this question as if an answer would be the solution to their
problems.
9) The CVR records the massive impact with the ground, but only for the
mere hundredths of a second that elapse between the jet's first impact --
and silence.
It's been right at 12 seconds since the impact with the small plane, and
the jet's speed is at least 400 mph. The dive is not so steep as to cause
the impact crater to be small and deep, though. The plane hits at an
angle, inverted and just about exactly wings-level. The aircraft, along
with everything and everyone in it, is completely destroyed, shattering
into thousands of pieces by the enormous, explosive impact. All the
passengers are killed instantly by forces amounting to tens of thousands
of Gs, and pieces of everything and everyone are found scattered
everywhere, for a distance of over a half mile. The NTSB report dryly
understates, "[The plane] was relatively intact except for the parts which
separated in the collision." There is no fire, since kerosene does not
burn easily, and because the force of the impact spreads the fuel out so
thin that combustion cannot occur.
The plane has crashed into a soybean field, about a hundred yards north of
a mobile home park. Residents of Shady Acres, some of whom actually saw
and heard the impact, scramble toward the spot in total bewilderment.
Those who had seen the plane coming had dived for shelter wherever they
could find it, and now, as they look at what remains of the plane, they
realize there is nothing they can do. Those who saw the crash are sure
they saw the doomed plane actually turn slightly to avoid the trailers, as
though the pilot had been doing what he was trained to do -- "fly it until
the last piece stops moving".
There were some eyewitnesses who actually had observed the two aircraft
for several seconds before the impact, one of them even shouting to her
husband that "I think they're going to hit!" Quite a few people in the
trailer park witnessed what must surely be one of the most spectacular and
horrible things a person can imagine: a huge jetliner - normally so
stately and serene while majestically soaring through the air or proudly
standing on the tarmac - plunging like a wounded bird to a violent,
deafening, earth-shattering death. We have become so accustomed to
spectacular special effects in movies and on television, that such a sight
might be expected not to elicit the awe and horror it deserves. We can
only wish that the crash had been as unreal as images on Hollywood film,
and that the aftermath of the tragedy had been only a bad dream. One
resident of the trailer court said, "The pilot must have seen the open
area and did all he could to keep the plane out of the trailer court. The
pilot must have known he was going to die, but he didn't want to kill a
lot of innocent people. It was only by the grace of God that he didn't ."
A school bus had just stopped to let off some children at the park, and
the crash scattered debris and bodies all around it. The driver of the bus
was heard to tell a reporter that he had to move several body parts away
from the bus, so that the kids would have a clear path to get off. As
improbable as the accident had been, as unlikely as it was that two
aircraft could try to occupy the same spot in the sky at exactly the same
fraction of a second, it was even more amazing that Captain Elrod, knowing
he was going to die, with his ship crippled as it was, somehow managed to
make sure that his last act as a pilot was to keep his terrible fate away
from those residents -- and those children.
A Miracle of Misunderstanding
There was one family who was spared the full brunt of the tragedy. Mr. And
Mrs. Darrell Hardesty of Linton, IN, had been ticketed aboard the
ill-fated jet. They had been visiting their daughter in Fayetteville, NC,
and were to return on Allegheny through Cincinnati on September 9. The
couple were making their way to the airport that morning to catch their
8:00am flight in Fayetteville, only to see their plane taking off as they
arrived at the airport. Apparently, some confusion over Daylight Savings
Time had caused them to believe they still had an hour left before the
flight would depart. Consequently, they missed their connection to Flight
853, and did not arrive in Indianapolis until 2:00am the next morning. As
airline officials had not informed them of the crash of their scheduled
flight, they did not know that relatives back home would be concerned
about their welfare. Mrs. Hardesty's sister and brother-in-law, of Carmel,
IN, had indeed been waiting for flight 853 at Weir Cook airport that
afternoon, and therefore went home that afternoon believing the worst
about their relatives. The confusion was cleared up only after Mrs.
Hardesty called another sister in Linton the next morning to inform
her of their late return. Imagine the surprise they both must have
experienced during the first few exchanges of that conversation!
The Investigation
The first people on the scene were the residents
of the trailer park. Of course, there was nothing they could do. Security
was on the scene within 15 minutes, and by 8:00pm, over 500 emergency
personnel were on the scene.
Sunset was at 7:01pm, and efforts were made that evening to gather as many
remains as possible. The work was solemn and professional, yet hurried and
intense. Everyone could feel the magnitude of what had happened, but for
most, the whole situation was like a dream. Days would pass before some
could come to terms with exactly what they'd seen in that field.
This was not the only tragedy that occurred on 9 September 1969. In
eastern Columbia, a Satena Airlines C-47 crashed with 32 persons aboard
(including three children). There were no survivors in that crash either.
An amazing follow-up to the Allegheny tragedy was provided on September
11th, just two days after the crash. On that day, the exact same flight
853, while departing Cincinnati on its way to Indianapolis, was
involved in a near-collision with a small single-engine airplane! The
pilot of the jet reported the small plane crossing his path with less than
a half-mile of clearance, and performed an evasive maneuver to avoid
contact. As far as the controllers could tell, the small plane's pilot
never knew the urgency or seriousness of the situation.
Memorial
A multi-denominational memorial service was
held in the rain at Forest Hill Cemetery in Shelbyville, IN, on 17
September. (See a picture
here.) 32
caskets were laid to rest there, each containing the remains of a victim
(or, actually, bulk remains divided evenly among the caskets by weight)
who could not be identified.
I was sent a copy of the funeral
publication, The Director, from November 1969. Read an edited
version of the story written by one of the major funeral directors
involved in this tragedy
here.
The
Trial
I have done some research into the
litigation that came out of this tragedy. There is a lot of material of
interest here, and you'll need to go
here to see it.
©
1999
Dan McGlaun
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