The Mystery of the Lost Clipper
The Civil Aeronautics Board and the FBI abandoned the case 47 years ago, but two amateur detectives are still searching for the cause of the crash of Pan Am 944.
- By Gregg Herken with Ken Fortenberry
- Air & Space magazine, September 2004
Twenty-five victims were never found, including Bill Fortenberry. For years, his son Ken believed the navigator was awaiting rescue on a desert island.
NASM (SI Neg. #00129509)
THIS IS A GHOST STORY. FOR THE PAST 46 YEARS, the two of us—Ken, a newspaper publisher, and me, a history professor—have been haunted by what happened to Pan American Airways Flight 7 early in the evening of November 9, 1957. The airliner, Clipper Romance of the Skies, was on the first leg of a round-the-world journey that began earlier that day in San Francisco. Its next stop was to have been Honolulu, but the Boeing 377—known by the airline as PAA-944—never arrived. It crashed in the Pacific, killing 44 people, including Ken’s father, second officer and navigator Bill Fortenberry, and flight attendant Marie McGrath, who had been my fourth grade teacher.
Our class was told that the big four-engine Boeing Stratocruiser had simply vanished, but the biggest air-sea search since the disappearance of Amelia Earhart would end just days later with the discovery of 19 bodies and floating wreckage about 1,000 miles northeast of Honolulu. And the little that was recovered from the flight only deepened the mystery.
Three anomalies confounded Civil Aeronautics Board crash investigators: There was no decipherable distress call received from 944; the location of the debris showed that the Clipper was well off course and headed away from a Coast Guard ship that could have helped; and, finally, elevated levels of carbon monoxide were found in several of the recovered bodies. Further inquiry by authorities implicated three suspects in the loss of the aircraft. The mystery of Romance of the Skies was, in effect, an airborne Agatha Christie thriller—Murder on the Orient Express at 10,000 feet.
In January 1959, after an unusually long investigation, baffled CAB officials found “no probable cause” for the crash, and formally closed their inquiry. Informally, Ken and I have reopened it, with the hope of bringing 21st century technology to bear upon this nearly-50-year-old mystery, and to finally discover what happened to a father, a favorite teacher, and the 42 other souls on board Clipper Romance of the Skies.
Like the fabled B-314 flying boat that preceded it, the Stratocruiser was an aircraft unmatched in size, speed, and luxury when Boeing introduced it to the world’s airlines in 1947. Dubbed “the ocean liner of the air,” the B-377 featured Pullman-style sleeping berths, separate men’s and women’s dressing rooms, and a horseshoe-shaped cocktail lounge in the belly of the airplane. Reclining seats doubled as sleeperettes and offered an amazing 60 inches of legroom. Seven-course dinners, beginning with champagne and caviar, were served on china. Meals for first-class passengers on transatlantic flights were catered by Maxim’s of Paris.
Even laden with heavy appointments, the “Strato-clipper” was faster than its two commercial rivals, the Douglas DC-6 and the Lockheed Constellation. Four Pratt & Whitney R-4360 B6 Wasp Major engines—the biggest piston engines ever put into production—gave it a top speed of 350 mph and an unmatched capacity for payload, as much as 30,000 pounds. When 944 left the gate at San Francisco’s International Airport shortly before noon for the nine-and-a-half-hour flight, its cargo hold was stocked with luggage, mail, movie film, radioactive medicine, and a new IBM computer.
The 38 passengers aboard the Clipper reflected the socioeconomic status of those who could afford the $300 ticket to Hawaii or the $1,600 round-the-world fare (equivalent to $10,500 today). Robert LaMaison, the vice president of Renault Auto and a World War II French air ace, was on vacation with his wife Nicole. William Hagan, a prominent Louisville surgeon, and his wife Norma Jean were on their way to a medical conference in Honolulu. H. Lee Clack, the general manager of Dow Chemical in Tokyo, was headed home with his wife Anna, sons Bruce and Scott, and two adopted daughters, Kimi and Nancy. Edward Ellis, the vice president and general sales manager of a spice company, was beginning a tour of his firm’s overseas plantations. Soledad Mercado—a Phoenix dress designer better known as “Soledad of Arizona”—hoped to find new customers abroad.
Those on Romance that day also included the mundane—and the mysterious. A deadheading Pan Am pilot, Robert Alexander, had planned a fishing trip to the islands with his wife and their two children. Twenty-four-year-old William Deck was en route to Kyoto to marry a Japanese woman he had met while in the U.S. Navy. Foreign service officer Thomas McGrail was bound for Rangoon, Burma, and an assignment as cultural attaché at the American embassy there. U.S. Air Force Major Harold Sunderland’s final destination remains somewhat unclear. Sunderland belonged to the 1,134th Special Activities Squadron and was on an undisclosed mission to southeast Asia with a briefcase full of classified documents. The Air Force would later describe Sunderland in a press release simply as an “information gatherer.”
In command of 944 that day was 40-year-old Captain Gordon Brown, a 15-year veteran of the airline. Bill Wygant, the first officer, had been with Pan Am for more than a dozen years. The young flight engineer, Al Pintara, was taking night courses in electronics at a community college in anticipation of promotion. The senior flight attendant, Yvonne Alexander, was a statuesque blonde who also took care of her ailing father in San Francisco.
Ken’s father, navigator Bill Fortenberry, 35, was an avid outdoorsman who enjoyed taking his young sons to Yosemite on weekend hiking and fishing trips. Abandoned by his mother while in his teens, Bill had been taken in by a South Carolina farm family and originally planned to be a minister, but he had a yearning to fly, so he took a part-time carpentry job after college to pay for the lessons. He was a religious man, and his sons remember him telling them that once a man has flown over the clouds and gazed upon the Earth below and the heavens above, he could never doubt the existence of God.
Stewardess Marie McGrath, 26, was an energetic brunette whom friends would remember as “pretty” and “pert.” Even while she was attending Keuka College in upstate New York, Marie had dreams of someday flying for Pan Am. Under her graduation picture in the college yearbook is the inscription “Wanderlust...air-minded...California.”
During her three-week layovers between round-the-world flights, Marie worked as a substitute teacher at my elementary school in San Mateo, California. When our regular teacher went on maternity leave, our class came to know and love Miss McGrath, who one day held a “luau” for us kids. We were all secretly sad when our regular teacher returned to work and Marie went back to flying.
At 4:04 p.m. local time, from an altitude of 10,000 feet, Captain Brown radioed a routine position report to the Pontchartrain, a Coast Guard weather ship stationed in the Pacific to assist over-flying aircraft. Romance of the Skies had just passed the point of no return and was on course and schedule, 1,160 miles from Honolulu and about 10 miles east of the Pontchartrain. The skies were clear and the seas calm, with the sun low in the western sky. Onboard the Clipper, Yvonne Alexander and Marie McGrath had just started serving hors d’oeuvres when something terrible happened. Twenty-two minutes later—wristwatches found on three recovered bodies had stopped at 4:26 p.m.—944 hit the water.
Debris from 944 was eventually found 90 miles to the north of the flight’s intended track, suggesting that the airplane continued to fly for some time after the mysterious incident occurred. Fourteen of the 19 bodies recovered were wearing life vests but no shoes, indicating that some preparations had been made for ditching. (Yvonne Alexander’s body was found still strapped to its seat, a life vest carefully fitted over her serving apron.) Floating fragments of the fuselage and cabin indicated that the airplane hit the ocean with the nose slightly down and the right wing lowered. Although several of the recovered bodies exhibited “impact trauma,” according to the CAB report, the fact that most died from drowning suggests that 944’s final plunge into the sea was not completely uncontrolled. The wreckage had burn marks; these were above the waterline, indicating a post-crash fire, but there was no evidence of an inflight conflagration.
Pan Am and the FBI suspected foul play. Suspicions grew when autopsies uncovered high levels of carbon monoxide in four bodies. The gas was found in the bloodstreams of Captain Brown and passengers who had been seated in the front as well as the rear of the airplane, suggesting that the carbon monoxide had been widely distributed.
For years afterward, whenever an airplane went down under “mysterious circumstances,” I would think of Romance of the Skies and Marie McGrath. On my first day at work at the National Air and Space Museum, in 1988, I asked my new colleagues in the aeronautics department about the B-377 and its reputation. But my job as chairman of the department of space history left me little time for research. In 2002, shortly before I left NASM, I finally began to seriously investigate the incident.
The revelation that I was not alone in my search came suddenly—like the discovery of footprints on a supposedly deserted beach—when I typed “Romance of the Skies” into an Internet search engine and came up with Ken’s Web site on the crash. After a short correspondence and several phone calls, Ken and I decided to join efforts.
Ken had begun his investigation almost 40 years earlier. As a child, he’d become convinced that his father was still alive on a desert island awaiting rescue, but on the tragedy’s seventh anniversary, he realized that his father wasn’t coming home. He wrote a letter to the CAB’s chairman saying he wanted some answers about his father’s death, and the CAB responded by sending him a copy of its report. Even as a 13-year-old, he thought the report was incomplete. Not a week goes by that he doesn’t file a Freedom of Information Act request or try to chase down another angle.
Independently, we had both researched 944 on the Web site of the CAB’s successor agency, the National Transportation Safety Board. The NTSB archives provided a passenger manifest and the basic facts of the investigation. Ken was able to get more details about the people who had been on Romance of the Skies by mining hometown newspaper “morgues,” and through the Freedom of Information Act, we obtained the FBI file on 944, which revealed a surprising—and disturbing—twist to the story.
On November 18, 1957, as the aircraft carrier Philippine Sea docked at Long Beach with recovered bodies and wreckage, a dockside dispute between CAB representatives and FBI agents concerning who had jurisdiction in the case blossomed into a full-fledged feud between the rival agencies. In retaliation, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover washed his hands of the investigation. Ignoring pleas from both the airline and the head of the CAB, Hoover left the question of determining whether a crime had been committed up to Pan Am and the board, whose investigatory capabilities were considerably less than the bureau’s.
We began our own inquiries by posting questions on a pair of Web sites maintained by former Pan Am employees, asking for information about 944’s crew members from those who might have known them. We were surprised to be deluged with responses from more than two dozen pilots, navigators, flight engineers, and flight attendants. And we learned from them that the airline, back in 1957, suspected one of its own.
Former colleagues revealed that 944’s 46-year-old purser, Eugene Crosthwaite, had previously been in trouble with Pan Am for erratic and sometimes bizarre behavior. Crosthwaite once bragged that he had deliberately dropped a meal on the galley floor before serving it to an unsuspecting captain, who he felt had insulted him. Furthermore, Crosthwaite blamed Pan Am for several misfortunes, including the tuberculosis he’d contracted in Shanghai before the war, while serving as a purser on the airline’s flying boats.
Though fully recovered from the disease, Crosthwaite had been despondent following his wife Julie’s death from cancer three months earlier. She was a raven-haired beauty some 13 years younger, whom he had met and married in China. Her death had left Gene the sole guardian of Tania, his wife’s 16-year-old daughter from a previous marriage.
Relations between Crosthwaite and Tania were stormy. On November 3, just days before the flight, Crosthwaite had called the county sheriff’s office to complain about the girl, whom he called “a demon” and blamed for his wife’s death. Crosthwaite even amended his will the morning of the flight—disinheriting Tania unless she “lived a moral and upright Catholic life”—and left a copy of the document in the glove compartment of his car, which he parked at the airport.
Pan Am considered the changed will a smoking gun—an indication that Crosthwaite had planned to die. The CAB too assigned one of its investigators, Claude Schonberger, to look into Crosthwaite’s background. Schonberger’s investigation seemed to strengthen the case against the purser. According to his report, Crosthwaite’s father-in-law remembered the suspect showing him a handful of blasting powder a few days before the flight, and despite an exhaustive search, neither Schonberger nor the purser’s father-in-law could find the explosive on Crosthwaite’s property after the crash. For Schonberger, the most damning evidence was a chance remark that Tania made to the sheriff. The sheriff testified that Tania thought it “probable that [Crosthwaite] might have taken his life and destroyed the 40-odd passengers on the flight ‘because he was too chicken to go alone.’ ”
But just as Pan Am seemed ready to conclude, 10 months after the tragedy, that the purser did it, a new suspect suddenly entered the case. William Harrison Payne, 41, listed as a passenger on Romance of the Skies, was reportedly on his way to Hawaii to collect an overdue debt. Payne owned the Roxbury hunting lodge, outside Scotts Bar, California, a small town near the Oregon border. Among the more curious details about Payne—whose body was not recovered—was the fact that the purported debt amounted to less than the price of the one-way ticket to Honolulu he had purchased. Even more remarkable was the fact that Payne had taken out a total of three life insurance policies on himself—one of which paid double in the event of accidental death—shortly before the flight. The two most recent policies, from separate companies, would pay a total of $125,000 to his wife Harriet, and had been purchased only three days prior to 944’s departure. But perhaps the most arresting aspect of Payne’s life was his career before becoming an innkeeper: he had been a Navy frogman—a demolitions expert.
Payne’s story came to light in the pages of the San Francisco Examiner, under the banner headline “Blast Plot Hinted in Mid-Pacific Air Crash.” The source for the story was Russell Stiles, an investigator for Western Life Insurance Company. Pending the results of Stiles’ inquiry, Western Life was withholding payment to Payne’s wife on the $10,000 double-indemnity policy Payne had bought two weeks before the crash. Upon learning of Payne’s background, Stiles had gone to the FBI and, frustrated by the bureau’s inaction, had alerted the Examiner’s crime reporter.
Stiles’ investigation only deepened his conviction that Payne had brought the airplane down to collect the insurance money, and had in fact never been aboard Romance of the Skies. Stiles discovered that the suspect had previously been in trouble with the law for trying to collect tolls on a public road used by logging trucks. Threatened with arrest, he had set off a dynamite charge in the road, making it unusable. Payne had also fired three shots at a business associate for reasons no one could discover and was overheard to boast that he could build a delayed-action detonator using only a length of wire and two flashlight batteries.
After interviewing people who had known Payne, Stiles also discovered a possible motive for the crime: Payne owed his mother $10,000 for the hunting lodge, which was losing money and was up for sale.
As Stiles dug, the story got even stranger. In June 1958, seven months after the loss of 944, Harriet Payne got married in Tijuana to a friend and former neighbor of her husband’s. Two days later, while the newlyweds were still on their Mexican honeymoon, the heavily insured Roxbury Lodge burned to the ground. Although the authorities suspected arson, the insurance underwriters, faced with the prospect of a lawsuit from Harriet, quietly agreed to settle the claim. Meanwhile, the postmistress in Scotts Bar told Stiles, in confidence, that Harriet and her new husband had begun receiving mysterious letters and packages from overseas. There was never a return address.
In the late 1970s Ken tracked Stiles down to a small mountain town in Colorado. He refused repeated requests for a personal interview, but his daughter told Ken that Stiles had never been satisfied with the outcome of the official inquiry into 944. Even after retiring from Western Life, he had continued his investigation of Payne, using his own funds. Stiles remained persuaded that Payne was not only still alive, but likely in a vengeful mood. According to Stiles’ daughter, until the day he died, in March 1999, her father feared that he would one day answer the door and look into the hateful stare of William Payne.
While Pan Am suspected Crosthwaite, and Western Life fingered Payne, some CAB investigators blamed another culprit.
Boeing’s 377s had a history of problems with propellers. The airline had initially adopted seven-foot-long Hamilton-Standard Hydromatic propellers with hollow-core steel blades. But centrifugal force tended to push the neoprene in the cores (the blades weren’t truly hollow) toward the tips of the blades, creating an imbalance and, in at least a few instances, causing pieces of blades to fly off. When the wreckage of a Pan Am Stratocruiser that disappeared over the Brazilian jungle in 1952 was finally found, investigators discovered that the airplane had literally shaken itself to pieces after losing first a propeller and then an engine.
Pan Am and Hamilton-Standard sought to solve the problem by nickel-plating the blades. But when another Stratocruiser—with newly plated blades—was forced to ditch off the Oregon coast in 1955 because of a runaway propeller, the airline realized that hollow-core props weren’t the 377’s only problem.
A runaway, or “over-speeding,” propeller was a nightmare for any flight crew. If the variable-pitch propeller could not be feathered—its blade pitch changed to point the leading edges in the direction of flight—centrifugal force wrenched the blades to the lowest pitch stop. The resulting drag was equivalent to that produced by a solid disk the diameter of the propeller in front of the wing. At that pitch, even if the prop simply windmilled, there was a danger that it would fly apart and pieces would penetrate the fuselage.
Equally terrifying was the fact that a runaway could occur virtually without warning, and left the pilots only seconds to react. Often the first indication of a problem was a sudden change in propeller noise, from the normal dull throbbing to a rapidly ascending, blood-curdling whine. One Pan Am pilot likened the sound to “the cry of a thousand banshees.”
A year earlier, an over-speeding propeller and engine failure had forced 944’s sister ship, PAA-943, Clipper Sovereign of the Skies, down on its way from Hawaii to San Francisco at nearly the same spot Romance of the Skies crashed. After circling until daylight, Sovereign ditched next to the Pontchartrain. All 31 passengers and crew were able to evacuate the airplane before it sank.
Curiously, the final CAB report on 944 paid little attention to earlier Stratocruiser over-speeds and claimed that Romance of the Skies never had an over-speeding incident. But a telephone call from one of our Pan Am veteran contacts, a gruff-voiced, 90-year-old Irishman and former B-377 pilot named Clancy Mead, contradicted that claim.
Mead recounted that he had been at the controls of Romance of the Skies when the airplane experienced a runaway propeller on a flight to Hawaii in June 1957, barely six months before its fatal plunge into the sea. Unable to feather the prop on the no. 3 engine, and losing altitude at a rate of 100 feet per minute—even with the remaining engines at rated power—Mead turned 944 around and headed back to San Francisco. He estimated that Romance cleared the mountains along the coast by only 500 feet. Luckily, he was able to set the airplane down safely at the airport.
What may be the last pieces of the puzzle came to Ken and me from two more veterans, Frank Garcia and Tony Vasko, who contacted us when word of our search got around on aviation-related Web sites. For decades, Garcia, the flight engineer on Sovereign when it ditched in 1956, has suspected that the cause of Sovereign’s runaway prop was a small part in the engine nose case needed to move oil to the prop dome (see illustration, opposite). A failure of the oil transfer tube or the bearing connecting it to the dome would make it impossible to feather the blades on that propeller. But conclusive proof of Garcia’s theory remains inaccessible on the ocean floor. Tony Vasko was the director of overhaul at Eastern Airlines until he retired in 1990. An expert on aircraft engines and propellers, Vasko is a frequent contributer to technical journals and aviation magazines. He found evidence that Pan Am, the manufacturers, and the Federal Aviation Administration had recognized, by the time of 944’s accident, that the transfer tube—which was brazed, rather than bolted in place—represented a potentially fatal flaw on the 377. Thus, an emergency “AD”—Airworthiness Directive—issued by the FAA in early 1957 warned: “As a result of propeller shaft oil transfer bearing failures, several cases of loss of propeller control occurred which make it impossible to feather the affected propellers.” The directive ordered that the brazed joint be inspected on every engine and either replaced or repaired “not later than May 31, 1957.”
But Clancy Mead’s 944 prop runaway had occurred June 18, 1957—more than two weeks after the compliance date had passed. This seems to confirm claims by several Pan Am veterans that maintenance standards had slipped at the airline, which was rapidly losing money on the posh Stratocruiser and had already announced plans to replace the 377s with jets.
The problem with the oil transfer bearing was soon corrected, thanks to subsequent ADs. But had it been fixed before Romance of the Skies took off on its final flight?
The near-half-century that has passed since the loss of 944 has made it possible to rule out some of the theories that had been put forward at the time of the crash. For example, Japanese pathologists in the 1980s—fearful that the high incidence of drunk businessmen falling off their boats and drowning was the handiwork of organized crime—confirmed that excesscarbon monoxide, the forensic discovery that had worried CAB investigators as they first looked for causes of the crash, can be the result of natural decomposition in warm saltwater. But there is still no smoking gun that would allow Ken and me to say we have solved the mystery.
Ocean charts indicate that the resting place of 944 is at a depth within the range of today’s miniature subs. Deep-sea submersibles of the sort that discovered the resting place of the Titanic could almost certainly answer the question of whether Romance of the Skies broke apart from the aerodynamic stresses caused by a dead engine, or whether a disintegrating propeller pierced the cabin and started a fire, also knocking out communications.
But without a Titanic-like expedition, our next best hope lies in finding an audio tape that has become the Holy Grail of our search. Our Pan Am friends have told Ken and me about a tape recording of radio transmissions from aircraft transiting the Pacific that day. The recording, which was entered into evidence at the CAB hearing on 944 back in 1958, seemed to include a last desperate “Mayday” from Romance of the Skies after all. Pilots who had known the airplane’s crew claimed that, upon repeated playbacks, they could hear a faint, garbled message on the tape. Pan Am had appealed for help to Bell Laboratories, which, after analyzing the tape for three months, concluded that it contained no recognizable words.
Thanks to computers and the cold war, however, signal analysis has made giant strides over the past several decades. Digital processors have replaced the oscilloscopes of the 1950s. Recently, experts at the National Transportation Safety Board were able to deduce the cause of a helicopter crash by listening carefully to a recording of the pilot’s frantic radio calls. In the background, almost too faint to be heard, was the telltale sound of a failing gear. When the wreckage was pulled up from the bottom of San Francisco Bay, the NTSB’s hypothesis was confirmed.
The archivist at Lucent Technologies—formerly Bell Labs—says that both Lucent’s copy of the tape and the report done for Pan Am have likely been destroyed. Pan American Airways went out of business in 1991, and the University of Miami now owns its records. The bulk of those—some 1,000 boxes—remains in storage at a former Navy base nearby. That collection is largely unprocessed and is currently off limits to researchers. But it is likely that the maintenance records for 944, Pan Am’s internal investigation of Eugene Crosthwaite, and perhaps even the audio tape are all in that labyrinth of boxes.
The archivist at the University of Miami estimates that it will be at least three years before the Pan Am collection is processed and opened to researchers. NTSB representatives have expressed a willingness to reopen the investigation of Romance of the Skies if new evidence—or, in this case, old evidence that can be reanalyzed by new methods—surfaces.
If the tape is found, what might it reveal—if anything? An explosion? A struggle in the cockpit with a madman? Or the shrill, accelerating scream of a runaway propeller? When those boxes are opened, Ken and I plan to be there.
Sidebar:
The governor inside a constant-speed propeller helps translate engine power to blade pitch. Gyrating flyweights (A) in the governor are driven by the engine. When the engine’s power is increased or decreased, the change in centrifugal force causes the L-shaped flyweights to open or close an oil flow valve (B), which controls the amount of oil flowing through the oil transfer tube (C) into the prop dome. Inside the dome, pressure from the oil shifts the piston-and-roller assembly (D), which twists the cam to adjust the pitch of the blades. If oil drains from the prop dome—perhaps due to a failure of the oil transfer ring (E), which connects the oil transfer tube to the spinning prop shaft—centrifugal force wrenches the spinning blades to their lowest angle of attack, perpendicular to the air flow. This condition makes it impossible to feather the blades. Without resistance from the blades—which aren’t doing any work—the engine drives the propeller too fast, causing it to over-speed.
Comments (54)
Great article. I'm a Pan Am/stratocruiser buff and have never found any information about this particular flight other than the standard "mysterious disappearance" blurbs.
Thans for a super piece.
Posted by Bill Taylor on April 29,2008 | 10:11 AM
3.7.08
HI,
I AHAVE READ THE STORY HERE WITH GREAT INTEREST AND DRAW YOUR ATTENTION TO MC ARTHUR JOBS BOOKS SERIES AIR DISASTER WHERE SOME OF THE DETAILS ON THE HAMILTON STANDARD PROPELLER AND ITS PROBLEMS ARE EXPLAINED.
THEY CAN BE PURCHASED VIA AMAZON OR MAY BE AVAILABLE AT A LIBRARY. IT MIGHT EVEN BE POSSIBLE TO GET IN TOUCH WITH THE AUTHOR WHO IS GREATLY EXPERIENCED.
REGARDS,
MPG ZUERICH, SWITZERLAND.
Posted by m.p.grandville on July 3,2008 | 01:16 PM
I enjoyed your article.
I own one of the engines like was used on these aircraft, so that is my reason for interest in this flight.
The main thing that ruins some of the theorys is the people wearing life vests. So they had warning of ditching the plane. I wonder why Pan am didn't adopt the aluminum propeller, that I'm sure all KC-97's had.
I don't see how Co would get to the flight compartment from the engines. So maybe some other source, did they have an APU? Cabin fire?
Posted by Bob on July 4,2008 | 05:01 PM
Wow. How could I have forgotten so much in only 51 years! I was a young Navy journalist based at Pearl Harbor in November 1957. On (or about) November 9, just 15 days shy of my 22nd birthday, I was assigned to assist with providing search information about the ongoing search for the Pan Am flight to an anxious gathering of news reporters. I worked in the 14th Naval District Public Information Office headed by Capt. Samuel H. P. Reed, Jr. Anyway, his boss, the admiral, had a second hat, a search & rescue command known as the Hawaiian Sea Frontier. My job was to shuttle information from the search command area in a top secret operations center to Navy PIOs who would brief news people. I was told the story was so big that the Associated Press had leased an undersea cable from Hawaii to San Francisco and the story was actually being written there and transmitted worldwide. I must have gotten hooked on SAR. Since then I've been a Civil Air Patrol mission pilot and, for about a decade, a CAP state emergency services director, a Coast Guard Auxiliary SAR specialist and even today, as an old man, I'm still a search "signcutter." Thanks for the opportunity to remember.
Posted by Don Johnson on August 12,2008 | 08:30 PM
I have emailed Ken to let him know that I am a relative of Preston Brown (Gordon Brown's brother). I just met Gordon Brown's son and daughter at Preston Brown's 90th birthday party. I had a long coversation with them regarding the loss of thier father (Gordon Brown, the pilot of 944). Although they are somewhat reserved about speaking about this loss, they did open up to a few people at this gathering. It was sad that they lost thier father at such a young age as Ken did. I believe that Preston and Gordon were in the Air Force together. Preston went to work for Lockheed and Gordon for Pan Am after being in the service. I am having lunch with Preston next week and hope to get more of the story. I am very intrigued with this story and hope to shed some more light once I meet with Preston.
S.
Posted by Sandi Dickston on September 22,2008 | 07:24 PM
I was the chief radarman in the combat information center of the Philippine Sea that conducted the search and recovery. Just to let you know it was a very difficult search and rescue mission. We were in Long Beach when the disaster ocurred. To my recollection, all hands were summoned to return to the ship where we immediately all preparations for getting underway. We were unable to contact approximately 1/3 third of the ships crew. After arriving along the predicted flight path of the aircraft, we commenced our search. S2F aircraft and helo's were used for the search. With the helo's searching areas near the ship and the S2f's searching about 50 miles forward and on each side of the flight path. We searched for several days with no results and finally on about the evening of the third day after flight operations had finished for the day. One of the plotters that was tracking the search pattern indicated there was one small area to the north that may have been missed. The next day, we searched that area and just before sunset the search plane to the north indicated debris had been sighted. It was too late in the day to search further so we steamed overnight to the location and started the recovery operations early the next morning. I remember very vididly seeing the debris and how horrible it was. One of the victims was a young child still strapped in the seat of the aircraft. I know this is of no relief to the victims families but believe me we did all humanly possible for the victims. God bless.
Gordon Howard Chief Radarman US Navy.
Posted by Gordon Howard on October 15,2008 | 07:14 PM
Would like more information possibly a picture of the Pan
Am flight from Portland to Honolulu that ditched off the Oregon coast 3/26/1955.
Who was the pilot.and where exactly did it ditch. Was it
near the coast line as I vaguely recall, or further out to sea. Did the Captain survive..and who perished, passengers or crew.
Just any information would be appreciated. Any photos would be appreciated.
Posted by Priscilla Decker on February 7,2009 | 12:07 AM
As a former Pan Am 377 captain, I remember this incident very well, and am watching with great interest your research on the subject. It's been a long time ago, but the memory of it is still pretty vivid. At the time the 377, while luxurious and powerful for its time, was also a major maintenance nightmare for the airline. The company couldn't get rid of these beasts fast enough when jets became available.
Anyway, there is no follow-up to this article. Are you still monitoring this website and what is the lastest info you have uncovered?
Thanks,
Art Tappan
Houston, TX
Posted by Art Tappan on February 13,2009 | 12:21 PM
It seems Pan Am had several of these "CLippers" lost over the pacific Oceon. I was reading about the Clipper Sovereign Of The Skies and its engine problems which brought me to your article. I hope you find peace and closure in your investigation.
Posted by Rick Jansik on March 23,2009 | 01:08 PM
Thanks to all of you who have posted comments on this story. Gregg and I continue to pursue any and all leads, but so far there is nothing new to report. With most of the evidence at the bottom of the ocean, we may never know what really happened to Romancce of the Skies. --Ken Fortenberry
Posted by Ken Fortenberry on May 14,2009 | 09:00 PM
Thank you for an excellent piece of reporting on the crash of PAA Romance of the Skies. I have been following this mystery for fifty years and appreciate the work you have done in bringing more background and possible causes of the crash to light.
I was a pilot on one of the two S2F aircraft from Antisubmarine Squadron 21 embarked in USS Philippine Sea which discovered the wreakage and bodies of the Romance of The Skies on the morning of Nov. 15, 1957. The two aircraft were flying a visual/RADAR search pattern approximately four miles separation when the RADAR operator in my aircraft reported a small contact about two miles ahead. At about the same time the pilot in the other aircraft reported visual contact of some small objects in the water.
We both descended to low altitude over the area and soon saw pieces of wreakage and bodies in the water. We marked the site with smoke lights and called the Philippine Sea with bearing and distance to the area. The carrier closed the area and launched motor whale boats to commence picking up wreakage and bodies. Both aircraft continued to fly a low altitude pattern and marked location of wreakage and bodies with smoke lights until we recovered aboard the carrier after 4.5 hours of flight time most of which was in the crash area.
Posted by Lee J. Gaffrey, Captain, USN, Retired on June 2,2009 | 02:05 PM
Just wondering if you could update your story with recent information or discoveries. Were you able to attend the "unsealing" of the old Pan Am historical records as you described in your story? Did you didcover anything significant?
Thanks, very interested in this.
Art Tapan
Houston, TX
Posted by Art Tappan on June 14,2009 | 09:57 PM
Just wondering if you could update your story with recent information or discoveries. Were you able to attend the "unsealing" of the old Pan Am historical records as you described in your story? Did you didcover anything significant? EDITORS' REPLY: Have not heard anything; perhaps a Web search would provide more recent information.
Posted by Art Tappan on June 14,2009 | 09:57 PM
Excellent article although an error occurs on page 2 paragraph 5.
The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter on Ocean Station 'November' when PAA 944 'Romance of the Skies' went in was USCGC Minnetonka WPG 67. USCGC Pontchartrain was a sister ship out of Long Beach, CA and was on station a year earlier (1956) when 'Sovereign of the Skies' ditched.
This was my first ocean station patrol out of nine aboard the Minnetonka and is memorable for two reasons - seeing Sputnik and the crash of PAA 944.
Posted by Richard Ormsby on July 4,2009 | 12:35 PM
Your story is very interesting, my uncle worked was a acft mech for PAA for 46 yrs, I remember he used to take me to the Pan Am base and let me sit in the Stratocruisers. If you would like i could ask him if he had any info on this acft. He remembers alot of crews and could tell you just about any history of the acft's he worked on the problems they encountered and i'm sure he would be happy to help in your investigation. EDITORS' REPLY: Sure! Report back if you find out anything. Thanks.
Posted by Mike Tambini on August 20,2009 | 06:48 PM
I can't help but think that the recent Air France event has probably brought back the sorrow to the Pan American families. The two events are similar. Both have many questions unanswered. Articles and pictures of the cabin sevice crew have always focused on just 3 of the 4. I have never heard anything about Director, John E. King, or his function on the flight. Your continued efforts are inspiring.
Posted by Frank Clark on September 1,2009 | 08:16 PM
Hi,
We are like you, my sister and I. That day forever changed our lives when our father First Officer, William Purdy Wygant died when The Romance of the Skies went down.
He had lived through WWII as a Navy pilot in the South Pacific, only to die in this way.
My sister and I were a bit younger than you, I wish I could remember his face,
more than just my mothers tears and broken heart....He had just left us for a stewardess....So many issues in our minds never to have closure.
I wish you luck in your quest for the real truth.
Please email me if you find out anything further.
Thank You.
Bette Anne Wygant (pinktopazgirl@hotmail.com)
Posted by Bette Anne Wygant(Wallace) and Brenna Wygant on November 11,2009 | 04:04 PM
Hello Ken: As a child, I use to live 2 or 3 houses away from 2 or 3 young fellows who were brothers named Fortenberry in Boiling Springs, SC. Do you know what SC family took your father in? We lived there in the mid 50's. One of the boys name was Jerry Fortenberry, cute little blonde whom I had a crush on at the time. I am now 60. For some reason your story seems so familiar and I was thinking they lost someone, either a father or uncle in a plane crash. I was thinking this Fortenberry man had a sister or aunt or some kin whose last name was Kimbrell (Lillie) and the Fortenberry's rented the home from this ladies husband, Guy Kimbrell.. I wish I could recall the other brother's names- some name which pop into my head is Danny and Bill and Kenneth sounds familiar too. Any chance you are kin here?
Posted by Nancy Rollins on February 10,2010 | 05:19 PM
I just "Googled" "Romance of the Skies" because an ex-pilot friend mentioned the Pan Am Clippers. I flew to Hong Kong on the "Romance of the Skies" in early 1957 and have a few photos if anyone is interested. If so, please send an email.
Regards, Russ m3russ [at] clearwire.net
Posted by Russ Hansen on February 25,2010 | 06:50 PM
On the mystery of the lost clipper paa 944 article september 2004.
To Greg or Ken, please email me as I was almost on the 944 with the Alexander family. With PAA 1944 to 1981. I have some comments. thank you
Posted by E D Bridges on April 30,2010 | 05:18 PM
On the mystery of the lost clipper paa 944 article september 2004.
To Greg or Ken, please email me as I was almost on the 944 with the Alexander family. With PAA 1944 to 1981. I have some comments. thank you
Posted by E D Bridges on April 30,2010 | 05:18 PM
I'm back again to ask if you have uncovered any new info, and did you have an opportunity to open any of the boxes of records being held at the University of Miami, which you mentioned in your story? You said you planned to be there when the boxes were opened and the contents made available to researchers. Perhaps there is good information in those boxes somewhere that will help you and the NTSB resolve this mystery. What a great story. I'm still interested in following your trail. Please keep updating this website so we can all follow your progress. Lots of folks apparently are really interested in this.....Thanks.
Posted by Art Tappan on May 16,2010 | 05:12 PM
I had my first-ever plane flight on PanAm Clipper America from Tokyo via Wake Island to Honolulu on July 13-15, 1957. We had a delayed departure from Tokyo and spent all day the 14th on Wake due to landing gear and engine oil leak problems which may be of interest to this discussion. We have my father's color slides and 16 mm film and my IDL certificate signed by Captain W.A. Thomas if anyone is interested. All five of our family who flew that time are still doing well.
Posted by David R. Bruns on June 28,2010 | 12:12 PM
To Nancy Rollins re: above post.
Yes, Nancy, that is us. My parents owned a house in Boiling Springs near those of Guy Kimbrell (my grandfather). After the crash, we lived with my aunt, Hazel Daniel, for a few weeks until my mother got her affairs in order. I attended Boiling Springs for a short time in the first grade, and in the fifth grade. My brother, Jerry, would have been in the third and seventh grade at the same time. Please email me.
Thanks,
Posted by Ken Fortenberry on July 1,2010 | 07:54 PM
I was the Radioman aboard the USCGC Bering Strait{NBYG} The ship had just docked at Sand Island CG base{Honolulu} from a double Ocean Station Victor patrol. We were still in "underway" status and were able to respond immediately. We operated on scene under the Navy Carrier"Philippine Sea until the recovery operation ceased. The Bering Strait stayed on scene for a week after the mission.
I never forgot the sight of the bodies we recovered or the starkness of the radio traffic as the mission developed. I still have a newspaper clipping from the NY Daily News including an air photo of the Bering Strait in the recovery operation.
Please contact me if you feel I can offer additional information. It was a long time ago but I remember. I was there from "OVERDUE" to we did all we could.
John B Lalley RM1x
10B Berkshire Ct
Red Bank NJ 07701
Posted by John B Lalley on July 10,2010 | 01:57 PM
My uncle is Ugene Crosthwaite. the night this happened my grandmother was in winnemucca nevada where my father is the youngest .. and the CEO of pan am called her my uncle Gene was his longest employee. My grandmother had tickets to hawaii. I have every letter my uncle gene ever wrote to my grandma Mary, and he loved her. He planned this to be his last flight and was going to take her to Hawaii. he would never do anything to harm anyone. If you looked at the records he had his shoes off. Meant as a purser he was ready to evacuate and there were problems before the flight. CEO Juan of Pan am talked to my grandmother for house. If he thought foul play he would not have talked to her. My uncle Genes adopted daaughter who was menatal told stories. My uncle was an honorable man.
Madonna Long
Pennsylvania
Posted by madonna crosthwaite long on September 10,2010 | 11:36 PM
For what it's worth, sounds to me like the crew fell asleep, went off course, and woke up as alarms were going off or they were in a stall...thus, no distress call. I attribute the CO readings to fire in and around the aircraft from residual fuel in the lines that hadn't been consumed.They hit that water hard- doesn't sound like a controlled ditch.Good luck and don't give up hope for a scientific explanation. The sea can give up items (like fuel gauges)long lost.
Posted by Paul Joyce on September 29,2010 | 03:15 AM
It's a little surprising, considering what is known about the 377's propeller problems, that the sabotage theory gained the most traction. It only makes sense if you consider that it's promoters had a vested interest in it. It saved the insurance company from a payout and it saved Pan Am from scrutiny of its maintenance. Had it come to light that Romance crashed while out of compliance with an emergency AD, it would have been a black eye comparable to the American Airlines Flight 191 crash in 1979.
Posted by GFC on October 3,2010 | 08:14 PM
Thanks for all the comments. Many, like myself, although not personally involved, are interested in this flight. Thanks for contributions to supply information for interested individuals like myself.
I especially appreciate comments from the families of crew members. Apparently the pain never completely goes away, but thank you for sharing with others.
Frank Clark
Posted by Frank Clark on November 5,2010 | 03:08 PM
How great to find this article and the comments that fill in much of the story. I was a USCG reservist on the cutter Minnetonka, which was stationed at November Weather Station at the point of no return between the mainland and Hawaii. That evening I was playing poker with other reservists and regular crew members. The game was interrupted when reservist John Wilde of Palo Alto was summoned to the bridge to talk to the captain of 944, who was a neighbor. Apparently John's family had arranged for the captain to make the call. John returned to the game and indicated he had a good chat with the captain. It was just an hour or two later that our game was again interrupted, and we were informed that 944 was missing. I and a number of others spent the rest of the night on the bridge with binoculars scanning the horizon for flares or other signs of the missing aircraft. Our ship and others participated in the search along with military and civilian aircraft. My job was to identify search aircraft as they passed over our ship and relay the aircraft identification information to our communication center. After the crash site was located, we steamed overnight to that site, arriving just before dawn. I was on watch and was amazed to see the assembled lighted Naval task force including the Philippine Sea stretching across the horizon. Small boat crews from our ship and the others picked up bodies and debris, a sight that could be seen from our bridge to the horizon eight miles distant. Smoke dropped from helicopters marked the bodies. Our crew picked up debris including mail, clothing and toys. I can remember a little boy's blue jacket with a baseball graphic and "Little Slugger" inscription. The mail included letters and family photos. I remember the great sense of loss I felt for the affected families. After the cleanup was complete the Navy ships returned to base and we returned to November Weather Station.
Posted by Dick Ferguson on November 27,2010 | 09:24 PM
My father Robert Halliday was a passenger on this flight. He was one of a couple of Australians. He was a businessman flying home after completing some work overseas and was booked on another flight but changed to this one in order to arrive home in Sydney sooner. He missed his wife and four young children after being away six weeks. I was the eldest and had just turned nine. I remember being told he was "lost" and days later being aware he had died and was never coming home again. It has always troubled me that I never knew exactly what happened to him. His body was recovered and flown home. Thank you for your very detailed search and for making the information you have public. With much appreciation Lindsay Newton
Posted by Lindsay Newton (nee Halliday) on November 28,2010 | 10:59 PM
Dick and Linsday:
Thanks so much for posting your comments on the site. Dick, I had never heard about the captain's call to the reservist. Fascinating. And the comments about the little boys jacket....well, what can I say? Absolutely heart-breaking. Lindsay, I have tried to find you for years to share thoughts about the crash. Would love to hear more from both of you.
- Ken Fortenberry
Posted by Ken Fortenberry on December 14,2010 | 07:07 PM
I have vague recollections from childhood of my father and his siblings mentioning "that terrible business with Cousin Lee, Anna and the kids". I regarded it as another dusty old story about relatives who had died more than a decade before my birth. Having read this fascinating piece, and particularly the other readers' comments, I am struck at last by a sense of connection to the moment and to the lives of the passengers and crew. It's chilling to imagine that some of the toys and clothing -- perhaps even the blue baseball jacket -- recovered by Mr. Ferguson may have belonged to a second cousin whose name I hadn't even known before today.
Thank you and best regards,
Heather C. Hughes
Posted by Heather Hughes on January 2,2011 | 03:34 PM
I am just an ordinary person (nonpilot) with an interest in aviation and aviation saftey (one of my favorite books was "Loud and Clear" by Robert Serling). This investigation is heart wrenching to read about, but the investigation is very much needed, not only for closure, but also for the lessons to be learned. When my wife is looking for the best price for a flight to visit her Mom, I think (not out loud to her) that I'd rather see the tickets cost 10 or 20 percent more in exchange for pilots who are adequately paid and planes that are maintained as well as can be. The ditching of a Pam Am Stratocruiser in 1956 would have been fresh in the minds of flying professionals and the flying public when Flight 944 was lost. Motive is not proof, but it would have been natural for the airline and the manufacturer to be anxious to see the findings point to something other than mechanical issues (especially known issues). I hope very much that they release the contents of the boxes at Miami soon. Thank you for your investigation. From the comments, it can be seen that you're helping a lot of people - Jeff.
PS: I hope this isn't too trivial to say here, but until I read this article tonight and then re-read postings about ditching of a 377 in 1956, it hadn't dawned on me that the 1950's film "Crash Landing" was aimed squarely at the 377. I haven't seen the film for 30 or 40 years, but I recall that it depicted parts flying off of one engine and damaging another engine, requiring Gary Merrill's character to ditch the plane. But, they showed a Douglas style piston airliner in the film, not a 377.
Posted by Jeff Bryman on March 9,2011 | 11:47 PM
Fascinating information contained in the article. Realize the cost of recovering the aircraft would be very costly, but is there any chance of a public subscription to raise funds for such a endeavour? And is there any information on what percentage of the aircraft was recovered from the debris field? For a plane crash that took place fifty-three years ago there seems to be considerable interest in said investigation.
Posted by George BLACKWOOD on March 11,2011 | 11:33 PM
Very little wreckage was recovered from Romance. We would, of course, love to see some kind of effort to recover the wreckage. It is likely the only way we'll ever really know what happened.
Posted by Ken Fortenberry on March 14,2011 | 09:36 PM
Wouldn't it make sense to mount the plane's BLACK BOX near the outside of the plane somehow so it would seperate and float in case of a crash at sea?
Posted by mont monaco on March 14,2011 | 11:54 PM
To Heather Hughes; Anna and the bodies of two of the Clack children recovered from the Romance of the Skies wreckage can be found buried in Midland cemetary (Midland, Michigan). We wish Ken Fortenberry luck in solving this mystery and locating the missing ARINC tape hopefully still found in some forgotten law practices archives. It is a terrible shame that law enforcement never seriously followed up on the missing "Payne" and the anonymous mystery packages from abroad (Mexico?) especially in light of at least one other insurance fraud bombing of an airliner just a year or two before the loss of the Romance of the Skies. Not many folks realize that dynamite was freely available in hardware stores up until the early sixties to allow farmers and home owners to "clear stumps".
Posted by David F Pawlowski on March 15,2011 | 06:48 PM
That was my Uncle, Albert Pinataro (misspelled in the article).
His sister, my Aunt,is still living today and I believe she has contacted Ken via email. This is an amazing article! an amazing job of sleuthing! I have a front page newspaper article copy that she gave me of the crash. Yes, I too would be interested to know whether the files have been reopened. I have a son who definitely resembles Albert; I think of my uncle often.
Posted by Donata Lynch on March 24,2011 | 06:46 PM
Ken you surely know Clive Cussler, the author and wreckage hunter. He and his friend Craig Dirgo have already located and sometimes recovered dozens of sunken ships and planes. He operates the NUMA (National Underwater & Marine Agency), whose funds mainly come from the selling of his books. Although I doubt the NUMA would have the means to locate the Romance -I imagine its location is in extremely deep water- it may be worth to contact Clive and ask for advice. He's a very passionate guy and maybe he could help you in a way or another.
Thanks by the way for this excellent article and good luck to you and Gregg.
Posted by Luc Gillieron, Switzerland on April 6,2011 | 11:35 AM
I am Gene Crosthwaites niece. My father is the youngest of all the Crosthwaites. I never knew my Uncle Gene, although my father is still alive and is 85. My father was a former Judge and is a very honorable man. The day the clipper went down, my grandmother Mary was in Nevada at my parents house. My father remembers the Juan the CEO of Pan Am talked to my grandmother for over an hour and this would be very unlikely of man who thought his employee had just sabotaged his plane to call and talk to his mother. Not only that yes my Uncle was very heart broken for the loss of Julie his wife. He would have not done this to his mother, my grandmother Mary, he had just purchased her tickets to Hawaii, and when he got back she would fly to meet him.
I have every letter my Uncle wrote his mother when he was in the Navy he adored her and would never do any thing to harm or hurt her. Why would he plan a trip and then harm other people. Oh and as for Tanya, my father has said on numerous occasions that she was nothing but trash and trouble maker. So to harm a man who had always taken care of her was what she was up too. Also My Uncle Gene was found with his shoes off which means the plane was ditching and he was doing his job, helping people get ready for impact.
Mr. Foternberry and I have discussed this one the phone before. I think that really finding out what happened will help the families of those who were suspected lay this to rest as much as for the ones who lost their loved ones as well. I to this day believe that My Uncle Gene Crosthwaite did nothing wrong but was tale that many told. One day we will know the truth. I am on his side.
Posted by Madonna Crosthwaite Long on April 24,2011 | 08:04 PM
Good Day to Madonna Crosthwaite, I have read Eugene Crosthwaites autopsy report obtained from the Los Angeles County Coroners Office along with a few others describing the recovered remains from the Romance of the Skies wreckage field. Several of the active flight crew and at least one of the vacationing pilots on board the plane appeared to have survived the initial ditching with relatively minor injuries. Some of the passengers had evidence of trauma injuries from the initial ditching. It appears that a few of the folks had severe bite injuries indicating that they fought sharks like the crew of the USS Indianapolis. As you say, Eugene was doing his duty even in the water and showed the effects of shark attack and not just feeding on the remains. Follow the money; follow the ghost of the House of Payne the man with the dynamite.
Posted by David F Pawlowski on May 7,2011 | 01:15 PM
My father flew aboard the Romance of the Skies in April 1957. I have a card (entitled: "Flight Log") written by one of the crew members that lists altitude, speed, point or origin, point of arrival and such. I was shocked to learn the plane crashed several months later. My father worked for Aramco and it appears that many Aramco employees flew aboard the same craft.
Posted by Carl on October 31,2011 | 09:35 PM
My husband, Richard A. Bowden (Dick) was a radioman in the USCG and served on the Bearing Strait during the search and rescue mission of the Pan American aircraft wreckage in November, 1957. Over the years Dick looked for information about the aircraft crash and the rescue mission but found very little info. He told about the search and the horror of the rescue; how they went out in small boats and brought in bodies, clothing and debris. I recently ran across a note he had hand-written about the crash and started looking for more information. I am interested in a note from John B Lalley from Red Bank, NJ written in July, 2010. He stated he was also a radioman aboard the Bearing Strait during the rescue and I wonder if he knew my husband? Dick passed away this past spring. He would have been so pleased to read the comments that have been posted and touched remembering how many lives were affected by the tragedy.
Posted by Jan Bowden on November 6,2011 | 08:51 PM
Wow, lots of great information here. Mr. Pawlowski, that is very sad that people had to endure sharks even after the plane wreck. I know that enduring an accident of such magnitude is not easy. I know far to well. I was paralyzed in a school bus accident over 30 years ago. Maybe I have a bit of the survival of my uncle. Madonna
Posted by Madonna Crosthwaite on December 6,2011 | 08:34 PM
My grandmother, Roberta Joan Leever (her last name at the time), in a family history binder, wrote of a story that I believe to be about this flight. She wrote:
"In Feb of 1957 I was accepted for Stewardess training with Pan American World Airways. It was a thrilling 18 months of travelling all over the Pacific and the Orient. One very sad (and scary) flight happened when scheduling had me down for two different flights...one under the name JOAN Leever and the other under the name ROBERTA Leever (that had never happened before!). I was to have left early in the morning and as I was leaving my apartment I received a phone call telling me that I was not to report until 8pm that night. I arrived in scheduling at 7:45pm, signed in, and was greeted with a lot of strange looks from the personnel and other flight crews there. I was told about the mix up with my name and that both names were written on pieces of paper, put into some Captain's hat, and which ever name was drawn would be the flight on which I would be assigned. It was "ROBERTA" that was pulled from the hat. The earlier flight, I was told, had vanished somewhere over the Pacific...all passengers and crew lost!"
She narrowly escaped! If she hadn't, I wouldn't be here today!
Posted by Breanna on December 9,2011 | 01:18 PM
A very interesting article, though not entirely satisfying in some of its conclusions I am afraid. Following up on this, I took it upon myself to read the CAB accident report published in 1959 (available online) and it is not quite as dramatic in some ways, and points in another direction missed by the authors of this piece.
First, as to the engine/propeller issue - while the PAA captain reported that he had an overspeed on the same aircraft six months before the crash, the CAB report clearly states that this aircraft had been modified and retrofitted with the new governors and solid aluminum propellor blades. While the captain's report was interesting, there is nothing to dispute the finding of the Board at the time or to think that following that overspeed incident the changes were not made in the ensuing six months.
Secondly, a handful of "blasting powder", which is essentially gun powder would be very hard pressed to bring down a large aircraft, as it has low explosive yield and tends to burn more than explode. However, the story of the suspect passenger might be more plausible; again, though, the CAB report specifically denies any such explosion and indicates there was no evidence of such on any recovered materials or bodies.
Thirdly, left out of this story was a section of the CAB report detailing "banging" noises heard on previous flights that Pan Am failed to check out in accordance with established procedures (and could have masked serious internal structural weakness). Was a spar or internal structure cracked or weakened from two prior hard landings? No way to tell without examine the wreckage itself, but it is an intriguing possibility and could explain the loss of control and diversion from course. PAA's maintenance was criticized in the report over this and related items.
Sadly we will probably never know the final outcome of all of this, but it does make for a great mystery.
Posted by George S. on April 4,2012 | 01:11 AM
Wow! This is amazing. I am very interested to know if the authors have an update about this article. Messrs. Gregg Herken and/or Ken Fortenberry, please let us know.
Posted by C-L on April 17,2012 | 03:55 AM
P.S. Might I suggest, if you have not already done so, contact the Producers of Coast to Coast AM. This is the kind of story they would love for their listeners to hear. Additionally, it is the largest radio show in both the U.S. and Canada. There might be some additional information that might be gleaned. They can be reached via email at: CoastProducer@aol.com. Their web address is: www.coasttocoastam.com. Good luck!
Posted by C-L on April 17,2012 | 04:00 AM
At 21 years of age I flew Sydney, Fiji, Canton Island, Honolulu, Los Angeles in Aug.1955--PAA "Romance of the Skies" and still have the entire Flight Portfolio as a wonderful memory of flying at its best.
I only recently checked this story on computer and found the detail of the tragedy most interesting. I hope that in time further answers are forthcoming for those who never give up asking why.
June 28/ 2012
Posted by Mr C.J.McCormack on June 28,2012 | 06:12 AM
I was a sailor aboard the USS Philippine Sea when the accident occured. The ship was in Long Beach at the time, and I was visiting my folks down in San Diego when a report came over the television for crew members to return to the ship as quickly as possible. I jumped on a Greyhound bus and made it back to the ship by about 9:00 PM. We left early the next morning, and headed for the area where the aircraft was thought to have gone down. As I remember we steamed at 25 knotts plus, and arrived at the area about two day later. We used helicopters and aircraft in an attempt to locate the downed plane. I believe it was about six or seven days before the wreckage was spotted. We were beginning to think that we would not find the aircraft or wreckage when word came over the PA system that they think they have found the wreckage.
For several days people and parts of the plane were recovered and hundreds of pieces of mail also. There were sharks in the water. Some of the crew said that some of the bodies were eaten by sharks, but I cannot confirm this. As I remember, some of the victims were still strapped into their seats. The bodies of the victims were put into our refers to keep them cold, and the debris were neatly laid out on the hanger deck. They were surrounded by a baracade and a guard to make sure nobody touched anything.
I never knew anything else about the accident until I read this report on the Internet.
Robert Baker, ET3, USN (now 74 years old)
Posted by Robert (Bob) Baker on December 19,2012 | 07:35 PM
My uncle, Gordon Brown, was the pilot on this flight. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE! KEN AND/OR GREG - tell us all whether or not you were able to get access to those boxes containing additional information about this crash.
It has been almost 9 years since you wrote this article. Surely, the 3 year time limit at Boeing has been met by now! It makes me ask: Why haven't you updated this site for all of us who have been such a part of this as well? You stated that you would be there at the opening of the boxes. WERE YOU THERE? DID THEY ALLOW OPENING OF THOSE BOXES? WHAT IS THE STATUS OF YOUR INVESTIGATION AT THIS TIME?
Thank you in advance,
Susan Brookfield
Posted by Susan Brookfield on February 12,2013 | 04:01 PM
Susan:
I check several times a year with the Univ of Miami, but so far nothing been discovered of significant value that would shed credible light into what happened. Would,love to communicate with you. Publisher@newsatnorman.com.
Posted by Ken Fortenberry on February 14,2013 | 06:50 PM
Problems with the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser around Ocean Station November (the Coast Guard ship in mid-Pacific)were also found in its military counterpart, the C-97.
See this Air & Space Above and Beyond article http://www.airspacemag.com/military-aviation/Mission_Unaccomplished.html
Posted by William Campenni on May 20,2013 | 02:51 PM