Wreck and Radio

One rainy morning last week two groups of newshawks arrived at Los Angeles' Union Air Terminal in Burbank. One group came to greet famed Explorers Martin and Osa Johnson, due at 10:45 on a Western Air Express plane from Salt Lake City. The other group came to witness the first demonstration of a new radio navigation device developed by Transcontinental & Western Air and just installed in all its planes. The new contrivance, everyone was told, permitted a pilot to find an airport no matter how dirty the weather. TWA's Chief Pilot O. W. Coyle took off with a party to prove it. With the cockpit of his big Douglas hooded, he climbed swiftly up through the murk in the deep San Fernando Valley, circled away over the wrinkled mountains which have given the region the name of "the worst flying country in the U. S." Time & again Pilot Coyle intentionally got lost. Each time he winged unerringly back to the field. Just as he was doing so the last time, Pilot William W. Lewis of the Western Air Express plane carrying the Explorers Johnson became lost unintentionally ten miles away. With only the conventional radio equipment at his command, Pilot Lewis did not find his course again. He smashed into a mountain.

At 52, Martin Johnson had risked many of the world's perils. A runaway at 14, he went to Europe on a cattle boat, returned as a stowaway, then shipped as a seaman on Jack London's Snark. Returning to the U. S., he married 16-year-old Osa Leighty, set off with her on 25 years of exploring, much of it in their own planes. Last week they were back from Borneo jungles for one of their periodic lecture tours. At Salt Lake City he remarked to newshawks: "America, probably because it is the most civilized place in the world, is the most dangerous." Instant later he stepped into the Western Air Express plane for Los Angeles. Month ago another famed couple, the Dame and Seigneur of Sark, just missed a WAE plane in Los Angeles. It has not been seen since (TIME, Dec. 28). Last week the Johnsons, both experienced pilots, gave small thought to this disaster, the first in WAE's ten-year history.

Presently the weather grew thick. Pilot Lewis radioed ahead for instructions, was told to come in on the Saugus radio beam. Pilot Lewis flew on through a heavy snow storm, gradually "letting down" from 7,000 ft. At 11:05 he radioed: "Coming down to localizer [beam] at field." He was then some ten miles from Burbank and only ten from the spot where a United Airliner smashed fortnight ago with death to twelve (TIME, Jan. 11). At that point he got off the beam, began circling to pick it up. Suddenly, out of the haze loomed a mountain. It was too late to clear it. With quick skill, Pilot Lewis cut his engines, pulled up the Boeing's nose, pancaked.

Inside there had been no warning, but the ten passengers were strapped to their seats ready for the landing at Burbank. As Passenger Arthur Robinson recalled: "Suddenly the plane began to drop--drop. Then there was a terrible crash. My seat belt kept me in my seat. I didn't lose consciousness, but my leg and side hurt. I guess I was about the only one that wasn't knocked out." Passenger Robinson set off alone down the snow-spattered mountain, managed to stagger four miles to the Olive View Sanitarium despite a broken ankle. Inmates there had heard the impact and screams of the victims borne by the wind, had already given the alarm.

Back at the plane, Pilot Lewis regained his senses, dragged himself, gun in hand, to guard the mail. Two passengers revived unhurt, began aiding the others. Stewardess Esther Jo Connor, despite a broken ankle, did what she could for her passengers, all but two of whom were severely injured, one dead. Martin Johnson, with both jaws broken, skull cracked, a shattered hip and internal wounds, became hysterical with pain. Osa, with leg broken and a concussion, was able only to wipe his face. Rescuers struggling up the mountain heard his screams afar. The plane was almost intact, with one motor torn loose. Nearby was a small fire lookout station. There for nearly ten hours the injured lay before they could be carried down the precipitous slope. Next morning Martin Johnson died. At week's end two other passengers had also died.

The U. S. was already in an official state of shock over the five crashes of the past month. WAE's second capped the climax. Pilot Lewis, too hurt to be questioned at length, was quoted by rescuers as mumbling: "There were three or four different voices on the radio and I couldn't make out any of them." This became the foundation for a number of bitter attacks on the Bureau of Air Commerce, operators of the radio beam system. Senator Copeland, chairman of the Senate Air Safety Committee, put the whole blame for recent crashes on the Bureau, demanded that it be reorganized, asked for $10,000,000 to improve safety. Other outsiders, such as Columnist Hugh Johnson, screamed violent accusations, suggested equally extravagant remedies. The Weather Bureau added 100 new stations. The Bureau of Air Commerce began an investigation, denied at once that the beam had been out of kilter.

To the Bureau's defense flocked most of the airlines. Said one airline executive: "After all, we've got to fly the planes. You can't blame a lighthouse if you sink your ship in a hurricane," Said Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, War ace and general manager of Eastern Air Lines, which has never lost a passenger: "Conditions wouldn't be improved by Government control--they wouldn't be as good as they are now."

Most cogent analysis of the situation from the aviator's point of view was presented by Swanee Taylor, oldtime flyer and associate editor of Popular Aviation, in an article in New York's World-Telegram: "Probably 80% of airplane crack-ups can be traced to errors of judgment, misplaced zeal, overconfidence or out-and-out stupidity on the part of the man at the controls. . . . Disaster does not spring at a pilot out of nowhere. Physical equipment is superb, and engines . . . give ample warning when they are getting tired enough to quit. . . . Bad weather used to be a popular alibi for crackups, but it doesn't go any more in the best aviation circles. Most experts believe a pilot should be able to master any climatic conditions he encounters, or have sense enough to turn and run when he pokes into a zero-zero situation. Our American weather-reporting service is atrocious, but the airlines have established their own weather depots covering their routes, and a pilot can find out whether soupy weather is ahead just by ordering his radioman to get in touch with the ground and ask. . . .

"One cruel imposition on the pilots is the much-touted radio beam. . . . Never particularly efficient, it places the entire burden of navigation on the pilot. The beam . . . is a tiny needle of radio impulse extending out into space, a few miles wide at its best. . . . Once you are off the track, you need to be a master mathematician to find your way back; and permit me to observe that there is no agony more piercing than that endured while careening along in a gray mist at 150 m.p.h. in search of a radio beam--the air, meanwhile, buzzing with extraneous signals which you are supposed to ignore. The solution . . . is to direct navigation from the ground through direction-finder stations similar to those used by the Navy and Coast Guard. Pan American Airways has used this system for years and never lost a ship since they started it.* When one of its pilots wants to know where he is, he merely dot-dashes a question. Two ground stations figure out by triangulation his exact position and wireless it back to him. . . ."

The device that TWA was demonstrating at the moment WAE's plane was crashing is similar to Pan American's. Called "the radio direction-finder and anti-rain-static loop antennae," it was developed by TWA's communications department under Engineer John Curtis Franklin. Radio direction-finders are not new, come in a half-dozen makes (TIME, March 25, 1935). In general they are doughnut-shaped loops sticking through the fuselage. By turning the loop and listening, the pilot can learn the direction of any radio station, for when the loop faces directly toward the station the signals disappear. A pilot can get bearings on, two separate radio stations, thus triangulate his position. But the ordinary direction-finder, like all exposed antennae, is subject to ice conditions or rain-static. The latter results from minute particles of electricity stored in rain drops which hit the antennae. This may have been what jumbled Pilot Lewis' radio last week. TWA's device is the first to eliminate rain-static, does it with an aluminum covering. Unlike Pan American's system, TWA's requires the pilot to triangulate his own position. The new loop also receives the regular beam, thus gives the pilot a choice of two navigational methods. Offering it free to any airline, TWA cautioned that its new loop is not infallible under all conditions. Any radio, for example, may go dead in the midst of a severe thunder & lightning storm.

*Last week, however, a Lockheed Electra of Compania Mexicana de Aviacion, subsidiary of Pan American Airways, crashed and burned with nine aboard in a jungle swamp near Vera Cruz.

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