Flaming Arrow

In 1928 a Spokane, Wash, flyer named Nick Mamer won a New York-Spokane air race. Two years later Nick Mamer made the first round-trip flight between St. Paul and Seattle, presently started an airline between Spokane and St. Paul. Though part of this route spans some of the most tortured country in the U. S. and there were no radio beacons or even lights in those days, Nick Mamer's success convinced the U. S. Post Office that the run was feasible. Northwest Airlines, which had begun flying between Chicago and St. Paul in 1926, thereupon absorbed both Nick Mamer and his route, eventually shoved on to Seattle. By last week Northwest Airlines had flown some 72,000,000 passenger-miles, was one of two U. S. lines which had never killed a passenger.* And Nick Mamer, looked on as "father" of the route, had flown 10,000 hours without serious accident. Last week both these magnificent records were spoiled; flying his regular run, Pilot Mamer crashed himself and nine others to a flaming death in 1938's first airline tragedy.

With eight passengers and a copilot, Nick Mamer was flying east in one of Northwest's brand-new Lockheed 143, twin-motored monoplanes whose 225 m. p. h. cruising speed makes them the fastest commercial planes in the world. Weather was not too good and shortly after noon Pilot Mamer dropped down at Butte, Mont, for a scheduled landing, lingered until the skies cleared. Then he drummed away over the mountains toward Billings, Mont. His last report: "Cruising at 9,000 ft. with everything okay."

Just north of Bozeman, Mont, rears the 9,106-ft. bulk of Bridger Peak, near which years ago was started the Flaming Arrow Dude Ranch. Woodcutters and ranchers working in Bridger Peak's thick fur of timber presently heard the din of Nick Mamer's two motors. Looking up, they spotted the glistening airliner hovering in apparent difficulty over a small clearing. In a twinkling it plunged straight down, bashed its nose into the frozen ground so hard that the plane telescoped like a tin drinking cup. BOOM went the gasoline tank and instantly the wreck was a fountain of flame which blackened the snow for 100 ft., prevented the horrified witnesses from trying to extricate the ten men aboard. When the flames subsided all ten were dead.

As a sheriff's posse set out from Bozeman on skis to bring in the bodies and as investigators from Northwest Air's headquarters and from Washington hustled unhappily toward the wreck, no one had any idea what could have caused it. The weather on the spot was blowy but no tempest. The plane had the best of equipment, even a unique loop antenna made static-proof by enclosure in the ship's transparent plexiglass nose. Lockheed 143's can maintain their height on one engine and it seemed incredible that both could have cut out simultaneously. Said Farmer Homer White, first witness to re-turn to Bozeman: "I think the clearing was big enough for the plane to land in but there were a lot of boulders and stumps under the snow."

-The other: Pennsylvania-Central Airlines.

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