"Impossible Accident"

With its twin motors ticking over rhythmically, a big Heinkel transport moved into position on Rio de Janeiro's Santos Dumont airfield one day last week, began loading up for its regular Sao Paulo run. Up the steps walked the passengers: Cuban Minister to Brazil Alfonso Hernandez Cata, Rockefeller Foundation's yellow-fever researcher Dr. Evandro Chagas, Norwegian Consul Alexander Stabell Grieg, Sebastiao Leme Salles, nephew of Rio's Cardinal Archbishop, eleven lesser wigs. Heading into the wind, the VASP airliner roared across the field, lifted easily into a climbing turn.

Out over the heart of Rio it circled, reaching for altitude before heading south. As it neared the shores of Botafogo Bay a twin-engined De Havilland of Argentina's Anglo-Mexican Petroleum Co. appeared to the side, drew recklessly closer to the transport. Frantically the VASP pilot waggled him away, but the De Havilland never changed course. Straight for the Heinkel it headed, swerving desperately at the last minute, catching the transport square amidships with one wing.

Ribs crushed, fabric ripped and afire, the airliner split in two, spilled three of its passengers into space, rocketed the others to the bottom of the bay. Across the water the De Havilland fluttered spinning to earth, shorn of its wing. In a final dive it smashed through the roof of a house, hurled its pilot, World War I Aviator Colin Abbot, into the street below.

To baffled civilian aeronautics investigators the next day, Brazil's second air collision within four months was an "impossible accident."

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