lnfo the Void

The Constellation Star of Hollywood droned over the Atlantic at 250 m.p.h., bound from Newfoundland to the Azores. It was 7:25 p.m. All seemed well. At 19,000 feet she was well above the overcast, and the T.W.A. ship was pressurized for the comfort of 21 passengers and the crew. In a couple of hours the moon would be up. Navigator George Hart climbed into the astrodome, a transparent plastic bubble atop the fuselage, and started to shoot the stars with his sextant.

Suddenly there was a roar and a rush of air, and the navigator vanished. Said Flight Engineer Dick Trischler: "I heard a loud noise and that was all there was to it. I saw him and then I didn't."

The plastic of the astrodome had broken. The pressure inside, instantly released, had shot George Hart up into the 250 m.p.h. airstream which tossed him back to tumble, without a parachute, more than 3 1/2 miles into the troubled ocean. Said a colleague: "I hope he was knocked out. It would take almost a minute and a half to fall 19,000 feet."

While the Coast Guard began a hopeless search, the Star of Hollywood dropped to 10,000 feet and retraced the 500 miles back to Gander. T.W.A. and other operators ordered their Constellations to keep below 12,000 feet (where the cabin need not be pressurized) until astrodomes could be made safer and navigators supplied with safety harnesses. That was just about what the Army had done in its B-29s.

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