Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival (59 page)

Steve Lullman, who worked at Mellowdent Hybrids
: Green, Larry, 1989, “Reward Offer Fails to Spark Gold Rush of Engine-Part Searchers on Iowa Farms,”
Los Angeles Times
August 19, at http://articles.latimes.com/1989-08-19/news/mn-523_1_engine-failure (accessed July 14, 2013).

John Moehring from GE coordinated
: Gary Brown; Harrington; and MacIntosh.

driver of the semi left on Wednesday
: Associated Press, 1989, “NTSB Inspecting Engine,”
Sioux City Journal
, August 4, p. A:1:4.

“There are guards at the door”
: NTSB Transcript, p. 274.

“We asked those people,” Glynn said
: NTSB Transcript, p. 367.

latest high-tech spy planes
: Gary Brown; Clark; Harrington; Swanstrom; Walker. Also, Clark 1989, Exhibit 16-A.

“We had a significant penetration”
: NTSB Transcript, pp. 367–368.

To back that up, electron microscopy revealed traces
: NTSB Transcript, pp. 371–382.

entire event took five to six milliseconds
: NTSB Transcript, p. 399; GE Comments, p. 102.

harvest began
: Clark, 1989, Exhibit 16-A, p. 6.

When Martha Conant first came out of the broken tail
: Conant; Hatch;Dave and Susan Randa; Vetter.

Within two weeks after the crash
: Scene reconstructed using Jan Brown; Clapper; Harrington; Swanstrom; Walker; along with photographs provided by Bendixen, Harrington, and the Iowa Department of Public Safety and video provided by Lindblade.

While Swanstrom and his people were cleaning
: Hilldrup; MacIntosh; Phillips 1989, Exhibit 9-A.

They built a wooden disk
: NTSB Transcript, p. 279.

In the meantime, the parts gathered by Gregory Phillips’s on-site team
: Cherolis; Wildey. Also, Phillips 1989, Exhibit 9-A.

“The duct work for that engine shows scars”
: Porter, Ed, 1989, “NTSB Tour Brings Culprit No. 2 Engine into Focus,”
Sioux City Journal
, July 22, p. A:9:1.

“FAA officials said”
: “FAA: Jet Lost All Hydraulics,” 1989,
Omaha World-Herald
, July 20, p. 1.

metallurgist in his group, Joe Epperson
: Epperson, Joe (undated),
Metallurgist’s Factual Report 90-1
, Exhibit No. 91, pp. 1–2.

“This accident was never supposed to”
: Letter from Robinson to Kolstad, 1990.

“The FAA believes that requiring the use of CRS [child restraint seats]”
: FAA response to NTSB Recommendation A-10-123, October 14, 2010.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

as the harvest proceeded
: Zahren, Bill, 1989, “Farmers Harvesting Engine Parts,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 6, p. A:1:3.

Janice Sorenson, fifty-eight, was running her combine
: Clark; Sorenson; Clark, John, 1989,
Specialist’s Factual Report on Search for Fan Disk
, October 19, Exhibit 16-A, Supplement 1; Zahren, Bill, 1989, “Alta Woman Discovers Part of 232 Fan Disk,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 11, p. A:1:6; Zahren, Bill, 1989, “Disk Harvester’s First Thoughts Go to Investigators,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 12, p. A:14:1; Schossow, Rebecca, 1989, “Search for DC-10 Parts to Intensify,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 14, p. A:1:2; “Searchers Make New Discoveries,” 1989,
Sioux City Journal
, October 23, p. A:1:1.

As soon as Jerome Clark phoned General Electric
: Engine number one and three were placed in an adjacent secure room called Cell 9. Moehring said, “In essence, the cell ten and cell nine area, and for that matter, the laboratories, were, for all practical purposes, an out-post of . . . the NTSB officers, as were myself and all of the team.” NTSB Transcript, pp. 274–276.

pit, or cavity, was measured
: GE Comments, p. 62.

first step was to use a brand new toothbrush
: Cherolis; Cherolis, Nicholas E., 2008, “Fatigue in the Aerospace Industry: Striations,”
Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention
, vol. 8, pp. 255–258, DOI 10.1007/s11668-008-9146-5.

On Thursday, October 12, 1989
: Clark; Zahren, Bill, and John Quinlan, 1989, “Investigators Find Crack in Fan Disc,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 13, p. A:1:1; Zahren, Bill, and John Quinlan, 1989, “Alta Farmer Receives Check for $116,000,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 13, p. A:1:1; Schossow, Rebecca, 1989, “Piece of Fan Blade Found in Metal Detectors Search,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 15, p. A:1:3.

Later that month, when asked under oath
: NTSB Transcript, p. 242.

By Friday, the company had organized
: Eddy; Schossow, 1989.

Employees from United Airlines took Susan White and Georgeann del Castillo
: White; del Castillo, Georgeann, pers. comm., August 7, 2013.

“Smoke inhalation”
: Diegel (undated), Exhibit 6-Z, p. 16.

Nicholas Edward Cherolis graduated
: Brate; Cherolis; MacIntosh; Wildey. Also, Wildey, James F., 1989,
Metallurgist’s Factual Report 90-2
, October 24, Exhibit 15-D.

It compresses the metal near the surface
: Lütjering and Williams 2003, p. 114.

“At all times prior to the inflight event”
: United Airlines, 1990,
United Airlines, Inc. Flight 232, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, N1819U, Sioux City, Iowa, July 19, 1989
, p. 18, in file A39915-ADD5, p. 22.

“The Safety Board believes that at the time of manufacture”
: AAR-90/06, p. 79.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Charles Martz, the ex-Navy fighter pilot
: Martz; Martz 1989.

Working in the high-security laboratory at GE
: This section reconstructed using Brate; Cherolis; MacIntosh; Wildey. Also, NTSB Transcript, pp. 295–326.

General Electric manufactured disk 00385
: Young 1989, Exhibits 11-A, -B, and -C.

It was then installed on various engines over time
: AAR-90/06, p. 15.

“The Public Hearing testimony”
: MacIntosh, Robert M., pers. comm., January 26, 2013.

concerted effort was put into keeping the technician’s identity secret
: Barrett; Cookson; Melhaff. Arthur Melhaff was the Foreman of Nondestructive Testing at United Airlines and as such, he was the boss of the man who performed the last fluorescent penetrant inspection of disk 00385. Melhaff told me the inspector’s name and Cookson confirmed it. Although I searched for him extensively, I was unable to find the inspector and saw no reason to publish his name unless he could speak for himself. Both Melhaff and Cookson believed that he had died.

In preparation for this step, . . . a technician . . . put the part
: Cherolis, Nicholas E., pers. comm., July 20, 2013: “Last weekend I visited with Doug Pridemore who was my best buddy and who also re-read all of the fractographs I took to check my data and help us get an accurate number of striations. He also remembers that Ivan Miller was the operator of the SEM when we examined the fracture from flight 232. Today I called Ivan Miller who has been retired for a while and he is pretty sure it was him also.”

serviceable metal cast by TIMET in 1971
: TIMET, “Certificate of Test, Chemical Analysis,” April 1, 1971, in Young 1989, Exhibit 11-L, p. 9.

Two priests dressed in the protective gear
: Gunsolley, Bob, 1989, “Airport Crash Plan Far Exceeds Requirements,”
Sioux City Journal
, August 11, p. A:10:1.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

When a fatigue crack grows due to vibration
: Cherolis; MacIntosh; Wildey; GE Comments, pp. 62, 78; Cherolis 2008.

by 1990, GE claimed that the electron beam
: GE Comments, p. 78.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

“The requirement on the transport airplanes”
: NTSB Transcript, p. 749.

few examples of uncontained rotor bursts
: AAR-90/06, pp. 69–70.

April 10, 1995
: NTSB Safety Recommendation A-95-84 and -85, August 25, 1995, at: www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/1995/A95_84_85.pdf (accessed February 2, 2013).

June 7, 2000
: NTSB Safety Recommendation A-00-104, August 9, 2000, at www.ntsb.gov/doclib/recletters/2000/A00_104.pdf (accessed February 2, 2013).

“In addition to the separation of the fan disk”
: AAR-90/06, p. 99.

Jim Burnett, the chairman and a staunch advocate
: AAR-90/06, p. 108.

NTSB said that FPI is “inadequate”
: NTSB Safety Recommendation A-00-104, 2000.

In 2007, you could buy a GE engine
: Lironi, 2007, p. 85.

On the afternoon of the crash
: Crain; Priest.

next day came up overcast for the prayer service
: Prayer service reconstructed using Gary Brown; Jan Brown; Clapper; Crain; Lindblade; Priest; White; photographs provided by Crain and by Iowa Department of Public Safety. Additional detail and quotes are from
Flight 232 One Year Later
, a series of television programs presented by KTIV, Channel 4 News, July 1990.

It rained so hard that manhole covers
: Sanford, Harvey M., 1990, “Gully-Washer Drenches City,”
Sioux City Journal
, July 20, p. A:1:1; Sanford, Harvey M., “Two Children Hurt When Water Sweeps Them under Parked Car,”
Sioux City Journal
, July 20, p. A:10:1.

Denny Fitch died of cancer in May of 2012
: Fitch.

EPILOGUE

Will Wernick, who was not quite seven years old
: Except where noted, the people involved told me their stories for the epilogue.

Al Haynes, who saved the aircraft
: Haynes; Associated Press, 1989. “Flight 232 Pilot to Resume Duties without Any Fanfare,”
Sioux City Journal
, October 29, p. A:16:1.

The investigators from the NTSB
: Benzon.

Within months of the crash
: Cherolis; Wildey.

The dead from United Airlines Flight 232
: Kraemer; Monserrate, Robert, pers. comm., September 18, 2013.

One day when Sabrina Lee Michaelson
: Both Jerry Schemmel and I tried to contact the Michaelson family on numerous occasions without success. The material about Sabrina came from a Facebook page in memory of her that appeared here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/24325251317/?ref=ts&fref=ts (accessed June 1, 2013). Her posting at age twelve appeared here: http://mydeathspace.com/vb/showthread.php?10429-Sabrina-L-Michaelson (accessed June 1, 2013). Photographs of her grave appear here: http://billiongraves.com/pages/record/SabrinaLeeMichaelson/1935223 (accessed June 1, 2013).

Rene Le Beau was thrown from the plane
: Jan Brown; photograph.

last scheduled airline flight of a DC-10
: Thornton, Paul, 2007, “A Final Flight into the History Books,”
Los Angeles Times
, January 7, at http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jan/07/opinion/op-thornton7 (accessed September 20, 2013). See also Biman Bangladesh Airlines press release dated November 13, 2013, here: http://www.biman-airlines.com/about/news?id=46e17663-312b-46ba-93d6-3d7e508f36b8 (accessed December 18, 2013).

On June 18, 1990, a healthy baby boy
: Tsao, Jeffrey Y., 1991, “A Tragedy in Sioux City,”
Parents Magazine
, September, pp. 102–106.

INDEX

Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations.

A-7 Corsair II fighter-bombers, 17, 24, 64–65, 67, 68, 88, 89, 96, 122, 128, 130, 153

Air Florida Flight 90 crash (1982), 173–74

airline industry, 59, 60, 173–74, 198–99, 243–46, 257, 262–63, 309–10, 347–49, 362–64

airphones, 49–50, 78

air traffic controllers, 16–17, 21–24, 64–74, 88–90, 95–96, 98–99, 114, 190–91, 220–24

Alert Three, 22–23, 114, 115, 140

Alert Two, 22, 139–40

Allen, Bill, 59–60

Allen, Jim, 150–52, 153, 204

Allen, Peter, 27, 31, 324, 361

alpha, 286, 333, 337–38, 347, 363

alpha defects,
see
nitrogen-stablized hard alpha inclusion

Alta, Iowa, 232–33, 275

aluminum, 158, 159, 161, 286, 288, 333

Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA), 161, 184–85, 282

American Airlines Flight 191 crash (1979), 174

American Airlines Flight 587 crash (2001), 362

Amkus rescue cutters (jaws of life), 151, 241

ammonium bifluoride etching, 287

Anderson, Gary, 140, 141, 143–45

argon, 87, 158

Armentrout, Terry, 17–18, 72, 73

Asay, Elaine J., 54, 253

Associated Press, 149

asymmetric thrust, 10, 32, 33

atomic spacing, 332–33

Atwell, Lydia, 129

autopsies, 235–42, 252–53

Ayers, Ellen, 207–12;
see also
emergency room

A-Zone (first class), 14, 15–16, 26, 31, 100–101, 134, 135, 150, 151, 193, 200–201, 209

Babbitt, J. Randolph, 310

Bachman, Kevin, 17–21, 23, 24, 35, 64, 65–70, 71, 88–90, 95, 98, 116–17, 190–91, 221, 223, 224

Badis, Aaron, 175, 271–74, 284, 288, 289, 290, 356

Badis, Adrienne, 271, 289, 290

Badis, Ellen, 175, 271–74, 284, 285, 288–90, 291, 355–56

Badis, Eric, 271, 272, 289, 290

Baier, Drew, 241