Mayday Over Wichita (10 page)

Air force investigators search for human remains.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

The Reverend Thomas Heffernan, a young priest who worked as a chaplain on McConnell, was a familiar face at the scene. Firemen gladly hunched over and carried the reverend on their backs, wading through the knee-deep water, foam and jet fuel, so he could give the last rites to victims. But, as a reporter commented, “[r]arely did he find a whole body.”
¹⁷²

Orange markers were placed on bits of tissue and bones until the markers were “as thick as trees in a forest.”
¹⁷³
Twenty-three of the bodies were sent to the morgue while six of the airmen were sent to another facility. Dr. Robert Daniels, the Sedgwick County coroner at the time, had a full crew of pathologists and dentists working on the recovered bodies in an attempt to positively identify them. When the next of kin arrived at the morgue, hoping to identify their family members, Dr. Daniels lamented, “There [were] only four or five bodies we could show. There's just nothing to see.”
¹⁷⁴

A
LL
D
AY AND
A
LL
N
IGHT

Recovery efforts were organized quickly and effectively by the federal, state and local authorities swarming on Piatt Street. But amidst the recovery efforts, the scene was far from calm. People of all ranks and titles were searching through backyards, and fire trucks were moving hastily along the streets. Bulky, pot-bellied water trucks made continual passes, spewing out water in an attempt to dilute the jet fuel as much as possible, while ambulances hurried in and out of a crowded field near the impact point, their doors swinging open in anticipation of human remains for transport.

As the ninety-year-old Winston Churchill lay dying in London, England, after suffering a stroke, reporters from the
London Times
were calling police headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, to find out information about the crash. Inquiries came in from nearly every U.S. state. It was as if, at least for the moment, the world had paused outside of Kansas, and all eyes were on the mayday over Wichita.
¹⁷⁵
Indeed, Churchill's famous words, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,” would have resonated with rescue workers as they wearily carried on in the fourteen-degree weather throughout Saturday night—raking through the last pieces of rubble.

Beneath the full moon and amidst the grisly remains, members of the Red Cross and Salvation Army provided coffee and refreshments to the exhausted workers as they pushed forward to recover the last of the bodies. A total of 500 cups of hot chocolate, 1,410 bowls of soup, 1,695 sandwiches and 3,700 bowls of chili were distributed by the Red Cross and Salvation Army that day alone.
¹⁷⁶
Later, writing about his experiences after the crash, Capt. Wert recounted that from January 16 to January 22, when the Salvation Army left the scene, nine tons of food had been donated to feed the fatigued searchers and, now homeless, survivors. These tons included: “canned goods, bread, donuts, chili, hot chocolate, coffee, cakes, pies, milk, orange juice, soups, cups, napkins,” and other miscellaneous items. An astounding 46,486 cups of coffee were handed out in seven days.
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Wert also praised Mrs. Wilder of 3845 North Clarence, who baked over forty pies and ten chickens and sent plenty of “home-made chicken noodle soup, that was ‘out of this world.'”
¹⁷⁸
The efforts of the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Wichitans to supply the recovery workers were extraordinary.

F
INAL
T
OLL

When Kansas Governor William H. Avery arrived at the scene of the crash, he called it the “[s]econd worst disaster in Kansas in his experience.”
¹⁷⁹
Avery stated that “it [was] second only to the Udall Tornado” of May 1955, which killed eighty people.
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Despite the death toll of the Udall tornado, the Piatt Street plane crash was the worst non-natural disaster Kansas had ever seen, claiming many lives and causing the destruction of an entire neighborhood. The final toll taken by the WFD recorded fourteen houses instantly obliterated, sixty-eight others damaged, thirty vehicles demolished and thirty people killed—including the airmen.
¹⁸¹
Twentieth and Piatt Street now marked the most overwhelming catastrophe in Kansas history. Nothing before it, or in the decades that followed, would compare.

The KC-135 inflicted severe property damage.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

No one was blaming the air force, Boeing or the pilots—yet. In the time immediately after the crash, the issue at hand was the question of where to go from there and how to cope with such horrendous losses. A man leaving a nearby grocery store an hour after the crash occurred put it best. He said, “I don't know what to do now, but I need a drink.”
¹⁸²

9

PICKING UP THE PIECES

We ministers changed our subject for the Sunday sermon…My sermon was, “You'd better get ready—it comes like a thief in the night.”

—Reverend Joseph E. Mason, 1965
¹⁸³

Even the following day, a sea of onlookers and souvenir-hunters lined the streets outside the crash site—each one gawking incessantly. Trucks, cars, bicyclists, pedestrians and cameramen were everywhere. The whole world, it seemed, wanted to see and photograph the worst disaster in Wichita's history. Such a catastrophe—killing so many, so quickly, in Wichita, of all places—was unthinkable. The alarming news rang out from church pulpits that Sunday; corner diners and coffee shops hummed with gossip; and local radio and television stations, newspapers and telephone lines all carried the grim details to frightened, concerned and stunned residents. Ominous headlines in the
Wichita Eagle
and newspapers across the country told the dreadful story: “D
EATH
T
OLL
C
LIMBS TO
30,” “J
ET
D
EATH
C
OUNT
I
S
30,” “W
ICHITA
T
ANKER
C
RASH
T
OLL
R
ISES TO
30,” “14 R
ESIDENCES
W
IPED
O
UT
: S
CORES
H
OMELESS
.”
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The congestion was so thick that one reporter remembered, after asking an officer directing traffic how many cars he thought were surrounding the crash site, the officer snarled, “How in the hell do I know? Every damned car in town is trying to get in here.”
¹⁸⁵

There was very little space within a six-block radius that was not filled with either a vehicle or a spectator. From 21
^st
Street to 13
^th
Street, and everywhere in between, cars were jammed bumper to bumper. Local law enforcement was hard-pressed to keep the thousands who had congregated out of the roped-off area. Unfortunately, this often included the very residents who lived there and were just trying to return home.

The impact crater left by the KC-135.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

Near the impact crater.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

One of the KC-135's engines.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

Few could blame the rubberneckers who strained to catch a glimpse. It was an unnerving site. When investigators began combing the murky scene at dawn on Sunday morning, one of them said quietly, “My God, it looks as though a bomb had hit.”
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Property damage estimates started at $150,000. A few days later, they increased to $500,000. And by the end of the week, a loss of $3.5 million had been calculated—the largest portion of which was for the KC-135, valued at $3 million.
¹⁸⁷
The area surrounding the deep crater where the tanker plunged into the ground was completely destroyed. The gross stench of jet fuel combined with burnt flesh still lingered. Blackened outlines marked where houses once stood. Copious piles of smashed vehicles and metal scrap mirrored those found in a junkyard. Trees were uprooted with their branches torn off. Grass was completely scorched. The only sign of life was the fifty-man team of air force investigators scouring and recovering the pieces to determine why the plane crashed.

A scene of devastation on Piatt.
Larry Hatteberg
, KAKE TV.