Mayday Over Wichita (15 page)

As the evidence suggests, it is highly improbable that a nylon cord or drogue chute crippled the tanker into a spiraling death dive. An anecdote from the KC-135's inception offers proof of the durability, versatility and flying capabilities of the KC-135's engines. Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston, who first flew the Dash-80 (the prototype for the commercial 707 and KC-135), made quite the spectacle when he sent the massive jetliner into a barrel roll in front of Boeing executives and would-be investors during a test flight at the Seattle Gold Cup Boating Competition on August 7, 1955. Johnston barrel rolled the gigantic plane, not once, but twice, to show both its proficiency and flexibility.
²⁹⁴
When the chairman of Boeing, Bill Allen, scolded Johnston afterward, demanding to know why he had performed such a ridiculous and dangerous stunt, Johnston replied, “I'm selling airplanes.”
²⁹⁵

Because the 707 and the KC-135 sold so well afterward, several believed Johnston's antics helped sell the jet plane as a solid, flexible and safe aircraft. The four 13,750-pound-thrust P&W J57 turbojet engines of the KC-135 were by no means invincible but were resilient for their time. Gen. Bywater most aptly addressed the parachute rumors when he said, “This is foolish.”
²⁹⁶

R
UMOR
#4: T
HE
P
ILOTS
A
IMED FOR A
V
ACANT
L
OT AND
I
NTENTIONALLY
N
OSE
-D
IVED

The most common rumor retold in newspapers, letters and poems after the crash was that the pilots had aimed for a vacant lot. Even today, this apocryphal tale is still alive in the neighborhood where the crash occurred. To be clear, Capt. Szmuc was, without question, a superb pilot who commanded the respect of his crew. He was a devout patriot, having served for nearly a decade, and was every bit as heroic as any pilot serving in the air force. His copilot, Capt. Gary J. Widseth, and the rest of the men on Raggy 42 that day had nothing but admiration for him. The dutiful and intrepid reputations of Szmuc and Widseth are indisputable, and to call the vacant lot rumor into question is in no way an attempt to traduce their memory with falsehood or allegations. All the same, the “vacant lot” theory has consistently been retold by the media, survivors, Wichitans and many who possess only a faint knowledge of what actually transpired.

It is evident that if the plane had crashed a mile away at WSU, where it began jettisoning fuel; or four blocks away at the Derby Oil Refinery; or three blocks away at the Institute of Logopedics, filled with “many small children and adults,” the casualty rate would have greatly exceeded thirty lives.
²⁹⁷
It is also plausible that, if the plane had not nose-dived into the intersection of 20
^th
and Piatt but had instead slid down Piatt Street, consuming homes and Wichitans as it went, the death toll would have grown astronomically. The question yet remains how anyone could come to the conclusion that the pilots purposely avoided other, more populated areas or had
any
control over the plane at all.

Poem by Ellen Anderson.
Irene Hubar (Kenenski)
.

Ironically, it was Gen. Bywater—who had so often squelched other rumors about why the plane crashed—who actually initiated the first reports of the pilots having aimed for a vacant lot. In an interview on
KAKE News
the day of the crash, Bywater stated, “From the reports we have received it appears that he made an effort at the last minute to avoid buildings, or knowing he was going to crash perhaps put the aircraft in the vacant lot.”
²⁹⁸
Although Bywater was only going off of the reports he received (it is still unknown who delivered these reports), the rumor, nonetheless, trickled far and wide throughout the Wichita community. In the midst of so many debauched rumors, it was refreshing to have one that spoke of compassion and heroism—unfounded though it was.

Chester I. Lewis.
Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas
.

Chester I. Lewis, who would later become the attorney for nearly half of the victims on Piatt, and who was himself a pilot, replied to the question of whether he thought Capt. Szmuc intentionally aimed for a vacant lot:

Nobody believes this hogwash! Because you can't put a KC-135 tanker in a two by four field, with it out of control, too—it just can't be done—that's like landing in a basketball court on the moon. Anyhow, this was said and I think this was an emotional reaction from the Air Force. Many people want to know what caused it. It's like an automobile accident, you want to know where the fault lies, who is the one who precipitated it. And knowing air crashes, being a pilot myself, something caused it, it just didn't happen
.
²⁹⁹

Indeed, to make the assumption that the pilots purposely chose the location of the crash not only perpetuates the myth of their control over the plane but also suggests they could have selected better locations, reawakening the rumors about their choice to crash in an African American neighborhood. A surviving victim, when asked about the vacant lot theory, mentioned how he thought the plane could have landed at the municipal airport or even made it back to McConnell but chose not to.
³⁰⁰
This sincere, yet misguided, belief lives on.

In all likelihood, the seven men onboard Raggy 42 had little, if any, control over where the plane crash-landed, the manner in which it crashed or the people whom it would drastically impact. The air force, it appears, prematurely expedited this rumor based on skewed witness testimonies, and it has stood the test of time. The inability to determine whether the pilots purposely nose-dived Raggy 42 does not imply that the airmen were any less patriotic or virtuous in their attempt to recover the doomed aircraft—lest we forget they lost their lives as well. As is the case with any good airman, they were merely serving their country and doing their duty when disaster struck.

After arriving in Wichita to begin the initial crash investigation, Gen. Wade made a statement to the media about the tragedy: “The cost of military preparedness has always been shared by both our citizen ‘soldiers' as well as our military members in our efforts to maintain a semblance of peace in this world—and in Wichita today, a high price in human life has been extracted.” He went on to add that the KC-135 “was staffed with a well-qualified combat crew. I know that they did everything within their power to avoid or prevent this tragic happening.”
³⁰¹
There is no reason to doubt Wade's statement as a genuine truth based on the airmen and their abilities. The rumors concerning whether or not the pilots had control over the aircraft and the actual cause of the crash, though, were far from being put to rest by Wade's statement. Others demanded more definitive answers in the months that followed. Ten months later, they received an answer.

13

WHY IT CRASHED

T
HE
R
EPORT

The report, withheld from the public for months, said the jet tanker's rudder was turned at a “severe” angle
.

—Wichita Beacon,
October 3, 1965
³⁰²

In 1925, when Calvin Coolidge was still president of the United States, Wesley E. Brown began his undergraduate studies at the University of Kansas. Four years later, he worked his way through the Great Depression, attempting to find employment wherever he could. When America entered World War II the following decade, he joined the navy at age thirty-seven as the oldest lieutenant in his unit. Born on June 22, 1907, in Hutchinson, Kansas, Brown had finished law school, gone into private practice, worked as a bankruptcy judge and become a newly appointed federal judge by the time the Piatt Street crash occurred in 1965.
³⁰³

Three years prior to the crash, in 1962, President John F. Kennedy had appointed Brown to the U.S. District Court. Though none could have guessed it at the time, he would go on to become the oldest practicing federal judge in U.S. history. Still active decades later, Brown was notorious for replying to critics of his age, “I was appointed for life or good behavior…whichever I lose first.”
³⁰⁴
Well past his 100
^th
birthday, determined as ever, he made the arduous climb to his fourth-floor courtroom to hear cases. Court clerks and lawyers who worked with Brown remembered the sprightly old figure walking by their office and asking, “Well, is justice prevailing?”
³⁰⁵

Judge Wesley E. Brown in 1962, when he was appointed to the bench by President John F. Kennedy.
Wichita U.S. Courthouse
.

Just three months shy of his sixtieth birthday in 1967, Brown made a controversial order concerning the Piatt Street crash. A headline in the
Wichita Beacon
on Tuesday, March 28, 1967, read, “Judge Removes Mystery Cloak from Jet Crash.”
³⁰⁶
Brown felt the plaintiffs, who had recently filed wrongful death lawsuits against the air force and Boeing, deserved the right to see the contents of the “secret” air force investigation report, if it existed. Although the Collateral Investigation Board Report had been released a year prior to Brown's order, Terry O'Keefe, an attorney who spoke on behalf of the plaintiffs, called this “secret report”—supposedly different from the one previously released—the “crux of the case.”
³⁰⁷

O'Keefe was unsatisfied with the Collateral Investigation Board Report because it did not provide, as he felt, a definitive answer for what caused the crash. Alleging wrongful death, physical and mental injury and property damage, O'Keefe cited four main reasons why his clients needed a more detailed report of the crash: first, that everyone on board the jet tanker died in the crash; second, the area surrounding the crash site was cordoned off and guarded while air force and Boeing investigators retrieved the parts; third, the remaining parts, said O'Keefe, “could not have been examined by the plaintiffs after the crash even if plaintiffs had the available resources and technology”; and, finally, the plaintiffs were “indigent people of limited education” and had “limited funds to prosecute their claims.”
³⁰⁸

Most, like U.S. District Attorney Guy Goodwin, doubted if such a report even existed. Goodwin, in textbook manner, refused to “concede that such a report [did] exist,” stating, “I have no knowledge that it does exist…therefore, I must deny it.”
³⁰⁹
The plaintiffs, as they had since the day of the crash, would have to wait for the government to respond.

T
HE
I
NVESTIGATION

The benefit for investigators probing crash scenes of commercial aircraft today is the recovery of the “black box,” also known as the flight-data recorder (FDR). In reality, this box is painted bright orange and provides key details concerning how the plane performed just prior to a crash. The FDR records valuable information such as the time of the crash, altitude, control-column position, fuel flow, engine thrust, airspeed, vertical acceleration and rudder-pedal position.
³¹⁰
As a military plane, KC-135s did not have such luxuries. The team investigating the Piatt Street crash had very little to go on for two reasons: there was no FDR on board Raggy 42 (since it was a relatively new technology at the time), and aside from mangled pieces of metal, four smashed engines and a crumpled tail section, there was not much left of the plane.