Word: 7b
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...airplane aloft that morning was a sleek, four-engined DC-7B, newly completed at the Douglas plant in Santa Monica and destined for delivery to Continental Air Lines. The $2,000,000 airliner had been lifted skyward on its maiden flight by Test Pilot William Carr, 36, for a trial turn over the Pacific at 10,000 ft., then back in a climbing arch over the valley to 25,000 ft. The four-man crew logged a routine test. Twice Santa Monica's Clover Field received position reports radioed by Copilot Archie Twitchell, 51, whose 34 years of flying...
...Midair Collision!" Twenty-five minutes after Carr's DC-7B took off from Santa Monica, Northrop Test Pilot Ronald E. Owen, 36, swished skyward from an airport some 50 miles to the northeast, near the desert community of Palmdale, in an F89 Scorpion twin jet interceptor. The Scorpion, equipped with new radar, was soon to be returned to the Air Force. Owen and Radarman Curtiss A. Adams, 27, were flying a final chore: three runs at another jet 25,000 ft. up, to test the ingenious radar mechanism that puts the interceptor on the trail of invading aircraft, fixes...
Owen made two passes, wheeled gracefully over San Fernando Valley for another. The third run was never completed. At Santa Monica, tower operators heard Copilot Archie Twitchell's shocked voice exclaim from the DC-7B: "Midair collision! Midair collision!" Through a burst of radio interference came his agonized report: "We're going down! Uncontrollable! Uncontrollable!" After 34 years, Old-timer Twitchell understood the odds. His last message, clear and calm: "Say goodbye to everybody...
...valley a few school youngsters spotted the violent flash of orange and yellow flame in the sky. The shredding planes veered away from each other, the smaller Scorpion plummeting to a puff of smoke in the green-brown Verdugo hills to the northeast. The DC-7B at first spiraled lazily, then, its dive steepening, went into a twisting spin, finally plunged with a thunderous roar onto the lawn of the Pacoima Congregational Church, just a block from the Junior High School. There on the athletic fields, 220 seventh-and eighth-grade boys were moving back into the gymnasium...
...Greece's ailing airline, T.A.E. (TIME, Aug. 6). Onassis' deal with the Greek government stipulates that T.A.E. start serving South Africa and the Far East by 1958, fly to New York by 1959. Onassis will spend some $10 million for expansion, is trying to buy three DC-7B and two Convair 440 airliners...