Word: pilote
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Perhaps if Pilot Tansey had pulled up to 1,000 or 1,500 feet, to circle and wait, the flight might have been routine to the end. But he was at 500 feet and there he started to circle. Through the scudding lower clouds he could catch occasional glimpses of the ground. "As he passed through one of these clouds," a T.W.A. official said later, "the plane apparently lost altitude and Tansey said he was suddenly flying into the ground...
Disaster struck in a finger snap. The sleek, shiny Constellation tumbled drunkenly across a swampy, weed-covered islet on an arm of the Fergus River not two miles from the airfield. The left wing struck first, then the nose, which broke off and threw the pilot and copilot clear. The rest of the plane hurtled on, scattering its guts, plowing a deep rut in the mushy land. Watchers on Rineanna heard a thunderous crash as the Star hit, saw the flare of the gasoline.fire reach high into the night...
...Christmas Eve, Pilot George B. Sprada had radioed that he was at 7,000 feet and could see the San Diego field 60 miles away in the sparkling clear night. A few minutes later, ranchers saw a flame on the mountain top. Then the weather closed in. It was three days later that a cowboy came upon what was left...
...holiday crashes were not over. The dead were still being brought down from the California mountain, and carried across Eire's Fergus River when the Chicago radio tower received an urgent message. American Airlines pilot Frank Hamm Jr., on top of the overcast en route from Buffalo to Chicago, had failing engines, would have to land on whatever was handy when he came down out of the cloud. He came out above the shore of Lake Michigan, headed for the Michigan City (Ind.) airport only about 40 miles from Chicago's municipal field. But there was not enough...
...Pilot Hamm headed for the clearest space he could find, brushed through a grove of trees on the way. The DC-3 burst into pieces at the crash. Somehow, the stewardess and 18 passengers escaped with their lives. But Pilot Hamm and his copilot, Harmon E. Ring, had made their last flight...