Brunswick, MD Military Jet and Airliner Collide, May 1958 - Plea for Air Controls

Maryland Plane Crash Stirs Plea For Air Controls

BRUNSWICK, Md.---Investigators today combed the wreckage of an airliner and a jet trainer which collided in the air, and an aroused congress asked how such accidents can happen and what the government can do to prevent more of them.

There were new demands for an end to the "see and be seen" rule which had governed pilots. Critics called for more central and positive federal air traffic control and speedier output of electronic devices to guide civil and military aircraft through the skies.

It happened in the blink of an eye yesterday---the collision of a Maryland Air National Guard T33 jet with a Capital Airlines plane in clear weather at about 8,000 feet. The toll was 12 dead, seven passengers who boarded the Baltimore bound plane in Chicago and Pittsburgh, Pa., the four airline's crew members, and an army first class private Donald Chalmers, 24, of Baltimore, Md., who was having his first airplane ride in the T33.

Sole Survivor

The sole survivor was Captain Julius R. McCoy, the jet pilot, from the Maryland National Guard's 104th Fighter Squadron base at Martin Airport near Baltimore. He miraculously escaped death when he was blown from his plane after the collision and parachuted into a tree.

In Frederick, Md., Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for burns, McCoy told questioners he "never saw" the airliner. His last memory was of being at 8,000 feet heading east.

The Fresno Bee Republican, Fresno, CA 21 May 1958