82 DIE IN JETLINER CRASH.

AERIAL BLAST BURSTS PLANE DURING STORM.

Elkton, Md. (AP) -- Eighty-two persons perished Sunday night in the explosion and flaming crash of a jet airliner near here during a lightning-streaked rainstorm.
Witnesses said they saw lightning hit the plane, transforming it into a ball of fire. They told of seeing some occupants spilled from the flaming wreckage as it plummeted into a cornfield.
The plane, a Boeing 707 on Pan American World Airways Flight 214, was minutes away from the end of its 4-hour, 15-minute Puerto Rico-to-Philadelphia run when it bucked into the storm and tragedy struck.
Pan American officials said 74 passengers, including several infants, and a crew of eight were aboard.
"We've been over the area," said Lt. CHARLES L. ANDREW of the Maryland State Police, "and there are no living."
He spoke after a tour of the scene -- a rain-soaked jumble of confusion marked by patches of fire and still burning bits of wreckage.
"Many, many parts of bodies were found," said ANDREW.
The plane left San Juan at 4:10 p. m. made a 50-minute stop at Baltimore and was midway along the last 104-mile jump to Philadelphia when its flight abruptly ended about two miles northeast of Elkton.
Shortly before the explosion, about two miles northeast of Elkton, the big four-engine jet had been groping its way toward Philadelphia on an instrument approach.
In the next instant it was shattered by a terrifying blast and falling in pieces into a rain-soaked cornfield and on nearby roadways.
The scene is some 54 miles northeast of Baltimore, where the plane had made a stopover moments earlier.
MRS. FRANK ULMER, a resident of the rural crash area, said the crash had occurred shortly before 9 p.m.
A severe storm accompanied by lightning had hit the area about that time.
MRS. ULMER said her son, CLARENCE ULMER, had seen the flaming wreckage of the plane plummet "like a big ball of fire."
Maryland State Police said the recovery of bodies had begun within 90 minutes after the crash.
"It was an explosion in the air," said a state police headquarters official.
Witnesses said one of the plane's four engines barely had missed one of the few homes in the area, and burning parts of the craft set some of the area aflame.
The area was soon aswarm with fire trucks, state police and spectators who clogged the roads and impeded the passage of officials and rescuers.
The Civil Aeronautics Board in Washington said a team of about 10 investigators was en route to the scene.
An FAA spokesman in Washington said the plane was on a holding pattern near the New Castle, Del., airport, flying at 5,000 feet and awaiting clearance to approach the Philadelphia International Airport.
There was an unconfirmed report that the pilot had radioed: "We are going down in flames."
The Federal Aviation Agency in Washington said the plane involved was Pan AM's Flight 214.
A government source in Washington said there had been about 10 crashes of Boeing 707s since they had gone into service. Some of the crashes have been training airplanes, and some have been planes in foreign airline service.
U. S. airlines have suffered three Boeing 707 airliner crashes with fatalities to passengers, a government official said. All the crashes were in 1962 -- in February, March and May.
The crash was pinpointed at between 8:58 and 9 p.m. by ANDREW T. NONNEMACHER, chief controller at the greater Wilmington Airport tower. NONNEMACHER said he had seen the flash from his home.
He said also there had been a flash of lightning at the time.
A spokesman for Pan American World Airways said at Idlewild Airport in New York Sunday night that the following were members of the crew of the Boeing jet:
Capt. GEORGE KNUTH, Huntington Station, L. I., N. Y.
1st Officer JOHN R. DALE of Port Washington, L. I., N. Y.
2nd Officer PAUL ORRINGER of New Rochelle, N. Y.
Flight Engineer R. J. KANTLEHNER of Brentwood, L. I., N. Y.
Purser MARIO L. MONTILLA of Bellerose, Queens, N. Y., and the following cabin attendants:
J. K. MORETT of Paramus, N. J.
T. L. SIMS, of New York City.
V. A. HEMZINGER, of New York City.

The Post-Standard Syracuse New York 1963-12-09

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81 DIE OVER MARYLAND.

JET CRASH PROBERS BELIEVE PLANE BLEW APART IN FLIGHT.

Elkton, Md. (AP) -- The nation's civil aviation chief said Monday that a jet airliner which crashed killing all 81 persons aboard cannot be reconstructed as is usually done.
"There is not enough left to reconstruct," said ALAN S. BOYD, chariman of the Civil Aeronautics Board.
"We are hopeful to take some parts to Washington when they are removed from the ground where they are buried."
Standing near the field where the Boeing 707 fell to earth Sunday night after exploding in the air, BOYD told a news conference that the four-engine flight recorder had been found. But he raised the possibility it would prove of little value.
"It was so compacted there is no way to tell at this time whether we can derive any useful information from it," he said.
Hold Faint Hope.
"We have had torn tapes from other flight recorders and we were able to make readouts. It is probably a faint hope that this tape will not be distorted."
The plane crashed during a thunderstorm, falling in fiery fragments about 15 miles southwest of Wilmington, Del. The plane carried eight crewmen and 73 passengers -- two of them infants.
Flight 214 of Pan American World Airways was en route from Puerto Rico to Philadelphia. Only a few minutes before the tragedy about 65 passengers stepped safely from the plane during its stop in Baltimore.
Despite the damage to the recorder, BOYD said, considerable information might be determined from the marks made in the ground by scattered parts of the aircraft.
Believed on Fire.
All four engines were found.
"It is apparent there was a fire of some kind in flight," BOYD said.
"It is going to be a long time before we are gonig to be able to make any sort of definitive conclusions on what caused this unfortunate accident."
He added, however, that "our technician can derive a tremendous amount of information from the engine and the wreckage pattern."
In response to repeated questions, BOYD said there was nothing so far to indicate any sabotage.
Earlier in the day, a federal investigator expressed the certainty that the airliner exploded before it crashed, but did not rule out lightning or a bomb as the cause of the explosion.
"I am convinced that there was an explosion before it hit the ground," said ROBERT ALLEN, deputy director of safety for the Civil Aeronautics Board.
Plane Disintegrated.
"What type it was I don't knkow. It could be decompression of the hull or rupture of fuel cells. Disintegration of this magnitude is hard to imagine."
"We knew there would be no survivors out of it, because it was just a ball of fire," said MRS. DEAN WILMOTH, who lives in the nearby village of Meadow View.
At a news conference in the Elkton firehouse, ALLEN was asked if there was any sign of a bombing.
"I would say not at this particular time, but we have not ruled out any possibility," he said.
"It was reported there was lightning activity at the time but whether or not this particular plane suffered a strike we cannot at this time tell."
The last words of crewmen aboard the plane were contained in an unofficial and partial transcript played for newsmen in Elkton.
"Clipper 214 is going down in flames" was the last message received by PAUL ALEXY of the Federal Aviation Agency in the control tower of the Philadelphia Airport. Then there was only silence.
Parts Strewn.
Strewn over an area of a square mile was wreckage ranging in size from tiny chips of metal to large segments of what appeared to be wingtips, some eight and ten feet long. Pine trees in the muddy field were festooned with debris.
One engine of the plane, crushed but still in one piece, was found about 600 yards from the main wreckage and debris.
"It started raining fire," said JAMES C. WALLACE, 34, who lives nearby. WALLACE found a box of jewelry in his back yard, with every piece broken or distorted.
State police and 50 sailors from the Navy training center at nearby Bainbridge, Md., lined up and slowly walked across the stubbled cornfield littered with parts of bodies and debris.
It was seldom that anything found was large enough to be identified.
Victims were to be identified through rings, clothing, pocketbooks, fingerprints or dental work.
Identification Difficult.
"It's going to be a very, very difficult job of identification," said DR. RUSSELL S. FISHER, Maryland's chief medical examiner who was on the scene.
DR. FISHER emphasized there would be "no personal or visual identification of the remains," saying it would be futile for relatives to come to Elkton for that purpose.
In Washington, the CAB said it had learned that another plane had been in trouble in the same general area at about the same time because of turbulence. This report indicated rough weather, rather than lightning, was a major factor.
Investigators said some witnesses told of seeing violent flashes which appeared to be lightning but other witnesses said the flashes definitely were not lightning.
The pilot of a Martin 404 twin-engine propellor airplane had reported extreme turbulence in the area about the same time and said the craft was in danger of crashing.
Some experts suggested that if lightning did cause the explosion it might have occurred from the opening of a seam by a damaging hit. Jet fuel which might pour forth from such an opening could be ignited by electrical discharges or the airplane's own power plant.
"A plane could be forced down by lightning," ALLEN said, "but there also have been instances where planes have been hit and not crashed."
If lightning did cause the crash it would be a first in U.S. commercial aviation records.
The Elkton crash was the nation's second worst involving a single airliner. The worst was the crash of an American Airlines Astrojet in New York City, in March, 1962, killing 93 persons.

The Post-Standard Syracuse New York 1963-12-10

Transcriber's Note: The official cause of this accident, was the jet being hit by lightning. The first such instance recorded in U.S. commercial air travel.

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!