Unionville, MO Jet Plane Destroyed In Mid Air, May 1962

45 KILLED AS CONTINENTAL JET PLANE IS TORN APART.

ONE FOUND ALIVE BUT SOON DIES.

Unionville, Mo., May 23 (AP) -- A $5-million Continental Airlines jet, possibly torn apart by a violent storm fell to the ground in sections Tuesday night, killing all 45 persond aboard.
Although violent storms raged across souther Iowa during the night, there was speculation today that a second plane may have been involved in the crash. Authorities at Kirksville reported that pieces of a plane which did not seem to be part of the jet had been found.
The only known survivor, rescued from an intact section of the fuselage after an all-night search, died in a hospital 90 minutes after rescue.
He was TAKEHIKO NAKANO, 27, an engineer who carried business cards listing addresses in Oak Park, Ill., and Los Angeles.
He was removed from the middle section of the fuselage, which, shorn of its wings and tail section, plunged into a shallow gully about 20 miles from where debris first started spewing from the doomed plane.
The plane left Chicago's O'Hare Airport at 9:25 p.m., Central Daylight Time and was due in Kansas City at 9:35 p.m. Central Standard Time.
"Morgue" Is Garage.
A temporary morgue was set up in a garage in Unionville, a small community just south of the Iowa line.
The plane was Continental's Flight 11 en route from Chicago to Kansas City and Los Angeles with 37 passengers and a crew of 8.
It apparently broke up over Centerville, Iowa, about 20 miles north of here.
The fuselage lay undiscovered in a clover field on a farm, operated by TERRY BONNELL, from about 9:40 p.m. (CST) when it vanished from a radar surveillance screen until after dawn.
DEWEY E. BALLARD, air carrier operations inspector for the Federal Aviation Agency at Kansas City, viewed the fuselage this morning and said it appeared to have been broken up "by some tremendous force."
"This tremendous force," said BALLARD, "might have been a tornado or extremely heavy turbulence."
He said the plane apparently broke apart in the air and pieces spread out as they fell.
The inside of the fuselage was a jumble of bodies, seats, luggage and clothing.
NAKANO was found half way down on the right side of the intact section, lying with his back against three seats.
Responds.
When told help had reached him he was able to respond only feebly. He died in St. Joseph's hospital in Centerville.
The craft, a Boeing 707 piloted by veteran Capt. FRED GRAY of Pacific Palisades, Calif., made its last report at 9:15 p.m. from a position 35 miles northeast of Kirksville, Mo.
This was about 120 air miles northeast of Kansas City where it was due to land about 25 minutes later.
The plane then disappeared from the FAA surveillance radar at Kansas City.
The crash was the first involving fatalities on a Continental Airlines plane in the company's 28 years of operation.
It was the second involving a 707 jet since the first of the year.
An American Airlines 707 crashed in Jamaica Bay, N. Y., last March 1, taking the lives of 95 persons.

HERE'S LIST OF THE DEAD.
Denver (AP) -- Continental Airlines headquarters released today this list of crew members and passengers aboard a jet that crashed near the Iowa-Missouri border:
Crew:
Capt. FRED R. GRAY, 50, Pacific Palisades, Calif.
First Officer E. J. SULLIVAN, Inglewood, Calif.
Second Officer JACK DEAN ALLEN, 32, Palos Verdes, Calif.
Director of passenger service DAVID E. OLSSEN, 40, El Segundo, Calif.
Hostess MARILYN BLOOMQUIST, 24, Traverse City, Mich.
Hostess MARY McGRATH, 20, River Forest, Ill.
Hostess JOYCE RUSH, 23, Odessa, Tex.
Hostess ANN BERRY, 21, Tomah, Wis.
Passengers:
DON D. BOWMAN, Merriam, Kan.
B. M. CARTER, Alden, Kan.
TOM J. COX, Meade, Kan.
R. GACH, Chicago, Ill.
PHILIP E. GIBERSON, SR., Jackson, Mich.
MAURICE E. HAMILTON, Cleveland, Ohio.
HENRY HANNA, Lyons, Kan.
JOHN HAMM, Kansas City, Mo.
BRUCE SEWART, Des Plaines, Ill.
FRANK TUTTLE, Liberal, Kan.
C. L. WALTON, Laverne, Okla.
RUSSELL WOLF, Guymon, Okla.
JACK ALEXANDER, Dallas, Tex.
K. H. BERGER, Rochester, N. Y.
WILLIAM C. CHAPIN, Rochester, N.Y.
J. CLARITY, Des Plaines, Ill.
THOMAS G. DOTY, Merriam, Kan.
MRS. GENEVA FRALEY, Independence, Mo.
C. FRITZ, Kansas City, Kan.
FRANK J. GREENE, JR., 30, Minneapolis, Minn.
SIDNEY H. GOLDBERG.
FRED P. HERMAN, 46, Dearborn, Mich.
DALE HORN, 29, Independence, Mo.
EDWARD A. KUHN, Aurora, Ill.
TAKEHIKO NAKANO, Evanston, Ill.
ROBERT MILLER, Chicago, Ill.
VIRGIL W. MOURNING, 45, Franklin, Mich.
ROBERT TABORS, Providence, R. I.
R. THOMAS, Mt. Prospect, Ill.
EDWARD WAFFLE, Kansas City North.
B. J. WILKS, Durham, N. C.
ROGER WELCH, 45, Grosse Pointe, Mich.
MARCUS BRAND, 27, Overland Park, Kan.
R. I. HOARE, Surrey, England.
R. A. REID.
ANDY ROUCKA, Chicago, Ill.
JAMES WEBB, Anaheim, Cal.

The Salina Journal Kanas 1962-05-23

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JET DEBRIS IS PROBED.

CAB INVESTIGATORS STUDYING WRECKAGE OF BOEING 707 WHICH CRASHED IN THUNDERSTORM TUESDAY NIGHT NEAR IOWA-MISSOURI LINE.

AUTOPSIES SET -- BODIES OF NINE OF THE 45 ABOARD TO BE EXAMINED FOR CAUSE OF DEATH.

MOST FOUND IN PLANE.

AIRCRAFT IS THE ONE TWO MEN TRIED TO HIGHJACK LAST YEAR IN TEXAS.

By John Ratterman.
(A Member of The Star's Staff.)
Unionville, Mo., May 23. -- A macabre trail of debris, strewn for 60 miles across the Iowa and Missouri countryside, was examined piece by piece by investigators today as they tried to determine why a Continental Airlines jet crashed last night, killing the 45 persons aboard.
The fuselage of the Boeing 707 -- the same aircraft involved in a bizarre highjacking attempt last August in Texas -- knifed into a field near the Iowa border during a thunderstorm.
Odd Event Recalled.
None of the eight crew members killed last night was aboard when a father and son threatened the pilot at El Paso and tried to get him to fly to Cuba. Officers prevented the plane from taking off by shooting out the tires as it sped down the runway.
GEORGE VAN EPPS, who heads a Civil Aeronautics board team of 15 investigators, said tonight that he had seen no indication that the plane was bombed. NAJEEB HALABY, Federal Aviation agency administrator, made a similar statement earlier in the day.
"The way the wreckage was scattered (heavier parts of the plane itself were scattered for 18 miles) does indicate that the plane broke up in the air," VAN EPPS said. "It's our job to find out what caused the breakup."
VAN EPPS estimated that his special team of investigators from Washington, New York and Kansas City would spend a week and a half at the crash scene. The airplane will be reconstructed from the wreckage later on, he said.
FBI Men Present.
Despite the statements of VAN EPPS and HALABY, there were indications that the CAB investigators had not ruled out the possibility of sabotage. Federal Bureau of Investigation men were at the scene.
Some were part of a special identification team flown in from Washington. FBI officials declined comment on the purpose in the presence of the other agents.
The CAB investigators were scrupulously probing the pattern of the debris and they requested that autopsies be performed on nine of the bodies.
DR. C. L. JUDD, Putnam County coroner, revealed the CAB request for the autopsies after a coroner's inquest this afternoon at the courthouse here. A 6-man coroner's jury found that the people aboard the plane died of unknown causes.
Seven Were Passengers.
DR. JUDD said the inquest was necessary so the bodies could be released to next of kin. He said seven bodies taken from the fuselage section will be examined, as well as those of the pilot and co-pilot.
By darkness tonight, 44 of the bodies had been recovered and all but six had been identified. The missing body was thought to be that of one of the stewardesses.
All but seven of the bodies were found in the main section of the fuselage, which fell to earth about five miles northwest of here.
The other bodies, except one, were scattered along the main path of the debris to the northeast. The closest was about a quarter of a mile from the fuselage. The next was another quarter of a mile away. One of those found was a quarter of a mile away from the main trail of debris.
Debris Scattered Widely.
Strewn along the route of the plane's descent was a trail of wreckage ranging from pillows to a ballpoint pen. The sheriff's office of Davis County, Iowa, reported finding luggage, clothing and other personal effects more than 35 miles northeast of where the fuselage was found.
A shower of wreckage rained down around the Iowa Farm towns of Centerville and Cincinnati, almost unnoticed in the dark and stormy night. If pieces had not fallen along highway M-60, where they were spotted by motorists, the location of the crash would not have been known until morning.
TERRY BONNELL, 25, a tenant farmer, found the wreckage of the fuselage in the muddy field after a neighbor called him out of bed to tell him a plane had crashed and wreckage had been found nearby.
Voice From Plane.
"I heard this voice moaning," BONNELL said. "There was silence, then more moans. I didn't think I should touch the wreckage, so there was nothing I could do. I was terrible hearing that voice."
TAKEHIKO NAKANO, a Japanese-born engineer, survived the crash seven hours inside the wreckage, but died 70 minutes after he was rescued.
Here in Unionville, the bodies were being laid out in old truck bed frames inside an abandoned garage. A few relatives and next of kin have arrived to make identification. They are ushered in and out of the grim temporary morgue by federal aviation officials, national guardsmen and representatives of the airline. Across the street from the roped-off area, townspeople look on with subdued curiosity.
First Bodies Released.
Authorities began releasing the bodies to next of kin tonight. The first released was that of CLYDE D. FRITZ, 33, of 26 Thorp street, Kansas City, Kansas, which was being taken to Kansas City, Kansas, by ambulance.
HALABY said earlier that there was not a shred of evidence to support reports that the plane might have collided with another aircraft. There was no fire, he said.
None of the four engines was found with the fuselage. A spokesman for the airline said tonight all had been found.
Call Precedes Crash.
HALABY revealed that the captain, FRED R. GRAY, had radioed for a route through the thunderstorm moments before the crash. The jetliner was equipped with its own radar, which should have revealed the storm pattern, an airline official said.
About 75 miles from the site of the crash, the pilot radioed the controller at the Air Force base at Waverly, Ia., and requested routes through the storm.
The controller gave him one route to the north of the storm and an alternate route to the south. Captain GRAY headed the plane into the southern route. He was flying at about 39,000 feet. Twenty seconds later the blip of the plane disappeared from the radar scopes. It was gone.
CHARLES BUCKS, an assistant vice-president of Continental Airlines, praised the dead pilot here tonight.
"The captain had flown through squalls like that a hundred times," BUCKS said.

The Kansas City Times Missouri 1962-05-24

(Transcriber's Note: THOMAS G. DOTY, one of the passengers, was found to have been recently arrested for armed robbery. He had taken out $150,000+ insurance policies before leaving. He also was know to have purchased dynamite before the flight. It was determined he placed a bomb in the rear towel bin in a lavatory and exploded the plane in a 'suicide for money' plan.)
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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!