Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710
	Remains of Northwest Orient Airlines 710
Accident
Date	17 March 1960
Summary	In-flight disintegration
Site	Tobin Township, Perry County,; near Cannelton, Indiana, United States; 37°54′39.62″N 86°37′58.83″W
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Lockheed L-188C Electra
Operator	Northwest Orient Airlines
Registration	N121US
Flight origin	Chicago Midway Airport, Chicago, Illinois
Destination	Miami International Airport, Miami, Florida
Passengers	57
Crew	6
Fatalities	63
Injuries	0
Survivors	0

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, disintegrated in-flight and crashed near Cannelton, Indiana (10 miles east of Tell City, Indiana) on March 17, 1960. The flight carried 57 passengers and six crew members. There were no survivors.

Crash and causes

A Northwest Orient Lockheed L-188 Electra, similar to the one involved

The seven-month-old Lockheed L-188C Electra operating as Northwest Orient Flight 710 (the airline's first Electra) was a regularly scheduled flight departing Minneapolis-St. Paul to Miami with a stop at Chicago Midway Airport. Radio contact with the Indianapolis Control Center was made at approximately 3:00 p.m. local time. About 15 minutes later, witnesses reported seeing the airplane break into two pieces, with the right wing falling as one piece and the remainder of the craft plunging to earth near Cannelton in southern Indiana.[1]

The crash was the third disaster involving an Electra aircraft in a little more than a year and the tenth major aircraft disaster of 1960, with nearly 400 people killed in less than three months. It came within days of the Washington, D.C. hearings on the death of 34 people in a National Airlines plane crash near Bolivia, North Carolina (later discovered to have been the result of a bomb).[2]

Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) investigators focused on three possible causes: a bomb, air turbulence and metal fatigue. Violent air turbulence had been reported over southern Indiana at about the time of the crash, and metal fatigue had recently caused other crashes.[2]

"Obviously, this plane broke up in the air," CAB spokesman Edward Slattery said, "It is too early to tell the cause of the tragedy, but we will investigate all possibilities, including a bomb."[2]

The Associated Press reported that at 5:44 p.m., 90 minutes after news of the crash, an anonymous caller had informed Chicago police that a bomb had been placed on board a plane at Midway Airport. The police investigated but found nothing and concluded that the call was a prank.[3]

The plane plunged from a height of 18,000 feet[2] into an Ohio River country farm at a speed of more than 600 miles per hour and disintegrated. FBI agents were dispatched to the scene to determine whether any violation of federal law had occurred, such as sabotage, and to assist with fingerprint identification of victims. The plane's last radio transmission occurred when it was over Scotland, Indiana, about 70 miles (110 km) from the crash site, but the pilot reported no trouble and the skies were clear.[3]

Because a great deal of wreckage had fallen over a wide area as the aircraft plunged, investigators first suspected that two planes had collided. One of the Electra's wings and its two engines were found about five miles (8.0 km) from the fuselage impact. State police faced great difficulty reaching the main crash site because of the area's thickly wooded, steep hills and a scarcity of roads in the vicinity. Rescuers discovered a scene of devastation with no survivors. A policeman at the scene remarked: "We haven't really found anything that you could count a body."[3] Some victims were identified by dental records, but most were never positively identified.[4] Hours after the crash, smoke still rose from the crater caused by the impact, which was about 25 ft (7.6 m) deep and 40 ft (12 m) wide.[3]

NASA, Boeing and Lockheed engineers determined that the probable cause was the structural failure and in-flight separation of the right wing while cruising at 18,000 ft (5,500 m) resulting from flutter caused by unexplained reduced stiffness of the engine mounts. This was subsequently defined as "whirl mode," a design weakness that Lockheed engineers termed a "freak vibration phenomenon."[4][5][6] Six months earlier, a Braniff International Airways L-188 Electra, Flight 542, disintegrated over Buffalo, Texas at 15,000 ft (4,600 m), killing all on board.[5] This second similar crash moved the Federal Aviation Administration to immediately issue a reduced cruise-speed directive while investigators tried to determine the cause of the fatal crashes.

The CAB's final report was issued more than a year after the disaster and concurred with the conclusions reached by Lockheed in its investigation.[4]

Notable victims

Chiyoki Ikeda, 39, a CIA training commander

Kiwanis Electra Memorial

The citizens of Perry County and the Cannelton Kiwanis Club raised funds for a memorial at the site of the 1960 crash. Dedicated in 1961, the Kiwanis Electra Memorial stands on Millstone Road in Tobin Township.

Cannelton newspaper editor and civic booster Bob Cummings wrote the words that are inscribed on the memorial along with the names of those who died. The inscription reads: "This memorial, dedicated to the memory of 63 persons who died in an airplane crash at this location, March 17, 1960, was erected by public subscription in the hope that such tragedies will be eliminated."

References

"Disasters: Why This Failure..." TIME. March 28, 1960. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2009-12-06.
"Bomb or Metal Fatigue Cause of Airliner Crash". The Edwardsville Intelligencer. 1960-03-19. p. 1, 11.
"63 DIE AS PLANE EXPLODES OVER INDIANA ON A FLIGHT FROM MIDWEST TO MIAMI". The New York Times. 1960-03-18. p. 1.
"Retro Indy: The Tell City plane crash of 1960". The Indianapolis Star. Retrieved 2021-12-16.
""NASA Wind Tunnel Tests"". Archived from the original on 2011-10-30. Retrieved 2007-05-28.
NWA 710 Accident Report Archived 2016-01-29 at the Wayback Machine

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.

[tmag-1] "Disasters: Why This Failure..." TIME. March 28, 1960. Archived from the original on September 30, 2007. Retrieved 2009-12-06.

[:0-2] "Bomb or Metal Fatigue Cause of Airliner Crash". The Edwardsville Intelligencer. 1960-03-19. p. 1, 11.

[:1-3] "63 DIE AS PLANE EXPLODES OVER INDIANA ON A FLIGHT FROM MIDWEST TO MIAMI". The New York Times. 1960-03-18. p. 1.

[:2-4] "Retro Indy: The Tell City plane crash of 1960". The Indianapolis Star. Retrieved 2021-12-16.

[NASA-5] ""NASA Wind Tunnel Tests"". Archived from the original on 2011-10-30. Retrieved 2007-05-28.

[CAB-6] NWA 710 Accident Report Archived 2016-01-29 at the Wayback Machine

Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States and U.S. territories in the 1960s
1960	National Airlines Flight 2511 Capital Airlines Flight 20 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 Chicago Helicopter Airways Flight 698 World Airways Flight 830 Eastern Air Lines Flight 375 Cal Poly football team New York mid-air collision
1961	Goldsboro B-52 American Airlines Flight 1502 Yuba City B-52 United Air Lines Flight 859 Alaska Airlines Flight 779 TWA Flight 529 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 706 Imperial Airlines Flight 201/8 Cincinnati Zantop DC-4
1962	American Airlines Flight 1 Continental Airlines Flight 11 Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 301 United Air Lines Flight 297 Eastern Air Lines Flight 512
1963	Elephant Mountain B-52 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 705 Camden PA-24 Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 293 Mohawk Airlines Flight 112 Pan Am Flight 214
1964	Savage Mountain B-52 Eastern Air Lines Flight 304 Paradise Airlines Flight 901A Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 United Air Lines Flight 823 Bonanza Air Lines Flight 114 Flying Tiger Line Flight 282
1965	USAF KC-135 Wichita Eastern Air Lines Flight 663 Pan Am Flight 843 Continental Airlines Flight 12 Allegheny Airlines Flight 604 United Air Lines Flight 389 American Airlines Flight 383 United Air Lines Flight 227 Carmel mid-air (Eastern 853, TWA 42)
1966	NASA T-38 American Flyers Airline Flight 280/D Braniff International Airways Flight 250 West Coast Airlines Flight 956
1967	Lake Central Airlines Flight 527 TWA Flight 553 West Coast Airlines Flight 720 Delta Air Lines Flight 9877 Mohawk Airlines Flight 40 Piedmont Airlines Flight 22 TWA Flight 159 X-15 Flight 3-65-97 TWA Flight 128
1968	Ozark Air Lines Flight 965 Braniff International Airways Flight 352 Los Angeles Airways Flight 841 Los Angeles Airways Flight 417 Northeast Airlines Flight 946 Japan Air Lines Flight 2 Pan Am Flight 281 Wien Consolidated Airlines Flight 55 Allegheny Airlines Flight 736 Pan Am Flight 799 North Central Airlines Flight 458 Ozark Air Lines Flight 982
1969	Allegheny Airlines Flight 737 Scandinavian Airlines System Flight 933 United Air Lines Flight 266 Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708 Prinair Flight 277 Delta Air Lines Flight 821 TWA Flight 5787 Newton Cessna 172 crash Allegheny Airlines Flight 853 Mohawk Airlines Flight 411
This list is incomplete.