Below is some information taken from a sign placed within site of the Bryce Canyon Airport, where doomed United Flight 608 was headed before it tragically crashed:
Tragedy and Triumph
"Tail is going out. We may get down...."
"...and we may not."
On October 24, 1947, Captain Everett L. McMillan of United Flight 608 relayed these chilling words. The mid-section of his DC-6 engulfed in flames, McMillan was attempting to steer the disintegrating craft to Bryce Canyon Airport for an emergency landing. Moments later, the plane-carrying 47 passengers and 6 crew members- crashed in Bryce Canyon National Park, 1.5 miles short of the runway. Local residents witnessed the crash and rushed to the scene to help. Tragically, there were no survivors. "
Piecing the story together
The crash of flight 608 marked the first time in aviation history that a plane was reconstructed to determine the cause of the accident. By piecing together the main fuselage, investigators discovered that the fire began after a routine mid-air fuel transfer. Unwittingly, the #3 fuel tank leaked fuel out of its air vent. The fuel then streamed into the intake for the cabin heating system, where it ignited. Reconstructing aircraft wreckage is now standard procedure in airline crash investigations.
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Additional information:
On October 24, 1947, United Flight 608, a Douglas DC-6, left Los Angeles International Airport for a non-stop flight to Chicago, Illinois with 47 passengers and a crew of 5 that consisted of Captain Everett McMilland and his CO-pilot George Griesbach and crewmembers Helen Morrissey, Shirley Hickey and Sabina Joswick. At 12:21 PM, the Captain radioed that a fire had been detected in the baggage compartment which they had been unable to control. The plane trailed smoke for some 22 miles. Smoke was also entering the passenger cabin and the Captain requested permission to use Bryce Canyon Airport for an emergency landing. The craft was heading for the airport and as it descended, it began to fall apart. Portions of the right wing fell off, and at 12:27 PM a final radio transmission was received. “We may make it—approaching a strip”. The doomed plane was flying over the crest of a tall plateau just a mile and a half from the airport when the nose of the plane pitched over and the plane crashed into an empty field near the entrance of Bryce National Park with such impact that all four engines were ripped off and thrown 300 feet past the plane which was engulfed in a fireball. It was later determined that most of the passengers had died in flight, before impact.
By reconstructing the pieces of the plane, investigators were able to determine a design flaw where a cabin heater intake device was positioned too close to the air vent of fuel tank #3. Flight 608 had been refueled and a routine transfer of fuel between tanks was speculated to have caused some overfilling, where the excess fuel ran into the heater intake and ignited in flight.
The airline industry upgraded all the remaining Douglas DC-6 to prevent further disasters. One very prominent DC-6 that received the repairs was President Harry Truman’s personal aircraft, “The Independence”.
Today, the crash site is still visible, just a few hundred yards from the “Entering Bryce Canyon” sign to the National Park. There are no markers at the actual site where the plane crashed, but even after the passage of time, the earth refuses to heal, and there is an area of dirt where the grass refuses to grow, where the fireball destroyed the vegetation more than 70 years ago.
Source: www.lostflights.com/Commercial-Aviation (link here)
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