One of Those Things

In bed at 10 o'clock one night last week Farmer George Behlmann, who lives three miles north of the St. Louis Airport, heard an airplane overhead. Said he next day:

"The motor sounded very loud and suddenly stopped. My wife said, 'That's funny. I wonder if it crashed.'... I dressed and went out. Other people whom I met said the plane had crashed. It was very foggy and I couldn't see 20 feet ahead of me ... so I went back to bed." Had he pushed on to the boundaries of his farm, George Behlmann would have come upon the scene of the third wreck of a U. S. airliner in 1936.

Just three months old, the twin-motored, ten-passenger Lockheed-Electra City of Memphis was on its regular run from New Orleans to Chicago, Chicago & Southern Air-Lines' sole route. At St. Louis, motors and controls were examined, found perfect. After getting a weather report which noted a 2,000-ft. ceiling at St. Louis, low-lying fog along the way and unlimited visibility at Chicago, the City of Memphis had soared off into the dark at 9:56 p. m. with a fresh pilot, a copilot, six passengers. One of the latter was Captain Vernon C. Omlie, oldtime flyer and husband of equally famed Aviator Phoebe Omlie. Six minutes after the takeoff, the airport called the plane by radio, got no answer By 10:20, when there was still no word anxious officials began querying airport; along the way.

It was three hours before the shattered City of Memphis was found. Then ground crew stumbled on an isolated clearing on the Behlmann farm, found 400-ft. swath through the corn strewn with the wreckage of the $50,000 all-metal plane. Scattered among the debris were the bodies of the eight victims, all killed instantly. The pilot's watch had stopped at 10:02 p. m.

With dawn, Air Commerce officials speedily reconstructed the accident. For some unknown reason, the pilot had apparently decided to return to the airport, banked sharply to the left at full speed when too near the ground. In the maneuver, the wingtip caught in a ditch, tripped the plane into a cartwheel. At the last instant, the pilot cut the switch, prevented fire. The retracted position of the landing gear showed that he was not attempting to land.

How to explain all these circumstances, as usual, baffled everyone. After a week of investigation by Air Commerce Director Eugene L. Vidal himself, no one had produced a better explanation than Chicago & Southern's President Carleton Putnam. Numbed by the first fatal accident in his company's three-year history, he groaned: "It was one of those things that can't happen but still did."

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