Death in the Morning

Like lion cubs unleashed, San Fernando Valley schoolchildren in the Pacoima area of Los Angeles burst out of classrooms one morning last week to test returning sunshine and the soft sea air that had swept away a week's foul weather. They found the world newly come alive, trees and stuccoed buildings glistening magically in rain-washed brilliance. Overhead, winter's deep blue sky throbbed to the scream of jets and the snarl of conventional piston engines. But to the San Fernando Valley's children, raised around Southern California's cluster of major aircraft plants, the heavy traffic in vapor trails and engine noises was unmagically routine.

One airplane aloft that morning was a sleek, four-engined DC-7B, newly completed at the Douglas plant in Santa Monica and destined for delivery to Continental Air Lines. The $2,000,000 airliner had been lifted skyward on its maiden flight by Test Pilot William Carr, 36, for a trial turn over the Pacific at 10,000 ft., then back in a climbing arch over the valley to 25,000 ft. The four-man crew logged a routine test. Twice Santa Monica's Clover Field received position reports radioed by Copilot Archie Twitchell, 51, whose 34 years of flying were interlinked with a 65-picture acting career in the neighboring movie studios (Souls at Sea, Tragedy at Midnight, I Wanted Wings).

"Midair Collision!" Twenty-five minutes after Carr's DC-7B took off from Santa Monica, Northrop Test Pilot Ronald E. Owen, 36, swished skyward from an airport some 50 miles to the northeast, near the desert community of Palmdale, in an F89 Scorpion twin jet interceptor. The Scorpion, equipped with new radar, was soon to be returned to the Air Force. Owen and Radarman Curtiss A. Adams, 27, were flying a final chore: three runs at another jet 25,000 ft. up, to test the ingenious radar mechanism that puts the interceptor on the trail of invading aircraft, fixes on the enemy in unshakable pursuit, then at the proper moment, opens fire automatically.

Owen made two passes, wheeled gracefully over San Fernando Valley for another. The third run was never completed. At Santa Monica, tower operators heard Copilot Archie Twitchell's shocked voice exclaim from the DC-7B: "Midair collision! Midair collision!" Through a burst of radio interference came his agonized report: "We're going down! Uncontrollable! Uncontrollable!" After 34 years, Old-timer Twitchell understood the odds. His last message, clear and calm: "Say goodbye to everybody."

In the valley a few school youngsters spotted the violent flash of orange and yellow flame in the sky. The shredding planes veered away from each other, the smaller Scorpion plummeting to a puff of smoke in the green-brown Verdugo hills to the northeast. The DC-7B at first spiraled lazily, then, its dive steepening, went into a twisting spin, finally plunged with a thunderous roar onto the lawn of the Pacoima Congregational Church, just a block from the Junior High School. There on the athletic fields, 220 seventh-and eighth-grade boys were moving back into the gymnasium.

Stilled Screams. As the plane struck, flaming gasoline sprayed the playing field. Debris whined across the play yard like shrapnel, clipped off a set of football goal posts, cut down some of the boys as they dived to earth. One youth's left leg was almost severed above the knee. He was saved from bleeding to death when a quick-thinking teacher made a tourniquet from a rag and a chunk of the fallen metal. Another youngster's abdomen was ripped open by a piece of flying metal. When the debris settled and the screams were stilled, three boys were dead or dying, 78 others hurt. Dead also: the airliner's four-man crew and Scorpion Pilot Owen. Scorpion Radarman Adams parachuted out, landed badly burned and unable to contribute an explanation of the collision. Busy at his radar, he had not seen the DC-7B until an instant before the planes met.

Dashing hysterically to the school, panicky mothers in pin curls and slacks retrieved their children, led them home through a 20-block area strewn with hunks of fallen metal, fragments of Fiberglas insulation, oxygen tanks. Though wreckage had pierced walls and roofs, no one outside the Junior High schoolyard was seriously hurt. From Los Angeles in the wake of the crash came angry demands for federal controls. But in the San Fernando Valley, anger was tempered by sorrow, and death had wiped magic from the air and sparkling sun. Gathering her child to her tightly, a mother said sadly: "Living here will never be the same again. Never."

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