1940 Lovettsville Air Disaster
Pennsylvania Central Airlines Douglas DC-3
Ed Coates Collection
On August 31, 1940, the worst disaster in the history of commercial air travel (up until that time) occurred in Loudoun County. The incident became known as the Lovettsville air disaster, named for the small town near where the Pennsylvania Central Airlines Douglas DC-3 crashed. No definitive cause for the crash ever has been established, but bad weather was the major factor. The flight from Charlottesville to Washington DC was delayed half an hour in order to give the storm time to clear the area. Although thunderstorms still were in the area, the airplane — with 21 passengers and a crew of four — was cleared to take off. Just 23 minutes later the airplane slammed into a clearing 35 miles west of Washington, killing everyone on board.
Farmers living in the area had heard the roar of engines just before the crash. The following day, J.J. “Slim” Carmichael, vice president of the airlines, said both engines of the airplane were apparently “wide open” when it crashed. The DC-3 had hit the ground with such speed and force that many of the passengers had been cut in two by their safety belts. Jerome Lederer, director of the Civil Aeronautics Board’s safety bureau, reported that the aircraft had “struck the ground at a sharp angle on its nose and ricocheted about 100 feet, breaking up as it turned over.” During that high bounce, eye witnesses reported that the ship was destroyed. It was concluded that the airplane was out of control when it made contact with the ground, given that the flat field would have made it possible to make an emergency landing with only minor damage.
On September 1st, with a bright sun beating down on the crash site, the clover field was transformed into a “picture of horror”. “Virtually all of the bodies appeared to have been severed. Unofficial observers said the passengers apparently were buckled in their seats and latterly were cut in two by the impact.” “The mangled bodies were scattered over a 25 acre area.”
At about 3am, Loudoun County officially had granted permission for the removal of the bodies to nearby Leesburg, Virginia. Throughout the long night, the ghastly job of removing the victims from the wreckage went on. In the glare of powerful flood lights generated by an emergency unit set up in the field, undertakers and their assistants assembled the mangled bodied in three hearses. Rescue workers; most of whom were members of volunteer companies, labored thru ankle deep mud. Some worked to hack down corn stalks in adjoining fields which caught portions of the catapulted bodies , while others sorted through a mass of twisted metal and machinery. A caravan of ambulances and hearses then carried the dead to nearby Leesburg, where a chapel inside Union Cemetery had been converted into a temporary morgue. Among the dead were U.S. Sen. Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota and a number of other government workers, including FBI agents and IRS workers. By afternoon relatives had identified from personal effects about half of the victims. Lundeens body was identified by Martin Hysong of Washington, a personal friend. FBI fingerprint experts were enlisted in identifying others.
Among the scattered remains of victims lay clothing, shoes, hats, handbags, money. Personal effects, and hundreds of bits of metal from the plane’s fuselage and wings, spread out like confetti. Almost in the center of the field stood the plane’s tail assembly; bent and twisted and up-ended, as if it had rolled over and over after breaking loose from the ships main section. To the right and left were the shattered wing portions, and all about lay other pieces of the deluxe $120,000 Douglas airliner. At the base of the slight hill over which Pilot Lowell Scroggins vainly fought to lift the big ship was a huge crater, the spot it was believed the ship struck first.
After the conclusion of the investigation, ground crews of the airline began pulling up wreckage and planned to saturate it with gasoline and set it ablaze. Carmichael said there was no salvage. It was the airlines first fatal accident in 13 years operations, and the nation’s first fatal crash of a commercial transport plane since March 26, 1939, when eight were killed in Oklahoma City.
Airline officials discredited reports that a note had been dropped by stewardess Margaret Carson of Pittsburg, just before the plane struck. Persons first on the scene reported the note said it asked the lines Pittsburg office be notified. [1]
Following the fatal crash of the PCA, Mayor LaGuardia of New York issued a statement on September 2 as follows: “in all likelihood the direct cause of the unfortunate crash will never be ascertained. At the present stage of the art, therefore, it becomes necessary to exercise precaution in avoiding undue risks. Sometime ago I urged before a United States Senate Committee the necessity of placing flights in bad weather under complete control of Federal authorities. I then urged and now again urge that all commercial flights be required to obtain a clearance from a Federal airport director stationed at each licensed airport before taking off. This would completely avoid the competition in taking chances in bad weather.” [2]
In 1940; fourteen years before the invention of the flight data recorder, investigators had to rely on intuition, experience, eyewitness testimony and clues found in the wreckage to help them figure out why an airplane had gone down. In the case of the Lovettsville crash, it was determined that the DC-3 had been flying through a thunderstorm. The fastened seatbelts provided strong evidence that the aircraft had been experiencing heavy turbulence just before it went down. It also was determined that the airplane had nosed over just before heading almost straight down into the ground.
In the end, wind shear, a sudden and powerful change in the direction of the wind, was given as one probable cause of the crash. The official Civil Aeronautics Board however, determined that the official cause was a bolt of nearby lightning that had disabled the pilots.
Nine years later on September 11, 1949, the deaths of twenty five persons in the 1940 Lovettesville Air Disaster was attributed to “accident, cause unknown” according to Dr. John Gibson, Loudoun County Coroner, after an inquest in which eighteen witnesses were heard. The witnesses testified that the Pennsylvania Central Airlines craft fell during a heavy rainstorm and intense lightning display.
In 1937; three years prior to this crash, there were Air Route Traffic Control Centers in Newark, Cleveland and Chicago. Although private airlines developed these centers in 1936, the federal government took over as planned a year later. The early route controllers used maps, blackboards and mental calculations to ensure the safe operation of aircraft. To represent planes, they moved boat shaped weights – called “shrimp boats” – across maps. These controllers had no direct radio links with aircraft. They used telephones and radio to communicate with airline dispatchers, controllers in airport towers and airway radio operators, who relayed instructions and weather information to pilots. In 1938, Congress established the Civil Aeronautics Authority, consolidating all federal regulation of aviation into one agency. On the eve of World War II, the CAA expanded its authority over the airways to also include takeoffs and landings at airports, uniting airport towers with air route traffic control centers.[3]
At the time of the Lovettsville crash, aircraft still only communicated directly with an air traffic controller at the air field during takeoff and landing. While enroute, pilots communicated with the company flight dispatcher radio operators who would relay information such as altitude and position, to the controllers.
[1]
Details of the crash
compiled from: “1940 Air Crash Took a Toll not Soon Forgotten”, By David Maurer
Mar 1, 2009 http://www.dailyprogress.com
and from “Gather up Torn Bodies of Plane Crash Victims”, Chicago Tribune, Sept.
2, 1940, http://archives.chicagotribune.com
[2] “Disaster in the Air” - By
Edgar A. Haine Published by Associated University Presses. 2000 - Fiction - 394
pages
[3] Early air traffic control information compiled from:
www.natca.org/images/NATCA_PDFs/Publications/ATCHistory.pdf
Links for additional information about the crash
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