Forgive my digression today, but I'm going to get personal.
In 1609, when Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company, explored the river in New York that now bears his name, he could not have imagined the extraordinary event that would occur there exactly 400 years later, on January 15, 2009.
As all media savvy persons know, on that recent frigid afternoon, US Airways Flight 1549 ditched in the North River section of the Hudson River five minutes after takeoff. The aircraft, a French-built Airbus A320, had just departed from New York City's LaGuardia Airport at 3:26 p.m. bound for Charlotte, North Carolina. About 90 seconds after takeoff, while climbing through an altitude of 3,200 feet, the pilot radioed that the aircraft had hit birds and had lost power in both engines.
All 155 people on board survived the watery ditching, safely evacuated the cabin, and were rescued from the partially submerged plane by nearby water craft. Lynn Lunsford, aerospace industry reporter for The Wall Street Journal, described "landing on water without fatalities" as "one of the rarest and most technically challenging feats in commercial aviation."
Indeed, the pilot of the plane, Chesley Sullenberger, instantly became a national hero, with over 3000 people gathering in the San Francisco suburb where he lives to cheer him on when he return home. Millions more, imagining the horror that he averted, marveled at his professional ability and personal cool.
The Day My Plane Crashed
All of which got me thinking about the unforgettable (and less admirable) conduct of an Eastern Airlines (remember them?) pilot when, at the tender age of ten years, I took my very first plane ride -- and that plane crash landed.
As you might imagine, I still harbor indelible memories of those few horrific minutes in my young life.
For many years afterward the experience made me an habitual "white knuckle" flyer -- when I was forced to go airborne, even when I was aboard Air Force One. (You can't get to South Africa or China by train, but before the painful advent of Amtrak, I took more than a few Pennsylvania Railroad trains to New York, Boston, Chicago and beyond).
I have flown many thousands of miles since, in all parts of the world, (and have had more than enough airborne scares along the way), but nothing ever equals your first and, thank God, only plane crash.
Happy New Year!
It was a cold New Years Day, 1947, and my father and step-mother had decided we would fly from Charleston, W.Va., where we then lived, to Akron-Canton Airport, to visit my older brother, Carl, and his new bride, Mary Grace, who lived in Newton Falls, Ohio.
As any 10-year old would be, I was filled with anticipation (and a bit of apprehension) about my first airplane flight.
In those pre-environmental days, the Charleston Airport had been constructed by lopping off the top of a couple of mountains and filling in the valley between, providing elevated runways that allowed planes to fly almost straight out into the air, right off the edge of the cliff, so to speak.
Our plane that day was that old workhorse manufactured by the McDonell-Douglas Aircraft Co., the DC-3. (About 400 of the 40,000 built, also known as "Dakotas," are still in use around the world). It was a small but classic aircraft, whose prototype first flew on Dec. 17, 1935, (the 32nd anniversary of the Wright brothers flight at Kitty Hawk). With a crew of two, its passenger capacity was only 21-32 people.
Odd Configuration
As I recall, the DC-3 had one row of double seats along the right side, and a row of single seats on the left. To get a good look, my Dad seated me at the starboard window and he sat next to me, with my step-mother across the aisle. No flight attendants -- just the pilot and co-pilot, one of them checking our seat belts before walking up the center aisle to the cockpit. (When resting on the tarmac the DC-3 had a marked decline to the rear, as though you were walking up stairs, since its low tail end sat on a single rear wheel).
I can't recall much about the flight itself, except that it was dark when the plane approached the Akron-Canton Airport.
As a first time flyer, I marveled at the unreality of the twinkling lights of the towns and cities below me. In the distance on the descending approach, I saw the neat, straight rows of landing lights that marked the runway. In quite a bit of air turbulence, I watched intently, my seat belt fastened, my Dad at my side, as I saw the ground rushing up very fast.
Sudden Dark
At that very moment, as I peered out the window, all the runway lights on the field went off!. (Later we learned that a strong ground wind had blown a transformer off a power poll, blacking out the entire air field, except for the terminal building).
What happened next took only seconds, no more than a minute or two -- but in retrospect, events seemed to be happening in liquid slow motion.
Suddenly the plane, only hundreds of feet in the air, and a short distance from the end of the runway, was left with no guiding illumination except the wing running lights.
In the dark, the pilot misjudged the location of the end of that unseen runway. The DC-3 slammed into the dirt and then into the cement edge of that runway.
Both tires blew out, the cabin lights went out and the plane belly wopped down the tarmac, rocking side to side as it careened along. At some point in those few seconds, I became aware that when we hit the ground, I had been snapped back and forth like a rag doll. (My father suffered from neck pain for days afterward).
Impressive Fireworks
I was seated next to the starboard wing gaping wide eyed at what I saw.
The starboard propeller curled up like giant spaghetti strands, producing a beautiful blue, white, and orange shower of sparks. as grinding metal connected with cement at 120 miles an hour. Illuminated by the shower of sparks, I saw the wheel undercarriage and assembly pop up through the starboard wing, metal plates flying in all directions. Suddenly I became aware of a strong smell of aviation fuel. The plane swerved to the right, when I think the one rear wheel broke off, leaving us rocking up and down as we came to an unsteady stop.
O don’t remember anyone screaming, but Bauman family lore says that at that point little Bobby turned to his ashen-faced father and said: "Dad, is this the way they always land?"
Hasty Exit
Unlike U.S. Air Captain Sullenberger, once we came to a screeching halt, our captain opened the cockpit door, mumbled something about an "emergency landing," ran down the aisle, opened the one rear door and jumped out onto the tarmac. So much for "women and children first."
The next day the local newspaper, The Akron Beacon Journal, had a one inch story about the crash, claiming the plane would be repaired. My older brother who had watched the crash landing from the terminal, and who was a tail gunner in a B-24 Liberator in Italy in 1944, had a different opinion: "That plane is headed for the junk heap. You’re lucky to be alive."
Last Word
Many years later, when I served as national chairman for Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), I had the honor of meeting the late Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, the World War One flying ace who was the founder and president of the now defunct Eastern Airlines.
Rickenbacker, who himself survived injured for 21 days in a life raft in the Pacific Ocean after a military air crash in 1943, listened to my harrowing tail and replied: "But you made it out OK, didn't you?"
Come to think if it, he didn't even offer a refund.
P.S.
In researching this story I discovered that there's a web site that claims to list every air crash in history in which fatalities occurred. It's morbid but interesting reading. Fortunately, my ill fated Eastern Airlines flight didn't qualify for the list.
