Mystery Of Airliner’s Crash In Mexican Gulf

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29055, 18 November 1959, Page 15

Mystery Of Airliner’s Crash In Mexican Gulf

(Rec. 10.30 p.m.) NEW ORLEANS, November 17. Investigators today examined the wreckage of an airliner and the remains of nine of the 42 persons killed yesterday when it crashed in the Gulf of Mexico.

The American Associated Press said indications were that the plane was ripped by an explosion, but whether it came before or after the crash was not known The wreckage was scattered over a wide area and clothing on the nine bodies found so far was in shreds, as if torn by an explosion.

The first surface rescue craft on the scene later reported that the clothing had been ripped off some of the victims, substantiating the theory that the aircraft hit the water with terrific force. The aeroplane disappeared near the spot where another National airliner went down in 1953, killing 45.

Coast Guard rescue squads continued to search the shark-infested waters of the gulf for more bodies.

The airline had flown 6,172,000,000 passenger miles without a fatality in the intervening six years.

The plane, a DC-7B operated by National Airlines, was flying from Miami, Florida, to Los Angeles by way of New Orleans when it crashed 80 miles south of the Mississippi-Alabama coast. It carried 36 passengers and a crew of six. An investigation team from the Civil Aeronautics Bureau is being assisted by a Federal Bureau of Investigation unit The aeroplane, flying at 14,000 ft and about 30 minutes out of New Orleans at its last report, apparently hif the water with terrific impact. The debris was in small pieces. The mystery of the tragedy was in the failure of the crew to report trouble during the time passengers had used to don life preservers. The Air Force radar station at Houma, Louisiana, had the airliner in its radar screen. Suddenly, the station reported, the image “just dropped off,” but an officer said this might have been because the pilot was beginning to lose altitude for a landing. The aircraft was equipped with normal survival gear—life Jackets and inflatable rafts—required for all such flights. There was no indication, however, from Captain Frank E. Todd, of Miami, who commanded the flight, that he was in trouble. There apparently was no distress message.