Flight 232: A Story of Disaster and Survival (56 page)

Poole, Marcia, reporter,
Sioux City Journal
. Telephone, June 20; personal, July 16; and pers. comm.

Porter, Ed, photographer,
Sioux City Journal
. Telephone, October 19.

Priest, Garry, passenger, seat 15-G. Telephone, May 17 and June 23, and pers. comm.

Quinlan, John, reporter,
Sioux City Journal
. Telephone, July 7.

Randa, Dave, passenger, seat 38-A. Personal, April 3, and pers. comm.

Randa, Jim, father of Dave. Telephone, September 5.

Randa, Susan, passenger, seat 38-B. Personal, August 23 and pers. comm.

Randall, Brad, director of morgue operations. Telephone, January 9, 2013, and pers. comm.

Rapoport, David, lawyer. Telephone, February 18, 2013; personal, March 1, 2013; and pers. comm.

Records, William Roy, first officer. Telephone, March 28 and November 16, and pers. comm.

Rehnberg, Upton, passenger, seat 9-A. Personal, March 12.

Reinders, Mark, reporter,
Sioux City Journal
. Telephone, July 11.

Schaden, Richard F., lawyer. Telephone, May 15.

Sheldon, Ron, passenger, seat 19-E. Telephone, August 22.

Shen, Kathy (married as Tam), flight attendant. Telephone, August 30.

Socie, Darrell F., professor of mechanical engineering, University of Illinois. Telephone, November 19.

Sorenson, Janice, farmer. Telephone, October 22.

Stevens, Mary, director of the St. Joseph Center-Museum at Queen of Peace, Inc. Personal, July 17.

Swanstrom, Dennis, commander of 185th. Telephone, June 13; personal, July 18; and pers. comm.

Swetnam, Richard, air traffic controller. Telephone, June 12, and pers. comm.

Transue, John, passenger, seat 9-C. Telephone, March 31.

Trombello, Joseph, passenger, seat 18-B. Telephone, June 5, and pers. comm.

Vetter, Rod, passenger, seat 19-D. Personal, March 7, and pers. comm.

Walker, Jim, volunteer rescuer, 185th. Personal, July 18, and telephone, November 11.

Wernick, Joan, passenger, 17-C. Telephone, January 13, 2013.

Wernick, Peter, passenger, seat 17-E. Telephone, May 8.

Wernick, Will, seat 17-D. Telephone, June 27.

White, Susan, flight attendant. Telephone, August 6; personal, February 27, 2013; and pers. comm.

Wildey, James, senior metallurgist, NTSB. Telephone, July 11 and September 23; February 4, 2013; and pers. comm.

Wizniak, Edward, chairman, Engine Investigation Group, NTSB. Telephone, October 23.

Zahren, Bill, reporter,
Sioux City Journal
. Telephone, October 22.

Zielezinski, Mark, control tower supervisor. Telephone, May 15 and June 19; personal, July 17; and pers. comm.

NOTES

PROLOGUE

Gregory S. Clapper drove into the hills
: Clapper; Clapper, Gregory S., 1999,
When the World Breaks Your Heart: Spiritual Ways of Living with Tragedy
(Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books).

Sioux Gateway Airport
: In 2002, the name of the airport was changed to the Sioux Gateway Airport Colonel Bud Day Field.

CHAPTER ONE

“picnic” lunch
: Fitch.

Far ahead of Martha Conant and . . . Dave Randa
: All scenes in the cockpit reconstructed using Jan Brown; Dvorak; Haynes; Murray; Records; Corrie, Stephan J., 1989,
Cockpit Voice Recorder Group Chairman’s Factual Report of Investigation
, September 1, Exhibit 12-A;
Transcript of ATC Communications Involving UAL232 H/DC10, July 19, 1989
,
Sioux City Approach Control
, 1989, August 4, Exhibit 3-B;
Transcript of the Aeronautical Radio, Inc. (ARINC) Communication Recording Pertaining to United Airlines Flight 232 on July 19, 1989
(undated), Exhibit 2-E. Also, Morris, Errol, 2001, “Leaving the Earth,” from his television series
First Person
, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPu0chBQeUK (accessed September 18, 2013). Additional material comes from Haynes, Al, 1991, “The Crash of United Flight 232,” talk given at NASA Ames Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, CA, May 24, at http://www.clear-prop.org/aviation/haynes.html (accessed August 10, 2012).

Walter Sperks, eighty-one
: “Services for Air Crash Victims,” 1989,
Chicago Tribune
, July 26, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-07-26/news/8902200585_1_kimberly-brothers-mr-cheng (accessed June 10, 2013).

DC-10 manual does briefly mention
: Exhibit 2-G, p. 64;
DC-10 Flight Manual Handbook
, p. 357, published in “Excerpt from United Airlines
DC-10 Flight Manual Handbook
, “Irregular Procedures Section” (undated, unsigned), Exhibit 2-G.

acutely aware that a United Airlines 747
: Jan Brown; NTSB Aircraft Accident Report AAR90-01, “United Airlines Flight 811, Boeing 747-122, N4713U, Honolulu, Hawaii, February 24, 1989.” Available from www.ntsb.gov.

Jerry Schemmel
: Schemmel, Jerry, 1996,
Chosen to Live: The Inspiring Story of Flight 232 Survivor Jerry Schemmel
(Littleton, CO: Victory Publishing); Schemmel, pers. comm., May 25, 27, and 31, and June 7, 2013.

As she passed into B-Zone
: Seating arrangement reconstructed using Diegel, Raymond P. (undated),
Survival Factors Group Chairman’s Factual Report of Investigation
, Exhibit 6-A, pp. 49–50; Diegel, Raymond P. (undated),
Occupant Injury Chart and Seating Diagram,
Exhibit 6-Z. In addition, I compared this information with seating charts published by the
Rocky Mountain News
, July 21, 1989; and
New York Times
, July 25, 1989, at http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/25/us/passengers-and-crew-in-dc-10-crash-in-iowa.html (accessed February 2, 2012). Those charts contained errors, and where possible, I have corrected those errors by verifying seating with the passengers themselves or relying on Diegel (undated).

Sundstrand model AV557B
: Corrie 1989, pp. 2–3.

At around the time Dudley Dvorak declared
: All scenes in the control tower reconstructed using Bates; Mleynek; Swetnam; Zielezinski; Corrie, 1989; Exhibit 2-E; Exhibit 3-B; Haynes 1991; Morris 2001.

airplane is a submarine of the air
: Description of DC-10 flight controls from
Hydraulic Power and Flight Controls Systems Descriptions
, Exhibit 9-C.

crew was then completely disconnected
: GE Comments, p. 98.

“There is no one out there”
: NTSB Transcript, p. 135.

At about 3:40 the emergency dispatcher
: Greco, David, 1989,
The Today Show
, NBC, July 20.

Dale Mleynek called Al Smith
: Mleynek; FAA tape of control tower transmissions. In response to Freedom of Information Act Request number 2013-002768, Teresa A. Bruner, regional administrator, Southwest region, of the FAA, wrote a letter to me dated April 1, 2013, stating that all FAA records pertaining to the crash of United Flight 232 had “been discarded in accordance with our records retention directive, FAA Order 7210.3, Section 4.” However, Mleynek provided a copy of those transmissions, while Lindblade provided copies of other transmissions.

Smith and his wingman Romaine “Ben” Bendixen
: Bendixen; Bendixen, Romaine, undated, untitled, unpublished memoir.

CHAPTER TWO

Fitch had first noticed
: Murray; Morris 2001.

“A flight attendant is not a pilot”
: Morris 2001.

He clearly saw that the motor pumps
: Exhibit 2-D, p. 3.

Or it might enter into an uncontrollable flutter
: MacIntosh.

Fitch passed Paul Burnham
: White boards.

Allen would eventually escape
: Haynes; Rehnberg; Allen, Peter, pers. comm., December 23, 2013.

“Unlock that fuckin’ door!”
: The NTSB does not print swear words. It inserts the symbol #, which stands for “expletive deleted.” Haynes told me, “I got very infuriated with the constant knocking on the door.” I tried to give him an easy out by suggesting that he’d said “that goddamned door.” He told me, “No, I said the F-word.”

pilots who later attempted landings
: Clark; NTSB Transcript, pp. 186–187.

“maintenance experts”
: Haynes 1991.

“They know this airplane cold”
: Morris 2001.

later that evening, the chief training officer for the DC-10
: Williams, Mary Alice (Anchor), 1989,
NBC News Special Report
, July 19.

CHAPTER THREE

Couleur . . . had a titanium shoulder
: White boards.

“Hey, we’re in this thing together”
: Schemmel 1996, p. 28.

Charles Kenneth Bosscher
: DeJong; Schemmel 1996, p. 49.

“I never would forget that face”
: Schemmel 1996, p. 50.

Two rows behind Ramsdell
: Feeney; Poole; Poole, Marcia, 1989, “Survival Amazes Teen Who Jumped,”
Sioux City Journal
, July 27, p. A:1:5.

past Karin Elizabeth Sass, thirty-two, who was pregnant
: White boards.

He was so keyed up with adrenaline
: The term
adrenaline
is colloquial shorthand. A description of the chemicals involved in stress can be found in Laurence Gonzales, 2004,
Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
(New York: W. W. Norton), p. 36.

Brown spun on her heel and rushed back
: Jan Brown; Dvorak; Haynes; Records; Corrie 1989. Jan Brown did not remember leaving the cockpit and returning to tell Dvorak about the tail. She remembers her conversation with Haynes taking place within the first ten minutes of the flight. But the knocks on the door and the conversation were picked up on the cockpit voice recorder. At 3:40 and 45 seconds in the afternoon, almost twenty-five minutes after the explosion, Haynes began by saying, “We almost have no control of the airplane.” She did remember saying “that rear wing” instead of “the horizontal stabilizer,” which confused the pilots at first.

“a good bit larger”
: NTSB Transcript, p. 814.

Jasumati J. Patel, whose jewelry
: White boards; photographs.

At about nineteen minutes to four in the afternoon
: Dvorak; Haynes; Records; Morris 2001; Grossi, Dennis, 1989,
Flight Data Recorder Group Chairman’s Factual Report of Investigation
, September 5, Exhibit 10-A.

“getting in tune”
: Morris 2001.

“It just became like the airplane”
: Morris 2001.

“My husband was a hero”
: Fitch, Rosa, pers. comm., July 8, 2013.

“The first time Dave mentioned”
: Randa, Tammy, pers. comm., February 23, 2013.

She was feeding her red rosary beads
: Eck; Stevens; Eck, Larry, and Mary Sue Eck (undated), “Mary Was Their Co-Pilot,”
Medjugorje Magazine
, pp. 20–29. See also Heise, Kenan, 1996, “Survived Iowa Plane Crash,”
Chicago Tribune
, November 14, at http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-11-14/news/9611140077_1_plane-convent-crash (accessed September 19, 2013).

Her tattoo of a bunny
: White boards.

“had to hold onto the seats”
: NTSB Transcript, p. 30.

CHAPTER FOUR

General Electric made the engines
: General Electric Aircraft Engines is now called GE Aviation. I use
GE
or
General Electric
throughout.

CF6 engines that powered November 1819 Uniform
: Technical information about jet engines from Gunston, Bill, 2006,
The Development of Jet and Turbine Aero Engines
(Sparkford, England: Patrick Stephens); Hünecke, Klaus, 1997,
Jet Engines: Fundamentals of Theory, Design and Operation
(Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International); General Electric website at http://www.geaviation.com/engines/commercial/ (accessed June 16, 2012). Confirmation and additional technical information from Benzon; Cherolis; Clark; MacIntosh; Wildey; Wizniak.

thirty-nine thousand pounds of thrust
: NTSB Transcript, p. 205.

Spinning at about thirty-five hundred
: Besuner, Philip M., et al., 1990, “Stress and Fatigue Crack Growth Analyses of the CF-6 Fan Disk Failure during United Airlines Flight 232” (Sunnyvale, CA: Aptech Engineering Services), February, pp. 1–4; NTSB Transcript, p. 401.

air goes through four low-pressure stages
: Lironi, Paolo, 2007, “CF6-80C2 Engine History and Evolution,”
Engine Yearbook
(London: Simon Barker), p. 80.

Most people never fully realize
: Newhouse, John, 1982,
The Sporty Game: The High-Risk Competitive Business of Making and Selling Commercial Airliners
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf), reprinted in Fielder, John H., and Douglas Birsch, 1992,
The DC-10 Case: A Study in Applied Ethics, Technology, and Society
(Albany, NY: State University of New York Press), pp. 55–57.

When Boeing was about to introduce the 707
: Johnston, A. M., 1991,
Tex Johnston: Jet-Age Test Pilot
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press), pp. 202–204. See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rILk6-4SMJQ (accessed January 10, 2013).

By the time United Flight 232 crashed
: Fielder and Birsch 1992, pp. 56–57.

It began powering commercial flights in 1971
: General Electric website at http://www.geaviation.com/aboutgeae/history.html (accessed April 25, 2012).