THE COMET - Chapter One - Not Like Any Thunder

I invite you to watch as the sleek midnight blue and white aircraft designated “Yoke Victor” slowly begins its takeoff roll down runway 19L.  The four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines cradled close inboard within the wings roared as they produce 200,000 pounds of thrust. At 112 knots Captain Maurice Haddon imperceptibly pulled back on the control column and 100,000 pounds of aluminum alloy, wires, rubber tubing, ambitions and 43 souls floated off the asphalt. 

It is 4:39 pm on the sweltering hot Saturday, of 2 May, 1953. Thunderheads are feasting on the heavy air above Calcutta, like false promises of Indra the King of Heaven.  As the twin bogie wheels of “Yoke Victor” fold neatly into the underbelly, the crew and passengers of Flight 783 have less than six minutes to live. 

Comet Take Off

Over the previous decade the sun had begun setting on the British Empire. India and Palestine were already free. Egypt was straining at the leash, as were South Africa, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Designed over that same time span, the world's first passenger jet, the De Haviland designed and built Comet (above), was a bold technical gamble which, if won, would give Britain a five year advantage in civil aviation.

The Comet cruised at twice the speed of its piston engine competition, the American built DC – 4, cutting travel time between London and Singapore or South Africa by two days. For example, Yoke Victor, the 8^th Comet assembled, had begun this day in Singapore, passing 1650 hours of safe flight since leaving the De Havilland factory three years earlier. 

On the flight to Calcutta the pressurized cabin provided shirt sleeve comfort while flying 9 miles above the weather,  with the thin aluminum tube strong enough to maintain 8 and 1/4 pounds of pressure difference between inside and and the -55 C thin air outside. Hydraulics amplified the pilot's muscles to compensate for the 80% reduction in air pressure. The jet engines burned cheap kerosene and were more reliable, making even a half empty Comet profitable for the operator, British Overseas Airways Corporation.

Four minutes after taking off, as Yoke Victor climbed northwestward over the dry West Bengal plains, Radio Officer Alfred Wood notified their next stop at Delhi they expected to cover the 800 miles in two hours and 19 minutes. He then added, “Climbing to 32,000 feet.” Two minutes later Delhi informed Yoke Victor of the local barometric pressure, so the crew of the Comet could fine tune their altimeter. There was no response.

Twenty-five miles north northwest of Calcutta, in the rice paddies and jute fields outside the village of Jagalgori, field workers were suddenly pummeled by a 60 mile per hour gust of wind. Then they

heard a distant explosion and saw a flash of light. Looking up they witnessed an airplane on fire, saw it split in two, and watched in horror as the pieces fell to the ground all around them. Many ran to the flaming wreckage but it was quickly evident there was no one to be helped. Twenty minutes later a constable telegraphed the police in Calcutta, “Plane knocked down by tempest.” Like all first reports, it was wrong.

There was no radar track of the flight of Yoke Victor, and no data or cockpit voice recorder. Investigators could only study the 5 mile long path of debris. It lay generally along the aircraft's heading of 334 degrees.  The scattering indicated the plane had broken up at high altitude. 

At the southern end of the debris field were the port outer elevator with port top skin of Yoke Victor, then the starboard outer elevator with sections of the starboard bottom skin. The tubular cabin structure had landed, upside down in two pieces - nose to half way down the tube at frame 27, and the aft center section, including the stub of the wings encasing the engines, to the pressure bulkhead at the rear of the fuselage (above) - all of which landed in a dry river bed and in the branches of a large tree.

Calcutta Crash

Because of the paucity of evidence, the Indian court of inquiry issued their report a mere three weeks later. BOAC flight 783 had crashed they said, because of either “Sever gusts encountered in the thunder squall...” or, because of unease about the new hydraulic control system,   “Over controlling or loss of control by the pilot...” Making their own assessment of the jigsaw puzzle of parts, De Haviland agreed with the Indian court. Yoke Victor had been destroyed in mid-flight by either an “act of God”, or pilot error. It was recommended that in the presence of turbulence the speedy jets be slowed down.  But no one questioned keeping the Comet in the air. 

Seven months later, on Sunday 10 January, 1954, another Comet rolled down a runway, this time at Rome's Ciampino airfield. On it's tail was prominently displayed it's International Aircraft identification:, G-ALYP; “G” for Great Britain, “A” indicating a heavier than air craft, “L” for the 12^th pass through the 26 letters in the alphabet, “Y” for a De Haviland and “P” for the Comet hull number 60003 – the third Comet constructed and the first to be released into service with BOAC.  

Yoke Peter first flew on 9 January, 1952. After test flights it was turned over to BOAC for 39 hours of training flights. Then, on 2 May, 1952, Yoke Peter became the first Comet to enter scheduled service, with a 21 hour flight from London via 5 stops to Johannesburg, South Africa. In its first year the 8 Comets in the BOAC fleet flew 12 million miles, carrying 30,000 of the wealthy and privileged, 35 at a time.

The plane had begun the day in Singapore, and was labeled BOAC Flight 783 – the last two digits an odd number because the course was to be westbound - with stops in Bangkok, Calcutta, Karachi, Bahrain and Beirut, before arriving in Rome. On the ground at Ciampino airfield, the passengers were off loaded while Yoke Peter was refueled.

BOAC maintenance chief, Gerard “Gerry” Arthur Bull interrogated the aircrew about problems, and then did a personal inspection, checking the landing gear, and looking for fuel or oil leaks. He found only what he called “incidental damage” and remembered thinking “We've got a clean airplane today.” At 10:18 that morning 31 year old pilot Alan Gibson signed the reports detailing the fuel and cargo on board. 

Then the 29 passengers – including 10 children returning from school vacation - re-boarded the aircraft. As they did, at 10:19, a BOAC Argonout (DC 8) piston engine airliner also headed for London, tail i.d. G-ALHJ , took off.

At 10:31am Central European time, 10 January, 1954, 33 year old First Officer William Bury guided Yoke Peter into a sky with a thin and broken ceiling above 15,000 feet. It was near perfect flying weather, and not a storm in sight. Pilot Gibson had more than 6, 500 hours of experience, and Bury, another 4,900 hours. Yoke Peter itself had achieved 3,681 hours of safe, speedy and profitable travel.  

Just after take off Captain Gibson, who was handling the radio, called to Able Love How Jig, asking “In due course, could you pass your height of cloud cover, please?” Captain John Richard Johnson, on the slower DC-8 (above), responded, “Well, we are currently at 20,000 feet. We'll let you know when we pass through it.”

The first “way point” for Yoke Peter was a directional radio beacon, 74 air miles northwest of Rome. At 10:42am Captain Gibson contacted the airport, “We are abeam of the Civtavecchia beacon, flying at 23,000 feet.” Eight minutes later, at 10:51am, as Yoke Peter climbed out over the Tyrrhenian Sea Gibson was heard from again, calling, “George How Gig, from Yoke Victor.” Captain Johnson quickly replied, “George Yoke Peter from George How Jig, go ahead” Captain Gibson said, “George How Jig. Did you get my....” Abruptly the radio went silent.

Johnson was concerned by the way Captain Gibson had been cut off in mid-sentence, and immediately tried to raise Yoke Peter again. When there was no reply, he contacted Rome, “We lost all contact with BA 781, and then they seemed to disappear. Can you read them?” At 10:56 Rome called out to Yoke Peter. Again there was no reply, because, by then, everyone on board, was dead.

Some 27,000 feet below on the ocean surface, some five miles south of the iron rich Cape Calimati on Elba, two fishermen heard the Comet before being suddenly startled by what 33 year old Luigi Papa called “...a break in the air”. His partner, 31 year old Givanni Di Marco, described “... three explosions, very quickly, one after the other”. For a moment all was quiet. Luigi remembered, then “...I heard a sound like thunder, but it was not like any thunder I had heard before.” Givanni saw, several miles away, “...a silver thing flash out of the clouds. . Smoke came from it. It hit the sea. There was a great cloud of water.”

The two men headed to the spot as quickly as they could. But, “By the time I got there all was still again,” recalled Givanni di Marco. “There were some bodies in the water. We began to pick them up. There was nothing else we could do." Still in shock Luigi Pappi said sadly, “Every time we went near a corpse we would shout, come over here, come over here! Because they seemed still alive, their eyes open. But when you got near you could see they were dead.”

The surface of the ocean was covered with debris and bodies from the innovative Comet, north of the romantic island of Montecristo, east of the prison island of Poanso, some 16 miles off the coast of Tuscany and 5 miles south of the fabled island of Elba in 400 to 600 feet of water. There were no survivors.

And from the instant of the crash, officials at De Haviland, BOAC, and the British Air Ministry began to wonder, what the hell was wrong with the Comet.

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WORST OLYMPICS EVER - Paris, 1900

I contend that 1900 saw the most horrific games in modern Olympic history, surpassed only by the ancient standard for horror when King Oenomaus was killed in an Olympic chariot crack up , followed by the race winner Pelops throwing competing driver Myrtilus, off a cliff. 

What could have surpassed such gore and horror, committed in the name of the purity of athletic endeavor? Simply, the Paris games of 1900 when Leon de Lunden from Belgium murdered 21 birds to win the "Live Pigeon Shooting" event.

In order to make the sport even “less sporting” for the birds, the little sacrifices were released one at a time, and each human contestant was allowed to keep blasting away until he missed – twice. Sports historian Andrew Strunk has described the event as “…a rather unpleasant choice. Maimed birds were writhing on the ground, blood and feathers were swirling in the air and women with parasols were weeping…”. In all 300 unlucky pigeons were sacrificed for the Olympic ideal. Just think of it; Dick Cheney could have been an Olympic athlete! If maiming fellow competitors counted, he might have won gold.

Those Paris games of 1900 almost didn’t happen, since the French bureaucracy considered Pierre Fredy Baron de Coubertin (above), who was pushing the modern Olympic concept, as "too English”, what with his alien ideas about exercise producing a healthy mind and body. In fact it wasn’t until Coubertin resigned from the French Athletic Associations that other French sportsmen agreed to back his idea.

Unfortunately, with Coubertin out of the way, the French Government stepped in and things went down hill from there very quickly.  

First the government decided not to award medals for first place, but "valuable artwork" instead. It must have been quite a sight to see Msr. Aumoitte, winner of the “one ball” croquet championship, standing on the victory podium with a Monet hanging around his neck.

Then there was the marathon, where two American runners, Arthur Newton and Dick Grant, lead from the start. But when they reached the finish line together they discovered two heretofore unnoticed French runners, Michel Theato and Emile Champion, rested and waiting for them, and already wearing their winner’s artwork. The Americans pointed out that all the other contestants were splattered with mud while Theato and Champion looked like they had not even broken a sweat. But this being France, the American protests were worst than meaningless.

In fact, because they protested, the Americans were awarded sixth and seventh place, instead of third and fourth. Well, as Albert Camus noted in one of his lighter moments, "Pauvre de moi, du cognito tricherie, ergo se donner la mort”, or, “Please excuse me but I think you cheated so I am now going to commit suicide".  The International Olympic Committee took the American protests under consideration for twelve years, before finally rejecting them; proving once again the Jerry Lewis rule about sports rulings; timing is everything.

The Games of 1900 were the longest in Olympic History, running between 14 May and 28 October, and including such extravagant events as "Cannon Shooting", "Life Saving", "Kite Flying" (above)... 

..."Tug of War" (above)  and "Fire Fighting". 

The Croquet Tournament took 21 weeks to play out in front of a paying audience of exactly one, an elderly Englishman living in Nice, France.

Curiously the strongest protest in that the 1900 Olympics was between two Americans. The born-again Christian coaches from Syracuse University felt that competing on a Sunday would be a sin. So they talked their most athletically gifted student,  Myer Prinstein (above), the world record holder in the long jump, into going along with them. Myer was a nice Jewish boy, and he finally agreed to skip the Sunday competition out of “team spirit”.  Besides, his qualifying jump on Saturday – his actual Sabbath - had been so impressive he thought it would be good enough for the victory. And it almost was. Almost.

That Sunday afternoon (14 July, 1900), while Myer was soaking in the Parisian culture, his Catholic teammate Alvin Kraenzlein (above) broke his own sabbath and beat Myer’s long jump mark by exactly...one centimeter. That Monday, when Myer noticed that Alvin was carrying an extra Van Gough around, he started pounding on Alvin. And Alvin pounded right back. But, since they were both track stars with no upper body strength, nobody got seriously injured.

The nineteen hundred games also featured a controversial final in the “Underwater Swimming” competition. This may sound like a fancy name for drowning, but the drowners...

...er, swimmers, were actually awarded 2 points for each meter they swam under water and one point for each second they were able to remain submerged. But despite having stayed under for far longer than anyone else, Peder Lykkeberg of Denmark was disqualified because it was alleged that he “swam in circles”. Just read the rules, I say.

Also in the river (during this Olympics all the water sports were held in the river Seine, which was not nearly as clean a sewer then it is today), were the exciting finals of the “Swimming Obstacle Course”. 

This involved swimming, of course, but also pole climbing, more swimming, boat boarding and de-boarding, more swimming, followed by swimming under a boat, followed by more swimming.

The winner was Freddy Lane (above, center) from Australia,  in 2:38. Freddy climbed over the stern of the boat as opposed to clambering across the boat's wider middle. For his efforts Freddie received a 50 pound bronze horse. I presume the equestrian winners received statues of fish. Oddly enough neither of these water events were repeated at any future Olympics.

But the sport from the 1900 Paris games  I am most glad having missed was the "Equestrian Long Jump". Now, try to picture this: four spindly legs holding up a big muscular body, and with a human wearing riding garb and hat balanced on their back. Horse and rider gallop up to the jump line and then fling themselves into the air - not over anything, just up. As far as you can go..

The winner was a British stallion named “Extra Dry”(above), with a soaring leap of 20 feet and one quarter of an inch. Can you imagine the excitement that must have gripped the crowds, watching this equestrian suicidal display? A horse leaping twenty feet and one quarter of an inch; that’s just nine feet short of the current human long jump record. And we've only got two legs.

It makes me wonder if the X Games are really all that original.

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ON A KNIFE'S EDGE, The S.S. Eastland.

I believe the root cause of the disaster was the  calm, placid river. And the solution to that problem proved to be the disaster. The river was Eastman Creek, stained dark with plant decay, a tributary of the placid South Branch of the Big Black River, which slipped quietly from Great Bear Lake (above), in west central Michigan.

The stream meanders northward through gently rolling woodlands before pausing at Breedsville, where a mill dam provides the only sense of drama in its course. Once the middle and north branches join the south branch the river abruptly jogs back south 3 miles before slipping quietly into Lake Michigan at the port of South Haven.

In 1861 the channel at South Haven was dredged to a depth of six feet to accommodate lumber haulers. It was the lumber shipped through South Haven which helped build the metropolis of Chicago, beyond the horizon,  across the lake. With the woodlands cleared, the land was converted to fruit orchards, to feed the newly built metropolis. To accommodate the fruit carriers, in 1867, a light house was built at the exit to the lake (above), and the channel at South Haven was dredged to a depth of twelve feet. But the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stopped there.

By the turn of the century (1900), each fall steam ships would leave the docks at South Haven, their holds crammed with peaches, apples and blueberries. 

Not wanting to return empty, the shipping lines promoted South Haven as “The Catskills of the Midwest”.

By 1900 the returning ships were carrying 75,000 tourists a year to South Haven’s 215 hotels.

The town boasted theatres, a casino, an amusement park and public gardens.

And for 12 years the S.S. Eastland (above), plied her trade between South Haven (and other ports around the rim of Lake Michigan) and docks on the Chicago River, merely one of a fleet of lake steamers, narrow of beam and fast to carry freight and tourists, and always carrying in their design the legacy of the quiet, un-dramatic and shallow Black River.

The Eastland was built to conquer the Black River. She was 265 feet long and only 28 feet wide. “Fully pumped out” she drew only 10 feet of water. Once christened in May of 1903, she quickly became the “Speed Queen of the Great Lakes”, able to slice through the water at over 20 knots. Speed was profit because it allowed the Eastland to make two transits a day between Chicago and South Haven.

However, during her first summer on the lake, while carrying 3,000 passengers, the Eastland listed so badly that during the winter of 1904 ballast tanks and pumps were installed to control her wild swings.  But no gauges were installed to measure the tilt or the ballast. Worse, an extra deck and heavy air conditioning units were also added, making the Eastland’s narrow wedge shape even more top heavy. In 1906 her maximum passenger load was reduced to 2,400 souls.

And then, in April of 1912, the Titanic sank. One thousand and five hundred people died because there were not enough life boats on board. In America the legislative response was the Seaman’s Act of 1915, requiring a life jacket and a seat aboard a life boat for every single passenger. Installed on the Eastland, the new life boats and rafts added 14 tons to the upper decks.

Shortly after three A.M., 24 July, 1915, the Eastland tied up at the “Chicago and South Haven wharf”, between Clark and LaSalle streets, along Whacker Drive in downtown Chicago. Directly across the river was the Reid Murdoch office building, with its distinctive clock tower, the office windows looking down on the river dock. The Eastland was scheduled this day to be part of a three ship excursion flotilla taking Western Electric employees to Michigan City, Indiana for a company picnic.

Shortly after six A.M., as the sun rose into the cool morning air above Lake Michigan, the Eastland’s ballast tanks were pumped empty. At 6:30 passengers began to board the Eastland; most moved directly below decks to get warm.

Over the next half hour, as 50 passengers a minute boarded the Eastland, the ship began to list, first to starboard and then to port. Each time water was pumped into side ballast tanks to right the vessel. At seven A.M. the tug boat Kanosha cast a bow line to the Eastland. Five minutes later the Eastland’s engines were started. 

At ten minutes after seven the gang plank was closed. The Eastland had on board her full compliment of passengers, 2,400 souls.  At eighteen minutes after seven the operator of the Clark Street draw bridge informed the Captain of the Eastland that he was ready to raise the structure. The captain ordered the stern line cast off.  At twenty minutes after seven  the Eastland began to list so strongly to port that water began to pour into the ship. 

The Captain ordered the engines stopped. A crewman hit an alarm whistle. At twenty-eight minutes after seven A.M. the Eastland rolled over onto her port side. Her bow was still tied to the dock. 845 passengers, men, women and children were trapped below decks and drowned in 20 feet of water 20 feet from the dock. Many people above decks simply walked onto the side of the ship, and then crossed the tug Kenosha to the dock, not even getting wet.

Jack Woodford watched from an office building across the river. Years later he wrote in his biography; “As I watched in disoriented stupefaction a steamer large as an ocean liner slowly turned over on its side as though it were a whale going to take a nap…lashed to a dock, in perfectly calm water, in excellent weather, with no explosion, no fire, nothing. I thought I had gone crazy.”

Miss Ina Roseland told one of the Chicago newspapers, “My brother Karl and I were standing near the rail on a lower deck when the Eastland tipped over. I lost Karl as the boat carried me down, until I felt the muddy bottom….Then I began to rise...As I touched the slippery wall that was about me, my hand struck something soft…I screamed and felt myself fainting, but…(I) heard an answering shout. I could not believe my ears. It was my brother's voice. He told me to be brave; that he had come up in the (sunken) state room next to me….

"Several bodies, all of them women or little girls, would keep knocking against me, however much I tried to climb higher. Then I heard the hammering and cluttering as the men worked to cut away the plates. 

"As a piece came away a little light filtered through and as I started a prayer of thankfulness, it was choked in my throat, for it fell on the upturned staring faces about me…Brother Karl was there urging them on as I was pulled outside.”

From another Chicago newspaper appeared this tidbit. “Joseph A. Forrester, who holds a Mississippi river master and pilot’s license, declared the Eastland never should have been used for passenger service. Forrester, who is visiting here and was early on the scene, continued: “There were not enough holds below the water line. The Eastland was built too high. When she started listing nothing on God’s earth could stop her, because there was more above water than below, which is contrary to all ideas of boat construction.”

The Chicago Daily Herald recorded the story of Charles Williams who was crossing the Clark Street Bridge when the Eastland rolled over. “"I leaped into the water and the first person that I reached was a man who was choking and crying for help. I swam to him and when I came up to him he threw his arms around my neck in a death grip.

"I knew that the only thing to do was to shake him off…I came up behind him and hit him in the neck. He became unconscious and I swam to shore with him, where spectators on the dock helped me get him out of the water. Next I pulled out a young lady dressed in a pink suit. A patrol boat then came along and a man on it yelled to me that a young lady had just gone down for the third time at a certain spot. I dived, got her and took her to shore, where she, too, was revived…

"I swam to the Eastland and worked my way up on top of the hull, where I assisted four firemen in taking bodies out of apertures that had been chopped through several places. We took out at least fifty bodies, mostly women and children, although there were about a dozen men.”

The bodies pulled from the hulk of the Eastland were transported to a cold storage warehouse, which was ninety years later occupied by Harpo Studios, and contained the sound stage for the Oprah Winfrey Show. 

Six investigations were made into the Eastland disaster. No one was ever indicted, no one was ever convicted of a crime in the death of 1,843 human beings - 340 more than died on the Titanic. A marker commemorating the Eastland disaster was not erected on the spot until 1989. The sinking of the Eastland remained the single worst civilian loss of life in American history until 11 September, 2001.

In 1915 a Coroner Juries’ inquest came to the conclusion that, “…the steamship Eastland was both improperly constructed for the service employed, and improperly loaded, operated and maintained…”. The jury recommended that, “…the state's attorney and grand jury investigate carefully the condition of the construction of this boat, to ascertain if there can be found legal methods by which those responsible can be held accountable.” Eventually it was decided there were none.

As if suspecting that this would be the case, the Corner's Jury also observed that, “…the federal government system of permitting the construction of vessels for use by common carriers is unscientific and a menace to the public safety. There is not now nor has there ever been an inspection service maintained by the federal government for the purpose of determining the stability of boats offered for passenger service. It is the judgment of this jury that the present method of determining the passenger-carrying capacity of vessels is not founded on any proper basis.”

http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/default.htm

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