(image above)Prepared for everything, Idlewild airport crash equipment converges on plane right after landing, before passengers disembark. Two squat trucks near wing at left are fire fighters. Tank truck in left foreground carries foam for them. Next right is an emergency truck with oxygen. Hook and ladder came from nearby town to help. Two white ambulances are at plane's tail, three are at upper right. Car with p.a. on roof under right propeller carried airport;s director of the operation. White-topped cars at right, brought New York City police. Other cars and trucks brought helpers and watchers.
At 23 minutes after 4 p.m., on May 6 a Pan American World Airways Stratocruiser thundered down Runway 25 Left at New York's Idlewild airport and lifted into the air, bound of London. About one minute later Captain Cameron Walker (39 years-old, former Marine fighter pilot) told his copilot, First Officer John Brink, to retract the landing gear. A few seconds later three little green lights on the instrument panel blinked out, one red light blinked on above them.
The plane taking off just behind the Pan American flight was a KLM Constellation. As the Constellation rose behind the stratocruiser its crew noticed that the nosewheel in the Stratrocruiser's landing gear had not retracted. It was twisted to starboard at a 45 ° angle. They radioed this information at once to the Idlewild tower. The tower relayed it to Captain Walker. But the little red light had already told Walker of the trouble and he confirmed to the tower that the wheel was inexplicably twisted.
For a few minutes Walker tried to work the retraction mechanism, without success. His next move was to ask the tower's permission to tune his radio to "company frequency" so he could talk to Pan American engineers and get their suggestions for righting the wheel.
Meanwhile the flight engineer crawled down into a lower level of the enormous plane's nose and peered out at the wheel. All that he could see was that the wheel was twisted.
By 1955, the Stratocruiser was the biggest commercial plane in the world. It carries 56 passengers in luxury, with berths for 17 of them. It has two decks. The top one is a convetional airplane cabin except for the Pullman-like berths. Amidships a slender spiral stairway leads down to the lower deck with a deeplu upholstered lounge and serving bar. That is where two stewardesses, Barbara Swan and Eileen Nicholson, were sitting, folding leaflets that they were to distribute to the passengers, when they first noticed that, athough several minutes had elapsed since take-off, the NO SMOKING and FASTEN SEAT BELTS signs were still on. They began to wonder what was wrong.
Above them, in the main cabin, Norma Kass also wondered. Until this flight Miss Kass had been a stewardess, but she was being promoted to purser, which means she would supervise the other stewardesses and handle the passengers' customs and currency declarations for foreign countries. Since this was her test, or shakedown, flight, her work was being observed by Pan American Flight Service Supervisor Hamp H. Jones, who was on the flight for that purpose. She went forward to ask the captain why he had not turned off the warning signs.
"We're returning to the field because we're having trouble with the nosewheel," he told her.
"Who do you want to announce it to the passengers?"
"I will."
A moment later Walker told the passengers over the plane's public address system that the nosewheel had not recessed properly. There would be a little delay. He spoke casually, making neither a lot nor a little of it. No one was alarmed. A few passengers asked if it weren't all right to smoke. The NO SMOKING sign was turned off but the seat belt sign stayed on.
In a few minutes, having conferred by radio with the company engineers, Walker returned to tower frequency on his radio and said he would circle the field while they tried to straighten the weel. Down on the ground the word spread through hangars and along the aprons that the Stratocruiser droning overhead in lazy circles was in trouble.
In the plane the captain's voice again came over the p.a. system: "We're going to try to retract the wheel manually, by cranking," he said. "That will take about 15 minutes." A boring half hour passed.
But in the cockpit, an intrument-lined room as big as a small office, there was no boredom. Walker and his five crewmen, three of them copilots, tried everything they knew and everything the maintenance men on the ground could suggest via radio. But they could do nothing with the twisted wheel. To set down 66 tons of airplane at 96 mph, the minimum landing speed they could count on, they would need all three points of the tricycle landing gear. As soon as the plane's weight shifted onto that fron wheel, it might rip offor colapse and no one could tell what might happen then.
Should they go on to Bermuda or return to Idlewild? The consensus both of men on the ground and in the air was that it would be better to attempt the hazardous landing at huge, well-equiped Idlewild than to fly on to Bermuda in the hope the wheel might right itself en route. Some of the maintenance men were of the hopeful opinion that when the twisted wheel touched the runway it would spring into normal landing position.
Walker informed the tower that he would make a landing, adding that he first wanted to fly out over the Atlantic and jettison some gasoline. The watch supervisor in the Idlewild control tower that day was an Air Force veteran named Gene Assip. "How many people aboard?" Assip asked.
"Fifty-three passengers and 10 crew members," said Walker.
They spoke in the quiet subtones of men long accustomed to conversing by microphone. "It was a routine emergency," Assip has said since.
He picked up the emergency telephone and began making the proper notifications. He called the Port of New York Authority emergency garage at the field where fire fighting equipment is kept. They in turn called the New York City Fire Department as well; it responded with 13 engine and ladder companies. Ambulances were summoned from nearby hospitals. Assip notified the Police Telegraph Bureau, the airport weather bureau (to make observations for the record) and had the radar and radio technicians on duty with him check their equipment, also for the record. The Coast Guard sent a helicopter to hover by, and so did the Police Department and Port Authority. Word spread fast now.
Meanwhile Walker was flying the Stratocruiser out to a point a few miles southeast of the Ambrose Lightship.
"When you attempt your landing,"Assip asked Walker, "where on the runway do you plan to touch down?"
"On the frist third," said Walker. "We'll try to hold her nose off the concrete."
Assip assigned him Runway 31 Left at the northwest end of the field and ordered it held clear until the Stratocruiser should land. The emergency equipment was directed to line it at a point about one third from the end.
In the plane the p.a. system clicked on again. "We're going to dump some gasoline in a few minutes," Walker's unemotional voice drawled to the passengers. "We're doing that to lighten the ship and male our landing easier."
The passengers saw piepes emerge from the wings and 2,200 gallons of gasoline jet from them in silver streams. One passenger asked what would happen if that stream fell on a ship. A stewardess explained the gasoline vaporized into nothing before it had fallen half a mile. But not many questions were asked. Walker was doing a great job of keeping the passenger informed.
The Stratocruiser headed back to Idlewild. It was now an hour or more after take-off. Some of the passengers, veterans of transatlantic flying, asked when cocktails would be served, fro this was a deluxe service trip on which passengers orindarily are given free drinks. The stewardesses explained that drinks could not be served because the plane was not outside the continental limits. There were joking complaints.
But some faces began to grow taunt and wary. No matter how confident the crew appeared, the passengers realized that they might crash and that if they did, an explosion could follow. And when they again began circling Idlewild at 2,500 feet thre could no longer be any doubt, for below them they could see the crash equipment gathering near Runway 31 Left. Firemen were linking up 200 50-foot lengths of hose to pipe water in two lines across the field.
From the tower Assip called Walker: "Not all the equipment is in position yet," he said. "Will you wait untill it is?"
"We'' wait," said Walker.
A little later Assip said to Walker, "One of the men in the emergency garage has suggested spreading liquid foam along the runway to help make the nosewheel slide. Do you want us to do that?"
"I don't think it will be necessary," said Walker.
The Stratocruiser continued circling in the fading afternoon light. In the cabin the crew began emergency preparations. Norma Kass went forward and asked the captain if he had any special instructions.
"Emphasize to the passengers that they must remain seated after we touch down," he said. "Tell them not to get up or try to get out as soon as we hit the runway."
Walker was also informed that one of the passengers, recovering from a broken neck, was wearing a cast. He assigned one of the copilots to sit with the man and assist him if necessary, but the passenger politely refused any assistance. Walker gave his orders calmy, matter-of-factly. Norma Kass composed her face into an expression of buoyant confidence before opening the door to return to the cabin. Once Stewardess Swan came forward for instructions; she remembers that just the way Walker looked at her over his shoulder and grinned made her feel better.
"We're going to take some precautions," the captain announced on the p.a. system. "It's nothing to worry about - just routine."
He had ordered the escape chute readied. Two of the copilots came out into the cabin and began hooking up the chute. It is a canvas slide which is attached to the main doorway and is used to get passengers to the ground during emergency landings when no platform stariway is available. The stewardesses knew that even passengers who might not already have glimpsed the fire trucks and derrick below must recognize its significance. They waited for the first sign of panic. The escape chute is packed in a white pouder to keep it from sticking and the copilots got powder over their natty uniforms. They made a joke of it. Some passengers laughed. Some looked a little pale. But there was no panic.
It was 6:30. Now all the disaster equipment was gathered near the runway. The roof top and the windows of the terminal building were filled with quiet people. Some were praying. The sinking sun glinted on the plane with her nosewheel still twisted crazily.
In the long, comfortable cabin the stewardesses secured all hand luggage that might fly loose. Hamp Jones went below and did the same in the lounge and baggage compartment. Two passengers seated nearest the door where the escape chute might have to be used were assigned different seats. A woman passenger with a little boy began to grow visibly nervous: it was her first plane trip. Norma Kass sat down nest to her and asked where she was going. "To Germany," the woman said.
The Stratocruiser began a last wide circle. The crew took their emergency landing stations. Out over the Rockaways the Stratocruiser dropped stadily, heading for the end of the 9,500-foot runways. In the cockpit Walker and Brink braced themselves to hold back the control column, for to keep the nose off the ground as long as possible they would have to hold the elevators in an acute climb position. It would take the strength of both of them.
In the tower's heavily draped, shadowy instrument room, Assip and the three others on duty with him left the control panel to thrust aside the drapes and stare silently out the window at the runway. Aboard the plane Norma Kaas told the woman with the little boy what a nice place Germany was.
From the roof, from windows, from the firemen and cops and all emergency crews near the runway there came no sound. All anyone heard was the soft thunder of the approaching motors.
She came in mushily, as slowly as Walker dared fly her in. Her nose was high. She hovered over the end of the runway, then dropped and touched down where he said he would put her down. The passengers felt a light jar. No one uttered any cry. The plane rolled on, slowly losing speed, for perhaps half a minute while Walker's and Brink's shoulders strained to hold the control column back. Then, finally, her nose settled. The twisted wheel touched the concrete.
It sprang into correct landing position. The plane rolled smoothly down the runway. A cheer and handclaps went up from those watching. Some women specators cried. It was 6:41 p.m.
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images and info provided by the LIFE Magazine / LIFE Magazine International / LIFE Magazine Atlantic ARCHIVE from the Zetu Harrys Collection
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