First there was a rumble, then the high-pitched whine of engines at full throttle as the doomed commuter plane plummeted to the ground in a rainstorm, "like a black streak coming down."
American Eagle Flight 4184 from Indianapolis to Chicago crashed Monday afternoon about 60 miles short of its destination, killing all 64 passengers and four crew members.Wreckage of the 7-month-old twin-engine propjet was scattered across a muddy 40-acre soybean field in northwest Indiana, 30 miles south of Gary. Searchers just shook their heads. "What we did see, we didn't like," said firefighter John Knapp.
Firefighter Jerry Cramer said he talked with emergency workers returning from the crash site. "They said any piece of the plane was small enough it could have been carried out by hand," he said. "There's not one body that's intact."
National Transportation Safety Board chairman Jim Hall said searchers found the plane's cockpit voice recorder within hours of the crash. The flight data recorder, which shows altitude and other information, was found Tuesday morning, and both were being rushed to Washington for analysis, he said.
The largest piece of the craft left intact was a 6-to-8-foot section of the tail, Hall said.
Cold rain and wind overnight impeded efforts to recover bodies and wreckage. The sun came out about an hour after dawn, but the mud remained. State troopers and Newton County highway workers labored to build a temporary gravel road through the quagmire to the wreckage.
Other state troopers established a perimeter limiting access to the crash site. When one motorist drove toward it, he was quickly chased down by officers and escorted from the scene.
The full plane took off nearly an hour late because of heavy traffic at Chicago's O'Hare Airport and was kept in a holding pattern, said American Eagle spokesman Tim Smith. Neither the airline nor airport officials said how long the plane had been waiting to land.
After being cleared for landing, the plane began a descent from 10,000 to 8,000 feet, then disappeared from radar, Smith said.
At the time, winds were gusting to 49 mph in Gary, the closest reporting station, and about 2 inches of rain fell Monday near the crash site, the National Weather Service said.
Witnesses said there was driving rain when the plane went down.
"It sounded like (the pilot) had it full throttle, like a stunt pilot, like he was going to try to bring it up," said Bob Hilton, who was working under the hood of his truck.
"It came down, almost straight down, not at an angle - just straight down," said Larry Midkiff, who saw the crash as he was driving along a highway. "It didn't look like it had a left wing on it. It just looked like a black streak coming down."
Bob Spitler, director of operations for Indianapolis International Airport, said weather in northwest Indiana at the time of the crash was "moderate" and visibility was about 21/2 miles.
"Those don't appear to be horrible conditions," said Spitler, who also is a private pilot. "It's not a nice clear day, but it's certainly the kind of thing that any pilot would typically fly right into."
Hall agreed, telling ABC Tuesday morning that the rainstorm alone would not explain the crash. "Airplanes operate every day in this type of weather," he said. "We'll have to look to see whether there were any unusual weather occurrences that might cause the result."
American Eagle canceled plans to celebrate its 10th anniversary Tuesday. It has planned to unveil a specially decorated airplane at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.