It was, at the time, the most stunning aviation disaster in U.S. history: 128 deaths, compounded by the breathtaking coincidence of the crash itself. Not only had two commercial airliners ended up at the same exact point in space at the exact same time, they had fallen from the sky into one of the most scenic spots on Earth.
Fifty years later, the June 30, 1956, midair collision of TWA Flight 2 and United Airlines Flight 718 over the Grand Canyon is recognized as the wake-up call that helped usher in sweeping changes in airline safety.
People had warned that America's skies were an accident waiting to happen. By 1956 there were 1,700 commercial aircraft, up from just 300 a decade before, and there was no coast-to-coast radar coverage. Once a plane left an airport, controllers knew its whereabouts only when the pilot periodically radioed his positions to ground stations that relayed the message to controllers who plotted the positions on charts, explains William Waldock, associate director of the Center for Aerospace Safety Education at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz.
It was a cumbersome system that allowed pilots to veer from designated airways and to fly under "visual flight rules," even though the view out the cockpit was full of blind spots.
Creation of a Federal Aviation Administration and national air traffic control system had been proposed. But funding had stalled in Congress.
Leaving L.A.
About 9 a.m. Saturday, June 30, the TWA flight bound for Kansas City, Mo., and the United flight bound for Chicago left Los Angeles International Airport within three minutes of each other. The TWA flight, carrying 70 people, filed a flight plan to cruise at 19,000 feet. The United flight, with 58 people on board, planned to cruise at 21,000 feet.
About 20 minutes into the flight, TWA pilot Capt. Jack Gandy requested permission to climb to 21,000 feet. An air traffic controller in Salt Lake City turned down Gandy's request. Then Gandy asked to fly "1,000 on top," meaning at least a thousand feet above the clouds, which that morning were billowing as high as 30,000 feet. That request was granted.
By the time both planes were over the Grand Canyon, the pilots were flying in and out of the clouds, on visual flight rules and off their prescribed flight plans, apparently typical in those days as pilots veered off course to play tour guide.
"The airlines were past the point where eyeballing did you very much good. They were moving so fast," says Dan Driskill, a northern Arizona flight paramedic who is writing a book about the collision.
The investigation
It was the last big accident before instigation of the "black box," so investigators had to piece together details from debris on the ground.
They decided that the left wing and propeller of the United plane hit the center fin of the TWA's tail and cut through the fuselage, sending Flight 2 nose-first into the canyon, two miles south of the juncture of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers. The United DC-7, which had lost most of its left wing, began spiraling down. Capt. Robert Shirley radioed Salt Lake City a garbled message that controllers understood only after they slowed down the recording: "Salt Lake, ah, 718 . . . we are going in." Flight 718 smashed into a cliff on Chuar Butte.
Henry Hudgin and his brother Palen owned Grand Canyon Airlines then, offering scenic flights. Saturday afternoon, Palen spotted two areas of smoke while flying.
"There was a lot of lightning that morning so he didn't think much of it," Henry recalls, until he got to thinking there wasn't enough vegetation there to burn.
Palen had heard two commercial aircraft were missing near the Grand Canyon and rounded up Henry. The sun had gone down by then but it was still light, so the brothers flew down into the canyon.
"We saw the United Airlines plane in a crevice and the TWA on a slope on one of the peaks," said Henry, now 83. "The thing that amazed us was the United fuselage was fully intact, although the wings and tail were sheared off. And there wasn't much smoke around it."
The brothers headed back to the little airport, then contacted TWA, United Airlines and the Civil Aeronautics Board.
On the scene
By the next morning, the TWA fuselage had totally disintegrated, Henry remembers. By that afternoon, the brothers were ferrying airline officials and reporters to the site.
"The reporters started coming by the thousands," he says.
Deseret News photographer J M. Heslop and reporter Frank Mensel arrived early Sunday afternoon. Heslop remembers sticking his head out of a small plane to get his photos of the crash sites. "The contrast between the scattered wreckage and the beauty of the canyon was terrible," he wrote 30 years after the crash, when a helicopter and a tour plane also collided over the canyon.
In the canyon's vastness, the wreckage of TWA Flight 2 and United Airlines Flight 718 has always been a reminder of how small human endeavors are. But the wreckage endures. You can still see pieces of metal from the United plane hanging on the 800-foot cliff; you can see it from the river, when the sun glints off the metal, says Driskill, who visited the site in April.
"There are probably whole engines still embedded in the crack," he says.
Over the years, some of the stuff has washed downhill. "There's a big tire almost down by the river," he says. "And all the way up you see pieces of aircraft. A lot of cylinder heads. Cable. Hydraulics. A tray table."
Trey Brandt visited the TWA site last year: eighteen miles in, 18 back, a trip he does not recommend.
Brandt, who describes himself as an aviation buff and "wreckchaser," says it's the old planes that interest him. But when the wreck is a fatal one there will also be other grim artifacts: coins, small glass containers that once held nail polish, silver brooches.
"I can picture an aunt figure or a grandmother looking in the mirror that morning and pinning it on," he says, and the thought makes him sad.
Scattered among the rocks are sales receipts and advertisements and a lady's wrist watch, the time stopped forever at 10:32.
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com