Descendants of Flight 410 victim visit Blue Ridge Mountain site

With a light snow blowing under overcast skies, brothers Marshall and A.B. Reid clambered over car-sized boulders and between snagging mountain laurel branches trying to find every piece that remained of a Douglas DC-4 that crashed on Blue Ridge Mountain in 1947.

"It's amazing there's so much wreckage after these years," Marshall observed. "We'll be able to describe this for our mother. She never got to come up here."

"It will be an epilogue for our mother," A.B. added. "I'm glad to have seen it."

Marshall Reid, left, and A.B. Reid stand between the landing struts of a DC-4 that crashed on Blue Ridge Mountain in 1947. The brothers’ great-uncle, Cecil Eaton, was killed in the crash.

Their mother is Marjorie "Mickey" Reid, 83 years old, but in 1947, she was 18 years old and the man who had raised her as his own, Cecil L. Eaton, died in what was, at the time, one of the most deadly airplane crashes in the United States.

Eaton was her uncle, who, along with his wife and Mickey's aunt, Laura, took her in when she was orphaned at 9 years old. They lived in High Point, N.C.

The Reid brothers grew up in Raleigh, N.C., and drove to the Eastern Panhandle Saturday morning by way of Charlottesville, Va., where they stayed with friends.

"I heard the stories all my life," Marshall said. "I began searching for more information about a year ago."

His Internet search took him to the Shannondale & Beyond website, which is maintained by Willis Nowell. The website features a detailed history of the plane crash, which happened a little after 6 p.m. Friday, June 13.

Through the Shannondale & Beyond website, the brothers were able to connect with Nat Hughes, who lives not far from the crash site. He and his wife, Diana, hosted the Reids Saturday. Hughes, Nowell and local resident Carey Ingram took the Reid brothers on a tour of the site, which is on private property.

Pennsylvania-Central Airlines Flight 410 had left Chicago a little before 2 p.m. headed for Norfolk, Va., with stops in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.

Eaton, 53, boarded the plane in Pittsburgh. He was headed home to High Point at the end of the workweek.

A graduate of Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., he was a consulting industrial engineer specializing in time and motion studies - he increased the efficiency of factories.

He was going to then-National Airport in Washington to catch a flight to North Carolina.

The weather was not good. It was raining with low-lying clouds, obscuring the crest of the Blue Ridge.

The plane was circling, waiting for air traffic control to clear it before descending to National.

When the pilot, Horace Stark, of Alexandria, Va., got the OK from air traffic control at National, he began his descent.

The airliner, with its 47 passengers and three crew, apparently flew directly into the side of the Blue Ridge near Lookout Rock. It disintegrated upon impact and burst into flames.

Everyone on board was killed.

"According to some reports, the pilot thought he was circling on the east side of the mountain, but he was on the west side and when he began his descent, he crashed into the mountain," Hughes said.

Lookout Rock is about 1,680 feet high. The surrounding mountain ridge is between 1,500 and 1,600 feet high. The plane crashed about 175 feet below the crest of the mountain.

Other reports conjecture that the pilot was trying to get below the cloud cover to find landmarks for his descent to National and did not realize he was as low as he was and as close to the mountain as he was.

Planes in those days were not equipped with the high-tech flight and safety equipment that are standard on today's aircraft.

According to the official report by the Civil Aeronautics Board, the precursor to the Federal Aviation Administration, "The Board finds that the probable cause of this accident was the action of the pilot in descending below the minimum en route altitude under conditions of weather which prevented adequate visual reference to the ground. A contributing cause was the faulty clearance given by Airway Traffic Control, tacitly approved by the company dispatcher, and accepted by Flight 410."

When Flight 410 did not arrive in Washington, the authorities throughout the region were notified.

The then-Martinsburg Journal reported the next day, June 14, 1947, "The local officials were alerted because the last word from the plane had been its routine report to Washington that it had passed just south of Martinsburg at an altitude of 5,000 feet with Washington only 20 minutes flying time away."

West Virginia State Police, Loudoun County, Va., sheriff's deputies and planes from Martinsburg scoured the countryside, but could not find the wreckage.

"The wreckage was finally located by James Franklin, of Washington, (Pennsylvania-Central Airlines) maintenance official, from a chartered plane which flew there and simulated what would have been normal flying practice for the airline," The Journal reported.

The debris from the plane was spotted by Franklin at about 8 a.m. the day after the crash. Parts were spread over a 100-yard area on the side of the mountain, reports said.

Reportedly, the search party was not able to reach the crash site until Sunday, June 15, 1947.

"Uncle Cecil was thrown free of the wreck - he was one of the few who wasn't burned," Marshall Reid said. "He was returned home to be buried in Greensboro (N.C.). He's with Aunt Laura now."

Included in Eaton's personal effects was his pocket watch, which was returned to his wife.

"Items that were recovered from his pockets were returned about two weeks later," Mickey Reid writes in a posting on Shannondale & Beyond. "There was a handkerchief which had minute tears all through it, currency and coins and his pocket watch. The watch crystal was broken and the watch had stopped at the exact time of the crash (6:16 p.m.). We wound the watch and it began working immediately. I have the watch and it works perfectly today."

Marshall said she keeps it in a glass case.

"Mom still works," he said. "She's still sharp. She does crossword puzzles to keep her mind sharp."

She was the first woman to graduate from Duke University with a degree in geology, Marshall said. She worked for the U.S. Geological Service for 30 years, he said.

She got $8,000 from the airline in a settlement agreement.

"I wonder how would my life have been if the plane hadn't crashed," Marshall said. "Would my mom have met my dad? In a split second, things can happen."

Strewn among the boulders and mountain laurel are several pieces of the plane's body still bearing green paint, the pistons from a couple of its four engines and engine cowlings with exhaust pipes as well as the front struts for the landing gears apparently all lying where they came to rest that evening in 1947.

The DC-4 was widely used by civilian airlines and armed forces around the world. It was a little over 93 feet long with a wingspan of 117 feet and 6 inches. It could carry up to 86 passengers.

The passenger list of Flight 410 included J.M. McIntosh, 29, who had graduated from Pittsburgh University the Wednesday before the crash; Mary Bryan and her 10-month-old baby from Indianapolis; Dr. Courtney Smith, Silver Spring, Md., the national medical director of the American Red Cross; David P. Godwin, Washington, chief of fire control for the U.S. Forest Service; and 17-year-old Margaret Kueppers of St. Paul, Minn.

Eight of the bodies could not be identified and were buried in a mass grave in Leesburg, Va. Two bodies were never recovered.

"It's important to get the individual stories out," Marshall said. "They all have stories. There are 50 stories there."

Sunday 3 March 2013

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