Ship Over Texas

For the seven men in the plane, the little lifetime that is a flight had begun at 6:30 a.m., in San Diego. If all went well it would end seven hours later at Corpus Christi, on the Gulf of Mexico, 1,200 miles across the plains and mountains of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas. Other Navy patrol bombers of the same type (Consolidated PBY) had made so many nonstop hops of 2,500 and 3,000 miles that this delivery flight from the factory was a routine matter. The ship, with its hull built only for landing on water, was now rushing over a land where Spanish conquistadors, men in covered wagons, desert rats had died for want of water. But the two officers, the five crewmen gave themselves up to the habit of flight, the saving certainty of airmen that all landings must be happy.

All did not go well. The ship flew into snow, into one of the sudden storms which buffet the Southwest in winter. Lieut. Murray Hanson, in command, flew low to look for water, saw none where he could land. He flew high, at 17,000 feet was still in the storm and snow. He flew blind; the snow had blotted out everything, and he had only his instruments to guide him. Wind mocked and rocked the great plane, smashed the cabin's windows. Spare parts spewed like hail through the cabin. A dreadful paralysis seized the plane; after each lurch, each drop in the wind, it seemed to recover a little more slowly, to climb a little less powerfully. Lieut. Han son knew why : ice was forming on the wings, and ice could drag him down to the land, where death was. He ordered his five non-commissioned men to bail out. Obediently, one by one, they stepped into the white world outside the plane.

Lieut. Hanson and Ensign Robert B. Clark, the copilot, stuck by the ship.

They flew out of the snow, into fog and rain, then at 6:45 p.m. happily down to a shallow lake on Richard King's Santa Fe Ranch near Edinburg, 80 miles southwest of Corpus Christi. The officers slept in the plane, were found next morning by two cowboys who led them out of the desert brush to the ranch house. Then Murray Hanson learned what happened to the men who had jumped at his order. One was killed; his parachute had been torn from his body. One was unhurt. Three were injured and in hospitals at Big Spring and Lamesa, Tex., 450 miles away as a PBY flies.

The four jumpers did not have long to thank their stars. A Navy transport (Douglas R3D-1) flew from San Diego, picked them up, headed back without Lieut. Hanson and Ensign Clark. Again, the plane belted into a storm, got within 40 miles of San Diego and safety. A work man on the ground thought that he saw flame in the sky; a rancher heard the transport's engines, flying low, then heard a distant crash. When searchers reached the top of Mother Grundy Peak, they found the smashed ship, eleven bodies, nobody alive to tell just what had happened. Airmen knew that for the four from the PBY, the last hell and thrill of flight in storm must have been about the same.

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