Mystery Crash

Buildings shuddered and windows rattled in & around Richmond, Ind. (pop. 40,000) one afternoon last week as 70 silvery F-84 Thunderjets of the Strategic Air Command streaked overhead. The planes had just taken off from Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, about 45 miles away, were climbing on the second leg of a 1,220-mile training flight to Michigan. People on the ground saw several of the planes enter a thunderhead, flash out into the clear again. Suddenly, a series of explosions seemed to rip through the formations. Within seconds, eight planes had crashed to earth in a 25-mile area around Richmond. Three pilots were killed, two parachuted to safety, three managed to belly-land their crippled craft into open fields.

What caused the unprecedented crash of eight planes at once was a mystery. Survivors were sure that the thunder & lightning were not responsible. One pilot reported that his engine had exploded, another that his had "just conked out."

This week, Air Force technicians wound up their investigation, announced the cause of the extraordinary accident: ice. Flying through moisture-laden air, the eight downed craft had picked up so much ice on the intake screens of their engines that it cut off the air, caused engines to die.

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