A Column of Smoke

Some 20 months ago, a sleek new Comet jet-powered transport plane, the pride of the British Overseas Airways, took off from London Airport to inaugurate a new era of travel in which men could hurry about their business on the globe's shrinking surface at speeds close to eight miles a minute. One day last week, the same plane took off from Rome on the last leg of the now routine jet flight from Singapore to London. Aboard were 35 passengers and crewmen, including Australia's able historian of World War II, Chester Wilmot (The Struggle for Europe).

Half an hour later, an Italian fisherman cruising off the island of Elba (where Napoleon was once a prisoner) marked the Comet's presence in the sky overhead. "I heard a roar," he said, "very high. Then there was a series of blasts. The next thing I saw was a column of smoke plunging straight down into the sea."

As BOAC technicians hurried down from London to investigate the crash, the third fatal crash in Comet history, fishermen, rescue planes and ships from the U.S. Sixth Fleet combed the water for survivors. They found none, but amid the flotsam of wreckage that floated on the Tyrrhenian Sea to mark the Comet's grave, 15 bodies were recovered. In an age of urgency and jet propulsion, the Comet's passengers had met their end as swiftly as they had pursued their goals upon earth. Said an examining surgeon: "They showed no look of terror. Death must have come without warning."

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