Delightful Destruction

A four-engined Douglas DC-7 skimmed at 140 m.p.h. across the desert sands near Phoenix, Ariz., clipped a pile of railroad ties that sheared off its propellers and landing gear. Next, the left wing smashed into a 25-ft. mound of dirt. Then the right slammed into three poles, which sliced off its tip. The fuselage hurtled onward, hopscotched over a 55-ft. hill, skidded to a shattering stop and burst into flames. Tense U.S. aviation experts broke into grins of delight; rarely had they witnessed such constructive destruction.

The spectacular crack-up was the most significant crash safety test in the history of U.S. civil aviation. Financed by the Federal Aviation Agency at a cost of $168,000, the project was planned by private aircraft companies, commercial airlines and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Its aim: to test new passenger safety devices and to analyze the pattern of structural damage wrought by such an impact.

Chesty Manikins. Actually, the plane, which moved under its own power with its nose wheel locked to a 4,000-ft. rail, reached greater speed than expected, careened far past the anticipated wreck site. The fire, too, was not anticipated, since the DC-7's main fuel tanks were filled with colored water to trace the post-crash distribution of inflammable fuel. An auxiliary tank carried only enough fuel for the short test run but resulted in the fire, which was quickly doused.

Main concern of the researchers as they raced to the wreckage was the fate of steel-framed, rubberized manikins strapped to seats inside the plane. To record the stress of impact, a dozen of them had a chestful of sensitive equipment. It will take months to analyze these data, but researchers were pleased to find that most of these "passengers" came through well enough to indicate a good chance of survival.

A major survival aid proved to be a new plastic air bag tucked into the rear of one seat; inflated before impact, it spread backward in two sections--one over the feet and legs of the dummy in the seat behind, the other over its upper body--and cushioned that "passenger" against impact injury. Such bags, which can be inflated by a switch in the pilot's compartment when a crash seems probable, are the first devices for individual passenger safety under serious consideration by the industry since the safety belt.

Better Crashes. On the negative side, three rear-facing seats failed to protect their manikins because the backs of the seats snapped and the "bodies" slipped out from under their seat belts. The protective qualities of one side-facing seat could not be determined because the seat belt broke. As for the "pilot" and "copilot," who were given no special protection, investigators reluctantly concluded that they would have been crushed to death.

The metals and alloys of the ten-year-old plane, which the FAA bought for only $29,000, will also have to be examined to determine their resistance to the stresses.

In June, a Lockheed Constellation with dummy passengers aboard will be similarly crashed. Such bigger and better crackups, air safety experts are convinced, will prove giant strides not only toward getting passengers safely down to earth but also toward allowing them to walk away from a wreck.

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