The Crash of Braniff Flight 352
The forgotten Texas air disaster that helped make aviation safer
By David Wilson
PROLOGUE
On May 3, 1968, Dean and Lee Montgomery were driving with their two children on Highway 31 headed toward the central Texas town of Waco after leaving their home in Corsicana. An afternoon thunderstorm typical of that time of year was sweeping in from the northwest. As the family neared the tiny blink-and-you’ll-miss-it town of Dawson, about 60 miles south of Dallas, the rain became so heavy that Dean had to pull over to the side of the road.
The intensity of the wind also grew to the point that it began to rock and even move the family’s Chevrolet station wagon. “We couldn’t have opened a door,” Lee said, “the wind was that strong.” Suddenly a tremendous flash of light filled the sky, “like the sun was coming up in the clouds.” Moments later, large and small chunks of aircraft debris then began raining down from the sky.
It was obvious to Dean, who was himself a pilot for Central Airlines, that a plane had broken up in the storm and fallen from the sky. Recalling the incident years later in an interview in the Corsicana Daily Sun, Dean said, “When he [the pilot] went into the cloud it was almost a tornado.” As soon as the weather let up a little, Dean exited the car, leaving Lee to stay with their two children.
A Highway Patrol officer happened on the scene and Dean walked with him to find the crash site. They found the main part of the wreckage smoldering in a field about a half-mile east of Dawson’s town center.
Except for a large piece of landing gear, and a few seats clustered together, little of the debris could be easily identified as being from an aircraft. It was also a gruesome scene with human remains scattered all over. Clearly no one had survived the impact. “I saw no survivors, no bodies intact,” one witness said. Yet another commented, “It was a haunting mess.”
What the Montgomerys had witnessed was the crash of Braniff Flight 352. At the time it was the worst airplane crash in Texas history with 85 killed. It was also the most significant and terrible event in the history of Dawson. But what caused this crash that killed so many and traumatized a small town?
THE FLIGHT
Braniff Flight 352 was a regularly scheduled commuter flight that had left Houston’s Hobby Airport at 4:11 PM local time headed to Dallas with further stops scheduled for Tulsa, Fort Smith, and Little Rock. Estimated flight time from Houston to Dallas was 52 minutes. Braniff was known for its sense of style and so the airplane, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, tail number N9707C, sported a dashing look with a white fuselage with red accents in what was known as the “Aztec” pattern.
With four large turboprop engines, the Electra was one of the last large propeller-driven airliners built before jets became the standard beginning in the 1960s. Braniff in fact advertised the Electra as “jet powered,” but this was all marketing. While the Electra’s engines were turbines, as opposed to the piston engines common in the previous decade, they still derived nearly all their thrust from their propellers with only a minimal boost provided from the turbine’s jet exhaust.
The flight’s captain was John Phillips, age 46. He was an experienced pilot with more than 10,000 flight hours including 1,380 hours in the Electra. Just the previous day Phillips had completed a “currency check” required by Braniff to demonstrate his proficiency with the aircraft. The officer administering the check cleared Captain Phillips, noting that his landings were “beautiful” and that it was obvious he knew the aircraft “very well.”
The first officer on the flight was John Foster, age 32. While he only had 2,568 total flight hours, 1,820 of them were in the Electra, which meant that he had more experience in that aircraft than the captain did. The last member of the cockpit crew was Donald Crossland, the flight engineer. While only 28-years-old, he also had a commercial pilot’s license and had over 750 hours as a flight engineer on the L-188. All-in-all Flight 352 had an experienced crew that was well-rested and knowledgeable about their aircraft.
At 4:35 PM, about 25 minutes into Braniff 352’s flight, the airplane had reached its cruising altitude of 20,000 feet when the second officer in the back of the cockpit looked at the weather radar and asked, “What’s that [about] sixty miles in front of us?”
Captain Phillips gazed out the window and replied that it was a storm, “[And] it looks like a pretty good one, too. Looks like we’d better deviate to the west.” First Officer Foster immediately radioed the Houston Air Route Traffic Control Center, saying “We’d like to deviate to the west, [It] looks like there’s something in front of us.”
The air traffic controller in Houston heard the request, but since he was in the process of handing the flight off to the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center, he deferred the decision to the controller in Fort Worth. One minute later Foster repeated the request to deviate west and also asked for permission to reduce their altitude to 15,000. The controller in Fort Worth, Glenn Wilson, replied, “suggest deviation east of course, the [other] aircraft are deviating that, that way at the present time.”
About that time Captain Phillips told his first officer, “it looks like there’s a hole up ahead to me.” Foster replied, “yeah,” and then told the controller, “On our scope here it looks like to the… uh … a little just a little bit to the west would do us real fine.”
Airline pilots are ultimately responsible for the safety of their aircraft, and with the controller having no valid traffic reason to deny the request, he granted 352 permission to deviate west. A few minutes later the aircraft was also cleared to descend and maintain 14,000 feet altitude.
About this time the captain made an announcement to the passengers that they were still planning to land in Dallas on schedule. He said he was using their radar to “go well under and to the west of all of the thundershowers.” However, he did turn on the seat belt and no smoking signs in the cabin, saying it was “just in the event it’s a little choppy in the area.”
At 4:43 PM Foster asked permission to descend again, presumably in order to try to fly under the storm clouds as they had just told the passengers they would do. However, the Fort Worth Center denied the request because another aircraft was in the same airspace directly below them. Interestingly, it was another Braniff Electra L-188, Flight 154, which had been flying on a nearly parallel route from Austin north to Dallas. Seeing the storms at about the same time as Flight 352, the captain of Flight 154 made a similar request to deviate west. According to the accident report, the pilot of Flight 154 “was advised by the Fort Worth controller to deviate to the east and he accepted that advice.”
THE CRASH
At 4:46 PM, Flight 154 had safely crossed beneath and Flight 352 was cleared to descend. Soon after the controller lost the plane on his radar scope because the storm’s radar echo “was so bright” that it was not possible to see the aircraft’s radar target through it. This prompted the controller to ask the flight, “do you indicate the area you’re going into there now as being fairly clear or do you see openings through it?” First officer Foster replied, “It’s not clear, but we think we see an opening through it.” The tone of Foster’s reply did not indicate confidence.
About 30 seconds later Captain Phillips told his first officer to ask the controller if there were any reports of hail in the area. “No,” the controller responded, “you’re the closest one that’s ever come to it yet. I haven’t been able to… well I haven’t tried really to get anybody to go through it, they’ve all deviated around to the east.” Captain Phillips told his first officer, “No, don’t talk to him too much. I’m hearing his conversation on this. He’s trying to get us to admit we’re makin’ a big mistake coming through here.” The first officer said shortly after that, “it looks worse to me over there.”
It was almost 4:47 PM and Flight 352 was now less than a minute away from its end. Witnesses on the ground reported seeing the plane approach a bank of dark, black-green clouds that had a “rolling or boiling motion at the leading edge.” It was the same storm that had forced Dean Montgomery’s station wagon off the road and buffeted the car with nearly tornadic winds.
About this time the cockpit voice recorder picked up the sound of the landing gear warning horn, which was probably triggered by severe turbulence bouncing the gear inside of the wing. “Let it ring,” Captain Phillips responded. The cockpit audio now picked up the sound of rain or hail and seconds later the captain told his first officer, “Let’s make a one-eighty.” (That is, a 180° turn to go the opposite direction out of the storm.) “One-eighty?”, Foster replied. “Yeah,” Phillips responded.
Foster immediately radioed the controller in Fort Worth, saying in a calm, professional voice, “Braniff 352. We would like to make a one-eighty, please.” The controller responded, “Braniff 352, one-eighty right or left is approved.” The time was 4:47 and 26 seconds.
The captain had actually already put the plane in a right turn before the first officer had even completed his request to the controller. They were at that time flying at about 9,700 feet, but the violent wind and turbulence made the aircraft difficult to control causing the plane to pitch up a few hundred feet. Normal bank angle for a commercial airliner in a turn is 30°, but the aircraft suddenly began to roll to the right, passing that mark, mostly likely due to strong wind, or “gusts,” as the NTSB report put it. As the turn continued they passed 70°, then they blew past 90° continuing all the way to 110° bank angle.
In this position, the wings of the aircraft were roughly perpendicular to the ground, with the right wingtip pointed down and the left wing skyward. In this “unusual attitude” the wings were not providing any lift and the plane plunged downward at a 40° angle, spiraling as it dropped.
As the plane dived the cockpit voice recorder picked up “a sound similar to hail or heavy rain.” The captain then told his first officer, “Let me know when we come back around there to reverse heading for rollout.” Foster instantly asked, “340?”, meaning if Phillips wanted their previous heading of 340°, to which Phillips replied, “right.” That was the last word spoken in the cockpit.
The aircraft, having started its turn at near 10,000 feet, had plummeted to 6,700 feet in less than 20 seconds. Captain Foster pulled hard left and back on his yoke to recover from the dive, which caused the aircraft to experience a maximum of 4.3 g’s, or 4.3 times the normal force of Earth’s gravity. To give one an idea of how much force this is, astronauts only experience about 3gs during a rocket launch to space. This stress caused the right wingtip to break off. At this time both the landing gear warning bell as well as the fire warning bell sounded, followed shortly by the disintegration of the rest of the right wing, and shortly thereafter the entire aircraft.
The cockpit tape revealed the sound of “breakup noise.” The time was 4:47 and 44 seconds. It had been twelve minutes since they first spotted the storm, less than a minute since the plane entered the dark cloud bank, and only about 20 seconds had elapsed after Captain Phillips tried to turn the plane around to escape the storm. The entire flight had lasted just 36 minutes after takeoff from Houston.
DAWSON
The main crash site was in a field about a half-mile east of Dawson, near State Highway 31. The largest pieces of wreckage were found in an area roughly 75 yards square containing two craters. The smaller of the two craters held the remains of the cockpit and forward fuselage, while the larger crater held the center of the fuselage and the wings. But this was only the main site, more debris was scattered along a three-mile line to the south-southeast.
First responders converged on the scene from the Dawson area and other cities and towns in the region. Rescue workers and ambulances came from Corsicana and Waco, and National Guard troops also arrived to help. Heavy rains and hail hampered initial efforts at the crash site, but as soon as the weather had sufficiently cleared teams were able to start working the scene.
The Austin American-Statesman reported that, “Rain fell heavily as ambulance drivers and other rescue workers picked up pieces of bodies and wrapped them in sheets.” The townswomen set up tables to serve free coffee and doughnuts for the rescue workers. The high school gym — one of the only large, air-conditioned buildings in town — was converted into a temporary morgue. Twenty-six-year-old Doug Lenox was a member of volunteer fire department who helped with the awful but necessary job of gathering the human remains. Only after he nearly tripped over a severed foot did he realize what he was in for. “I’ll never forget it.”
It took two full days to find all of the body parts and bring them to the gym. J.D. Chastain, the head of the crime lab for the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), was in charge of identifying the bodies. A team from the FBI had also come to help, but Chastain informed them that the DPS would handle it and he sent the federal agents away. Only after a body was identified by the DPS forensic team were the remains removed from the gym and taken to the funeral home across the street.
Only one body was recovered intact or nearly so. It turned out to be a corpse that was being transported in a casket in the plane’s cargo hold. Some reported at the time that the body was a deceased soldier who died in the Vietnam War, but others say it was a woman who had died of cancer in Houston and was being transported to Oklahoma for burial.
All told 85 persons aboard the plane were killed including 80 passengers and five crew. It was lucky no one on the ground was injured or killed by the falling debris, especially considering a barn was destroyed in the crash and large chunks of wreckage landed just 25 yards from the back door of the Hill family’s farmhouse.
THE INVESTIGATION
As an organization the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was just over a year old at the time of the crash. The agency is tasked with investigating many types of transportation accidents but is best known for its role in investigating air crashes. It had been created as part of the Department of Transportation which came into existence on April 1, 1967, making Braniff 352 one of its first major investigations.
When the NTSB “go team” arrived in Dawson they quickly noted that the scattered nature of the debris, strewn over three miles, indicated that the plane had broken up in flight as opposed to having disintegrated upon impact with the ground. This fact weighed heavily on the minds of the investigators given what their report called, “the long history of the L-188.”
The Lockheed L-188 Electra was not actually a very old model, with it first having been introduced to airlines just nine years earlier. The “long history” that the investigators were referring to was the fact that two L-188s had crashed due to a design flaw soon after the model was first introduced. The first crash occurred in September 1959 and was also a Braniff airplane, Flight 542; the second was Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 that crashed in March 1960.
The crash of Flight 542 was in fact eerily similar to what had just happened to Flight 352 in Dawson. Like 352, Flight 542 was a Braniff Lockheed L-188 Electra; like 352, it had taken off from Houston headed to Dallas; like 352, it had broken up in mid-air scattering its wreckage near the tiny Texas town of Buffalo, which is only about 60 miles from Dawson; and like 352, all 34 passengers and crew on the flight were killed. In what must have seemed like nightmarish déjà vu, many of those who responded to the Dawson crash, including the DPS forensic team, had also worked the Buffalo crash nearly nine years earlier.
Both the 1959 and 1960 L-188 Electra crashes were determined to have been caused by a design flaw in the engine mounts that allowed an engine to create a sympathetic vibration in the wing, or “flutter,” that eventually caused the structure to fail and the aircraft to break up in flight. To solve the “flutter” problem Lockheed modified and strengthened the engine mounts and wing assemblies on all the remaining L-188 Electras. NTSB investigators at Dawson therefore looked very carefully for evidence that “flutter” may have played a role in 352’s fate.
Another interesting outcome of the earlier Electra crashes was the creation of the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR). Edmund Boniface, one of the Lockheed engineers involved in the Electra crash investigations, bemoaned that he had no way to listen to what was happening in the cockpit before the two crashes. In 1963 he successfully patented a CVR design and by 1967, a year before the Dawson crash, Cockpit Voice Recorders as well as Flight Data Recorders (FDR) were required on all large airliners. These recent innovations were put to good use in the 352 investigation.
In addition to looking over the wreckage, flight data, and voice recordings, the NTSB interviewed 75 people in the Dawson area as possible “ground witnesses” to the Flight 352 accident. Several witnesses reported seeing a stroke of lightning immediately precede the crash. One witness, David White, remarked “‘I wonder why he’s flying right into that storm?’ and then there was a big flash of lightning.” Some said that lightning struck the plane, while “others stated that it passed close to, or in front of, the aircraft.” However, after an extensive examination of the wreckage the NTSB concluded there was no evidence “which would indicate that the aircraft had been struck by lightning.”
And while many if not most of the witnesses reported an “explosion,” the NTSB investigators found no evidence of this. Instead, they concluded that “All fracture surfaces examined were typical of those caused by overloads. No evidence of fatigue or in-flight explosion was observed.” The NTSB also concluded that what witnesses had observed was the aircraft catching fire after the plane had broken up. “There was no evidence of fire prior to the in-flight structural failure.”
It was obvious that 352’s right wing had failed and broken apart in flight, but investigators were able to rule out flutter, which is what had brought down the two earlier Electras. This is because flutter would have shown evidence of the wing bending many times in both the up and down directions before it failed. However, in 352’s case, the break appeared to have been caused by a single overstress event, and the bend was only in the up direction.
What the information off of the flight data recorder indicated is that after Captain Phillips began his right turn the plane also began to roll excessively to the right, likely due to strong gusts and turbulence from the storm. This lifted the left wing skyward and pointed the right wing at the ground causing the aircraft to lose lift and dive, spiraling as it plummeted.
The investigators concluded that when Phillips tried to recover and pull the plane out of the dive “loads in excess of the structure’s ultimate capability were developed on the right wing.” The tip of the wing just past the outboard engine broke off first and as fuel poured out of the broken wing fuel tanks it ignited in a fireball. This caused the fire alarm to go off in the cockpit and is the reason why so many saw what they thought was an “explosion” before the plane crashed. When the plane lost the wing, it began to tumble causing the rest of structure to come apart before it hit the ground, which resulted in the debris being strung along a nearly three-mile line.
The NTSB’s report on the accident was 65 pages long, but they summarized their conclusions succinctly: “The probable cause of this accident was the stressing of the aircraft structure beyond its ultimate strength during an attempted recovery from an unusual attitude induced by turbulence associated with thunderstorm. The operation in the turbulence resulted from a decision to penetrate an area of known severe weather.”
The report also noted that the 352’s crew “insisted on a deviation to the west,” despite having been advised several times by ground controllers to deviate to the east and that “all other flights were diverting to the east.” The report also noted that the westerly deviation would have saved time getting into Love Field in Dallas, whereas the easterly deviation suggested by controllers would have put them behind schedule. Pressure on the pilots to maintain on-time performance was evidenced in the flight recording as well, when the captain told the passengers early in the flight that Braniff was the “number one airline on-time,” and that they were “leading the industry” in on-time performance and that they hoped to maintain that record.
“We do believe,” the investigators wrote, “that the fact that the crew knew that another Braniff flight, coming from the west, was deviating to the east parallel to the storm front, taken in conjunction with the repeated comments from the controller regarding deviations to the east, should have been sufficient reason for the captain of Flight 352 to reconsider his decision to penetrate the weather area.”
Importantly, the report noted that, “The crews who operated east of the line of thunderstorms reported smooth flying conditions throughout their operations into Dallas.” In fact, the last words on the CVR were not those of the crew of Flight 352, but was their sister flight 154 informing them their deviation east had them “in the clear” and the air was “smooth.”
Most histories and articles about the accident fail to mention one other important detail that is revealed in the report: “The decision to reverse course was not in keeping with company procedures for operation in areas of turbulence,” the investigators observed. “Normally, once in an area of turbulence, the crew is expected to maintain the attitude of the aircraft as nearly straight and level as possible.”
The report suggested that “the possibility of gusts” added to the control input of the pilot probably caused the initial “upset” of the aircraft, that is the roll to the right which resulted in the plane’s death spiral downward. In other words, while it was a mistake to have tried to penetrate the storm, it was probably the pilot’s decision to attempt to reverse out of it that actually doomed them.
LESSONS LEARNED
The NTSB report on Braniff 352 had a significant impact on the future of aviation safety. The report recommended that severe thunderstorms “be avoided by at least 20 nautical miles.” They also emphasized that airborne weather radar in planes be used “primarily as a thunderstorm avoidance tool rather than a penetration aid.” The influence of these recommendations, along with the other lessons learned in the report, can easily be seen in the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) current guidance on thunderstorms which are contained in its “Advisory Circular” AC 00–24C. Here are a few excerpts:
- “Airborne weather avoidance radar is, as its name implies, for avoiding severe weather — not for penetrating it.” (AC 00 — 24C, paragraph 9a)
- “Avoid heavy or extreme level [storm] echoes by at least 20 miles.” (AC 00 — 24C, par 9c)
- “Don’t attempt to fly under a thunderstorm, even if you can see through to the other side.” (AC 00 — 24C, par 10a)
- “Do ask ATC [Air Traffic Control] for radar navigation guidance or to approve deviations around thunderstorms, if needed.” (AC 00 — 24C, par 10a,10)
- “Don’t turn back once in the thunderstorm. A straight course through the storm most likely will get the aircraft out of the hazards most quickly. In addition, turning maneuvers increase stress on the aircraft.” (AC 00 — 24C, par 10c,4)
CONSPIRACY THEORY
A Web site has put forth an unfounded theory that Braniff Flight 352 did not crash because of bad weather, but instead had exploded in mid-flight due to it having been loaded with C-4 explosive unbeknownst to its crew. The author of the theory provides no evidence supporting his primary assertion that items from the crash “tested positive for C-4 residue.” The author likewise makes claims that there was no bad weather in the area of Dawson at the time of the crash, which runs counter to numerous eyewitness statements published in contemporary newspapers and later in the official NTSB report. On these two points alone, therefore, the theory can be dismissed.
There is only one point that the conspiracy site makes that is worth further discussion, which is an assertion that the CVR transcripts were altered. There are in fact two published transcripts of one very specific part of the CVR recording which had been damaged and was difficult to interpret. When Captain Phillips speaks with First Officer Foster near the end of the flight, the NTSB transcribes the statement as “No, don’t talk to him too much. I’m hearing his conversation on this. He’s trying to get us to admit we’re makin’ a big mistake coming through here.”
Whereas the Austin American-Statesman, July 31, 1968, reports it as “No, don’t talk to him (Fort Worth) too much, don’t carry on a conversation with him… Let’s keep trying to get us a fix… We’ll make a circling… letdown and (unintelligible).” This different interpretation of the recording doesn’t make much sense. Why would they be trying to “get a [location] fix”? Why would they be talking about “circling” when at this point in the flight they were flying straight and level and had not yet entered the storm.
In April 2023, the CVR tapes were rediscovered (see appendix at the end of this article), and any remaining doubts as to the accuracy of the NTSB interpretation and transcription can be put to rest. They clearly got it right.
AUTHOR’S PERSONAL NOTE
The controller in Fort Worth who communicated with Braniff Flight 352 just before it crashed was Glenn Wilson, my father. When I was a teenager in the 1980s, I had asked my father if he had ever been the controller on a flight that had crashed. He said, yes, and gave me a short description of what had happened to Flight 352. While he didn’t give many details, he did say that he had tried to tell the pilot to “go around the storm to the east, but he wouldn’t listen, and he flew straight into it and crashed. Everybody aboard was killed. I had sent the other planes around the storm, and they all made it.” This was the only time that he spoke to me about what happened that day.
In 1969 Glenn testified about the crash at a public NTSB hearing. The leadership of the FAA complimented his performance at the hearing, saying it “was done in a professional manner that reflected favorably upon the Government.” He earned letters of commendation from the FAA including a Superior Performance Award in part based on his “outstanding control ability… on Friday, May 3, 1968, at the time Braniff flight 352 crashed at Dawson, Texas killing all on board. Your phraseology, radio and interphone technique, and application of control procedures were outstanding.”
The incident weighed heavily on my father. Within a few years he said that he couldn’t handle controlling planes when there were storms around. He eventually transferred to the training department where he didn’t have to actively control flights anymore. Despite being a self-described “dyed-in-the-wool Democrat,” he remained in the training department at the Fort Worth Center through the Air Traffic Controller strike in 1980, earning more commendations for working long hours to help keep the Fort Worth Center functioning during that time. I remember asking him why he didn’t strike and was willing to cross the union picket line to keep working. He said, “I’m paid to do a job, so I do it. If someone doesn’t like their job they should quit and find another.” He also told me that he had grown up dirt poor in Oklahoma and that he was grateful to the government for giving him a career that allowed him to live a middle-class lifestyle.
Glenn retired in the 1990s, and finally passed away in 2005 from complications of cancer. However, I only came into possession of his personal effects after my mother passed in 2016. It was then that I discovered the paperwork that he kept relating to this incident and I came to understand the magnitude of the event and the impact that it had had on him, his professional career, and even our family. In a very real way, he was also a victim of Braniff Flight 352, and he carried the psychological scars with him for his entire life, even though he never spoke of it.
UPDATE: DISCOVERY OF THE COCKPIT VOICE RECORDER TAPES
This article was originally published in July 2021. In April 2023, longtime Texas radio and TV personality Steve Eberhart contacted me after reading this story: He had found copies of the Cockpit Voice Recordings (CVR) in an unlikely location: the archives of Sellers Recording Studios in Dallas.
Sellers Studios primarily produced local commercial audio and records for Dallas-area musicians. The studio closed in 1982, and its archive of master tapes was relocated to a barn outside of town. The CVR tape was notably out-of-place amongst the other recordings of radio jingles and local bands, and Eberhart speculates that after the crash the NTSB took the tapes to Dallas where Sellers Studios was one of the only locations in the area that had the necessary equipment to listen to and make copies of the tape.
The tape was four-track audio with each track having a different source: 1) Radio communications, 2) Captain’s audio, 3) Flight Engineer audio, and 4) Ambient cockpit audio. While the NTSB mentions the original CVR and FDR tapes were damaged, they state it was relatively minor and mostly toward the end of the tape when the crash occurred. The audio is remarkably clear except for the the ambient cockpit audio, which is difficult to hear due to background wind and engine noise.
While the original tape is presumably archived in Washington, D.C., I could not find any online evidence of it and have not had the time to make the journey to the National Archives to do a search, so Eberhart’s discovery is obviously a welcome one. While there are no new major revelations on the tapes, they have allowed me to piece together the final moments of Flight 352 more completely than before, and I have revised the article to reflect the new information. The audio does put to rest once and for all any doubts as to the accuracy of the NTSB transcription of the controversial section of the tape mentioned above, though it is still very difficult to make out.
My brother, Steve Wilson, is a talented photo-video artist who was able to composite together the four tracks and remaster the Cockpit Voice Recording. I worked with Steve to transcribe the tapes and create a shortened version of the recording for public distribution. This version focuses on the most relevant audio to the crash, leaving out the cacophony of miscellaneous radio communications with other aircraft that would have been confusing to a lay audience. Most importantly, Steve was able to enhance the cockpit microphone track, nearly eliminating the ambient wind noise, engine sounds and microphone hiss to isolate the voices of the pilots and engineer. This was a significant effort that took many hours of work.
This recording was published on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram YouTube site on April 27, 2023. The video was accompanied by a short article that I wrote describing the crash for the newspaper. I hope that with the publication of the CVR recording, everyone who still remembers or was affected by this tragedy can now find the answers that they may seek.
Government Reports:
Federal Aviation Administration, “Advisory Circular: Thunderstorms AC 00–24C,” U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration, 19 February 2013. https://www.faa.gov/documentlibrary/media/advisory_circular/ac%2000-24c.pdf
National Transportation Safety Board, “Aircraft Accident Report: Braniff Airways, Inc. Lockheed L-188, N9707C, Near Dawson, Texas, May 3, 1968,” 19 June 1969. https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR6903.aspx
NASA Langley, “#NASALangley100: Responding to Emergencies,” 2 June 2017. https://www.nasa.gov/langley/100/nasalangley100-responding-to-emergencies
News organizations:
Associated Press, “84 Aboard Die,” Daily Iowan. 4 May 1968. http://dailyiowan.lib.uiowa.edu/DI/1968/di1968-05-04.pdf
Associated Press, “Lightning Eyed In Plane Crash,” The Abilene Reporter-News Texas. 5 May 1968. http://www.gendisasters.com/texas/391/dawson-tx-airplane-crash-may-1968?page=0,5
Associated Press, “84 Die In Worst Texas Air Disaster,” The Abilene Reporter-News Texas. 4 May 1968. http://www.gendisasters.com/texas/391/dawson-tx-airplane-crash-may-1968?page=0,1
Associated Press, “84 Persons Die in Plane Crash,” Austin American-Statesman, 4 May 1968. https://www.newspapers.com/image/357753994
Associated Press, “In Crash Killing 85 Crew Had No Panic,” Austin American-Statesman, 31 July 1968. https://www.newspapers.com/image/357722016
Mike Copeland, “WWII vet Chastain shares treasure trove of stories from career as crash investigator,” Waco Tribune, 12 November 2016. https://wacotrib.com/news/local/wwii-vet-chastain-shares-trea...stigator/article_a299a857-2fc6-54c9-b13e-544bccf5759d.html
Paul J. Gately, “‘All you could see was a ball of fire,’ witness to 1968 crash recalls,” KWTX 10, Waco, 2 May 2018. https://www.kwtx.com/content/news/All-you-could-see-was-a-ball-of-fire-witness-recalls-of-1968-crash-481568701.html Author’s note: This source was mostly used for the recent quotes from witnesses. There is unfortunately a lot of misinformation in this article sourced from the conspiracy Web site cited below.
Bartee Hale, “Air disasters nine years and fifty miles apart,” Hays Free Press, Kyle, Texas. 2 May 2018. https://haysfreepress.com/2018/05/02/air-disasters-nine-years-and-fifty-miles-apart/
Bill Hendricks, “Recording Recounts Tragedy of Airliner,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas. 31 July 1968.
Janet Jacobs, “Dawson plane crash remembered,” Corsicana Daily Sun. 3 May 2008. https://www.corsicanadailysun.com/archives/dawson-plane-crash-remembered/article_54e13070-635d-597c-9fd5-87f475890506.html
Original Sources
Papers of Glenn Wilson (Author’s personal collection)
Cockpit Voice Recordings, courtesy Steve Eberhart, Eberhart’s personal collection.
General Sources
Wikipedia, “Flight recorder,” Accessed 21 July 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_recorder
Conspiracy Site
Brooke D. Watts, “The Crash Of A Braniff L-188 Electra II on 3 May 1968 4:37pm in Dawson, Texas,” Watts Media. Access date 20 July 2021. http://www.wattsmedia.com/1968/1968.html Author’s note: Brooke D. Watts, who passed away in 2020 at age 52, seems to have been a Braniff “fan” determined to somehow prove that the airline was not responsible for the crash. The site he created makes numerous fantastical claims, most with no valid citations or sources. Unfortunately, these false claims sometimes make their way into news stories.
