Mayday Over Wichita (14 page)

Most disturbing, perhaps, is the complete, yet sincere, delusion with which the article was written—further evidence that a social and economic moat, fortified with racism and ignorance, conspicuously divided Wichita in 1965.

12

WHY IT CRASHED

T
HE
R
UMORS

They said they were trying to kill a bunch of black folks in here; that was the rumor
.

—Sonya House, 2012
²⁷⁰

Avagrant arrived in Wichita a few days after the crash claiming he was going to deliver all the victims from their troubles. He was an odd-looking man with peculiar habits. Large and gangly, some described him as resembling “Frankenstein” or a “beatnick type of fellow”—comparing him to those who rejected the norms of conventional society and clung to the social movements of the 1950s and '60s.
²⁷¹
He was a vegetarian, wore a full beard, spoke eloquently and, for all intents and purposes, conveyed his ideas well. Beneath the façade of concern and good intentions, however, there was a darker side to the stranger. And in the opinion of those who had direct contact with him, he was a deranged man.

Of the many conspiracy theorists emerging after the disaster, none was as eccentric or irritating as Samuel D. Coleman. He meticulously scoured the crash site, holding solo prayer sessions in the ashes, prowling through the neighborhood and repeatedly harassing residents about what happened. To make matters worse, barely a week after arriving, Coleman burst into Razook's confectionary store waving a small bag of miscellaneous “airplane” parts, insisting he was the brother-in-law of one of the pilots. Coleman swore the parts were from the destroyed KC-135, somehow “overlooked” by the air force. Those who remembered Coleman especially recalled his various claims about the cause of the crash: the plane had been sabotaged by communists as part of a “larger plot”; a time-bomb was onboard and must have exploded, causing the crash; and, finally, it was a massive government cover-up. Probably the vilest rumor Coleman spread was that the airmen were intoxicated, and the reason they crashed was because the men aboard the KC-135 were inebriated.
²⁷²

Coleman spouted his theories incessantly throughout the neighborhood, upsetting residents and increasing hostility toward the police after their relaxed presence in the area ended with the investigation. For weeks afterward, Coleman gladly offered his ideas to any ear that would listen, though most tried desperately to avoid him. He was hard to miss, wailing in prayer amongst the field of ashes, alarming passersby. If there was ever a profane, burlesque and abominable perversion of John the Baptist—the biblical prophet described as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” who wore tattered clothes and ate locusts and wild honey—it was Coleman.
²⁷³

Although abnormal, Coleman's behavior was representative of the abundance of rumors that arose soon after the crash. Wichitans, as well as the air force at the time, had no idea why Raggy 42 plummeted, but that did not stop the myths from spreading like wildfire throughout Wichita. With the onset of numerous wrongful death lawsuits against the air force and Boeing filed by the victims' families in the years that followed, combined with the lengthy investigation by the air force, rumors persisted.

R
UMOR
#1: I
T
C
RASHED TO
K
ILL
“B
LACK
F
OLKS
”

A common assumption then, as it still is among some today, was that the KC-135 crashed at 20
^th
and Piatt because it was a predominantly African American neighborhood. Wichita historian Craig Miner described how, over the years, rumors that the KC-135 “was aimed there [in the black neighborhood] after circling to avoid the rich eastern suburbs” began to spread.
²⁷⁴
Theresa Johnson, a former member of the Wichita City Council, commented on the horrible rumors she had heard as a small child attending Mueller Elementary School:

Some pieces from the plane had landed on some of my classmates' homes, so we discussed it a little. After that class, I overheard people saying it wasn't a big deal because it was just a bunch of niggers that had been killed
.
²⁷⁵

The comments described by Miner and overheard by Ms. Johnson were not uncommon, nor were they isolated to any particular race. Malicious gossip about the plane striking the northeast section of Wichita propagated many unsubstantiated rumors, which were further exacerbated by the context of 1965 America. Blacks and whites in the Wichita community expressed that they thought the plane crashing in the African American neighborhood seemed in no way to be a coincidence. Many thought it was intentional. Sitting in the same house forty-seven years later, when asked about why she thought the plane crashed, Sonya House stated, “They said they were trying to kill a bunch of black folks in here; that was the rumor. Some people still feel like that was their motive.” But she disagreed. She went on to clarify, “If that had been their motive, they would not have failed…Instead of putting it in the ground, if they had slid with it, how far would it have gone? Central? 13
^th
Street?” At the end, she stated, “I just don't know why it crashed.”
²⁷⁶

There are certain key points in the statement by Ms. House that reveal, not only how much bitterness has remained in the community even decades afterward, but also how common sense overrides such frivolous theories. The only reason, perhaps, that this theory has perpetuated for nearly five decades may be just one thing: residential segregation.

A 2010 study on the development of Wichita's African American community by Deon Wolfenbarger of the National Park Service reiterated how racial boundaries, enforced by restrictive covenants, ran deep in Wichita during 1965.
²⁷⁷
One such covenant provides the perfect example. It reads:

No persons of any race other than the Caucasian race shall use or occupy any building or lot, except that this covenant shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of a different race domiciled with an owner or tenant
.
²⁷⁸

It must be noted, however, that the practice of residential segregation was not isolated to Wichita, nor was Wichita's the worst in terms of severity. For example, Levittown, New York, in the 1960s defined segregation. According to historian Mike Wright, in his book
What They Didn't Teach You About the '60s
, “Of the 82,000 who lived in Levittown, none was African American.”
²⁷⁹
Wright stated, “The developers told black families outright not to bother trying to buy a home in Levittown. They were not welcome.”
²⁸⁰

Residential segregation received even more momentum in Wichita due to the social norms allowing such practices. Blacks were sent to the northern end of Wichita, out of white neighborhoods. Therefore, with 97 percent of African Americans living jam-packed into Wichita's northeast section, no matter where the plane fell, it was going to be either a white tragedy or a black tragedy. It was unavoidable. Residential segregation made this an African American disaster, not the pilots, or the air force or some communist agenda—as Mr. Coleman insisted.

The pilots and their crew were not from Wichita, or Kansas or McConnell AFB, and neither was the plane. They arrived in Wichita only a few days before the crash. Because they were not Wichitans, they most likely had no detailed knowledge of the city or its residential segregation practices and were in all likelihood looking forward to a routine refueling mission before heading home. What's more, pinpointing a particular racial community while peering out of a tiny window on a plummeting aircraft, with seconds to spare, would be very difficult. The boisterous attorney Chester I. Lewis noted:

Most people accepted it as a matter of fate…Particularly since there have been no crashes and particularly since we have McConnell out here since God knows when, together with Boeing, Cessna and Beech—and there have never been any crashes in any particular neighborhood and so I don't think initially—even the Air Force officials were perhaps afraid that since it did happen basically in a Negro community that it might arouse racial antagonism toward the Air Force…
²⁸¹

Factors were set into motion decades ago with the migration of African Americans to Wichita and the evolution of enforced residential segregation. The plane crashed. And it happened to crash in northeast Wichita.

R
UMOR
#2: A P
ARACHUTE
C
ORD AND
F
AILED
E
NGINES

The Parachute

Although there was not much left of the KC-135 to signify that a plane had crashed, its mangled engines miraculously survived. The force of the plane driving nose-first into the ground sheared the wings from the fuselage, propelling the battered nacelles (an outer casing for the engines) throughout the scene. A reporter described the image of one charred engine nacelle protruding out of a depression in the ground as being “the only pieces of the wreckage recognizable.”
²⁸²
The engines and a piece of the plane's tail section found half a block away gave some clues for the investigation team to work on, but very few.

A bulky semi truck with a long flatbed trailer hauled the engines to Tinker AFB in Oklahoma a few days later for examination. Most who watched undoubtedly wondered if engine failure was to blame for the crash. Much to the investigators' surprise, when the number one engine was cracked open, they discovered a piece of shredded parachute and its melted nylon cord in the “aft portion of the compressor section”—the area of the engine that takes in air.
²⁸³
The Oklahoma City newspaper quickly released a controversial photo of the parachute entwined in the engine, which only fed new rumors. It was believed to be a personnel parachute, the same kind as KC-135s at the time had on board. The cord had somehow been sucked up by the engine.

An escape hatch, which investigators later discovered to have been jettisoned at approximately four hundred feet in altitude, on Raggy 42 suggested that at least one of the airmen tried to make a last-ditch effort to escape.
²⁸⁴
Quickly dissolving the parachute rumor, a Tinker AFB spokesman explained, “[T]he engine apparently picked up parts of a parachute after the plane crashed and broke apart”—not before.
²⁸⁵
“Specialized parachute personnel” were brought in and identified the parachute to be a “part of the canopy of a personnel type.”
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The official went on to say the pieces of parachute and cord were “so located that it's evident it did not contribute to the accident.”
²⁸⁷
Logic would dictate that an airman would not jump out of a plane if it was not already going down to begin with. The plane must have already been in danger, and therefore the parachute would have played little, if any, role in causing its demise.

The Engines

As Brigadier General Murray A. Bywater, head of the investigation team, indicated, the KC-135 could have flown fully loaded with just three engines. The plane, according to Bywater, “had been tested in flying at full load on three engines and had performed well.”
²⁸⁸
Even if the parachute had contributed to the one engine malfunction, it would have been recoverable. Further dispelling the rumors, however, metallurgists and other aircraft specialists at Tinker AFB closely examined the condition of engine parts, which revealed the damage to be the effect of post-impact fire resulting from the crash. On the engines, they studied the oil system, fuel system, bearings and turbine section. They inspected the front compressor, rear compressor, combustion section and other miscellaneous parts. They looked for damaged or missing rotor and compressor blades and found many. Parts were excessively bent, torn and broken; some were missing.

Despite the badly damaged engines, the meticulous inspection of all four ended with two identical conclusions. The first, “[s]evere anti-rotational bending of compressor and turbine blades, shearing of the front compressor rear hub, turbine shaft and coupling and severe rotational scuffing on parts throughout the engine[,] indicated that subject engine was rotating at a high RPM when ground impact occurred,”
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and the second concluded that “[n]o evidence of material deficiency or progressive failure on any engine component was found.”
²⁹⁰

Nothing was discovered during the inspection that revealed the engines were a contributing factor to the aircraft accident. Each one was functioning, as it should have, when Raggy 42 came crashing down.

R
UMOR
#3: A D
ROGUE
C
HUTE

Rumors also persisted that a drogue chute—a small parachute dragged behind aircraft to help with stabilization and deceleration—was left on the runway from another aircraft stationed at McConnell and had blown into Raggy 42's engine shortly before takeoff.

The F-105 Thunderchief and F-100 Super Sabre—both of which possessed drogue chutes—were highly active bombers in Southeast Asia, especially following the Tonkin Gulf incident in 1964. Moreover, the air force utilized both bombers extensively in the heavy bombing of North Vietnam called “Operation Rolling Thunder.”
²⁹¹
There were, in fact, F-105s and F-100s stationed at McConnell in 1965. F-105D, an active duty aircraft, was there from November 1963 through June 1972. F-100, an Air National Guard jet, was there from April 1961 through March 1971.
²⁹²
And although it is not inconceivable that a drogue chute could have been mistakenly left out on the runway or blown away by the tumultuous Kansas winds, none of the eyewitness accounts of those who watched Raggy 42 take off that morning chronicled any such occurrence. Likewise, there were no reports of a missing drogue chute following the crash, which would have been noted in the post-flight inspections. This rumor most likely developed only after the personnel chute was discovered inside one of the engines at Tinker AFB.
²⁹³