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By Jeff Brown:  

   In 1957, the U.S. Air Force introduced the largest transport aircraft in the world, the C-133 Cargomaster, and soon selected Dover Air Force Base, Del., as the East Coast home port for the giant aircraft. On April 13, 1958, one of those planes left Dover on a 90-minute training mission. Aboard were Capt. Raymond R. Bern, pilot; 1st Lt. Herbert T. Palisch, copilot; and Tech. Sgts. Marvin A. Aust and Edward L. McKinley Jr., flight engineers. Their flight ended tragically, only minutes after it began, when the plane suddenly flipped over and dove into a pine forest near Ellendale.

A Bigger, Faster, More Advanced Aircraft

   The C-133 came into being in the early 1950s when military planners decided they needed a large-capacity aircraft for strategic airlift missions, which included carrying intercontinental ballistics missiles.The Cargomaster went almost directly from the drawing board to the production line, with design changes being made during construction. Eventually, 48 Cargomasters were delivered to the Air Force. The first C-133 took to the air April 23, 1956, and was subjected to more than a year of tests that revealed several problems, most notable being the plane’s tendency to stall. Although there was almost no warning, crews found they could recover from the stall if they acted quickly. Exactly why the aircraft tended to stall was not completely understood and thus there was no immediate fix to the problem. Instead, recommendations included a warning system and a prohibition against intentional stalls. The first C-133 landed at Dover in August 1957, with the pilot, 1607th Military Airlift Wing commander, Col. Claude W. "Snuffy" Smith, telling reporters the Cargomaster "… flew like a fighter plane." The fourth Cargomaster, tail number 54-0146, arrived at Dover on Nov. 2, 1957; when it was lost, it had served only five months and 11 days.

The Mission

   April 13, 1958, was a Sunday, a day of rest and worship, but not for the crew of 54-0146. By 7 a.m., Aust and McKinley had already met Bern and Palisch for a preflight briefing and were on the flightline, well into their preflight inspection checklist. As the engineers worked, Bern and Palisch were in base operations for their mission briefing. Palisch, the lesser experienced of the two officers, had just over 60 hours in the Cargomaster. By comparison, Bern, a senior pilot, had flown the C-133 for more than 585 hours. Their mission began with a 120-mph trip down Dover’s Runway 32 and a climb into the air on a heading that would quickly put the giant Cargomaster over Sussex County.   A routine mission that was to last an hour-and-a-half ended abruptly just 15 minutes later. Exactly what happened still is not completely understood.

   According to the initial accident report, the C-133 lifted off at 8:28 a.m.; routine contact was made with the plane at 8:34, and a second time at 8:40. Then, nothing. At approximately 8:43 a.m. 54-0146 had smashed into the ground, landing upside down in a heavily wooded Ellendale State Forest, between Ellendale and Georgetown. Townspeople rushed to the site, but encountered a wall of fire, fed by thousands of gallons of aircraft fuel. Fire alarms were immediately sounded, and crews from Georgetown and Milton rushed to the scene. They were soon joined by more than 100 firefighters, some of whom were traveling north to attend training, as well as Air Force firemen and emergency workers. Many said the C-133 was circling the area about 2,000 feet above the forest and descending slowly when the engine sounds suddenly increased. After several seconds, the Cargomaster rolled over and dropped from the sky. At the time, Air Force investigators were not able to confirm those accounts. Firemen fought the stubborn, fuel-fed fire for more than two hours before bringing the blaze under control, taking an additional four hours to completely extinguish the fire. Workers cut down nearby trees to construct a small road into the site and as night fell, set up strings of searchlights around the perimeter. Air Force security officers put up a 24-hour guard at the site.

   Initially, an Air Force spokesman said the front part of the plane, where the crew would have been seated, was partially intact, raising hopes someone might have survived the impact. However, volunteer crews searched the thickly wooded area in vain. The bodies of the four crewmen were recovered the day after the crash. Searchers initially discovered what was described as a half-molten piece of metal that might have been an identification tag as well as a shattered pair of glasses. Other bits of metal from the plane were strewn over a quarter of a mile. A local funeral director said afterward someone turned in a wallet to him, which he forwarded to Air Force officials without opening it. News accounts said one of the Cargomaster’s wings still was attached to the fuselage, but the other was found approximately a block away. The plane’s four engines had been torn from the wings and lay scattered throughout the crash site. Three of the four propellers were recovered two days after the crash. The most recognizable piece of the plane was the aft bulkhead, situated under the vertical stabilizer.

The Investigation

   The destruction of the Air Force’s newest and largest transport plane and the loss of four popular crewmen stunned the population of Dover AFB. Cargomasters throughout the Air Force were grounded, and investigators combed through 54-0146’s maintenance records. Nothing amiss was found.The results of the investigation into the crash of 54-0146 never have been released to the public. Most theories about the accident centered on the C-133’s stall tendencies, which during initial flight testing indicated uneven airflow over the horizontal stabilizers made the elevators useless. A fix was ordered to the eighth aircraft, and retrofitted onto all previously built Cargomasters. About six months after the accident, a Dover maintenance officer discovered cables controlling the flight surfaces on another Cargomaster had locked up during a freezing rain. Knowing it had rained the night before Bern’s flight, they found the salvaged tail section of 54-0146, wet it down and put it in a deep freezer, suspecting that at the altitude Bern was flying, ice also would have formed. The tests showed ice formed in a tube through which the doomed plane’s control cables had passed.

   The repair was simple: maintenance crews simply cut a one-inch hole in the bulkhead and removed the tube. A Douglas representative later said a similar system was being used on the company’s DC-8 commercial transport; a similar failure on the commercial plane could have killed dozens. The loss of 54-0146 was not the first time a Dover plane was involved in a fatal accident and it was not the last. But it was particularly noteworthy because four highly skilled and well-liked airmen died and because the C-133 was considered the largest and most advanced transport aircraft of its time. The base recovered and C-133s continued to fly from Dover for another 13 years.

 

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