Speaker 1: It was late March nineteen seventy nine, and an unseasonably
Speaker 1: warm day was settling in over Tulsa, Oklahoma. Down at
Speaker 1: the main hangar of the American Airlines Maintenance Facility just
Speaker 1: east of Tulsa Airport, mechanics and coveralls mingled with engineers
Speaker 1: in crisp shirts and ties under bright fluorescent light, serenaded
Speaker 1: by an endless wiz of drills and the thrum of
Speaker 1: heavy machinery. The facility was then and still is the
Speaker 1: world's largest commercial airlines base. Back in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: it employed around six thousand people, servicing as many as
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen aircraft at any one time. One of
Speaker 1: them on that day in late March was a sparkling
Speaker 1: aluminium paneled McDonnell Douglas DC ten registration number N one
Speaker 1: one zero AA. The model was notable for its its
Speaker 1: distinctive trijet design, with an engine on each wing and
Speaker 1: one in the tail. This particular aircraft was seven years
Speaker 1: old and had flown thousands of hours since its first
Speaker 1: delivery in nineteen seventy two. It carried movie stars, people
Speaker 1: on business families jetting off on vacation, but now it
Speaker 1: was just another machine undergoing a routine maintenance check, including
Speaker 1: an inspection of the engines. McDonnell Douglas had an official
Speaker 1: procedure for this. It involved first removing the engine and
Speaker 1: then the pylon, a curved strip of metal that held
Speaker 1: the engine to the wing. It was a complex, meticulous job,
Speaker 1: and one that also involved having to disconnect seventy nine
Speaker 1: different cable systems, including hydraulic lines, fuel lines, and various
Speaker 1: electric facilities. This was not only fiddly but also time consuming,
Speaker 1: so engineers at American Airlines found a quicker way, a
Speaker 1: more practical, cheaper way. Instead of taking the engine and
Speaker 1: pylon apart separately, piece by piece, with the aid of
Speaker 1: an overhead crane, they removed both sections in one go
Speaker 1: as one single piece, using a regular forklift truck for support.
Speaker 1: This way, they only had to disconnect twenty seven systems
Speaker 1: instead of seventy nine, saving two hundred working hours every
Speaker 1: time a plane underwent maintenance. And so it was that,
Speaker 1: in the early hours of the midnight shift in the
Speaker 1: hangar of that American Airlines maintenance facility in late March
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, the thirty first to be precise, the
Speaker 1: same process was applied to plane N one one zero AA.
Speaker 1: Forklift truck was brought forward and the platform attached to
Speaker 1: its forks, was carefully positioned into place under plane N
Speaker 1: one one zero AA's left engine. With the fork secured,
Speaker 1: the mechanics got to work removing the engine along with
Speaker 1: its supporting pylon. A few hours later, the midnight shift
Speaker 1: came to an end, but the engine removal had not
Speaker 1: yet been completed, so the forklift truck was simply left
Speaker 1: in place, propping up the engine and the wing. The
Speaker 1: truck's engine was then turned off and the midnight crew
Speaker 1: clocked off for the day. Perhaps had someone been there,
Speaker 1: they might have heard the faint hiss of pressure escaping
Speaker 1: from the truck's hydraulics as its engine powered down, or
Speaker 1: heard the pylon creek and shift ever so slightly out
Speaker 1: of place as the truck's forks holding the plane's engine
Speaker 1: in place slowly began to ease ever so slightly down,
Speaker 1: Or perhaps it would have been imperceptible under the din
Speaker 1: of all the rest of the noise in the hangar.
Speaker 1: Either way, when the next crew arrived shortly after to
Speaker 1: finish the task, they were surprised to find the pylon
Speaker 1: a little out of line, but after a little bit
Speaker 1: of jiggling with the fork lift, they soon managed to
Speaker 1: ease it back into place and remove it accordingly. Later,
Speaker 1: with the maintenance check complete, the tech crew finished up,
Speaker 1: logged their time and headed home. By the afternoon of
Speaker 1: March thirty, first d C ten N one one o
Speaker 1: A A stood ready once more, its engines reattached, its
Speaker 1: paperwork stamped and signed, but somewhere deep in the metal
Speaker 1: of the aircraft's left pylon, unbeknownst to any one, a
Speaker 1: near invisible, undetectable fracture was just beginning to appear. You're
Speaker 1: listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard mc lean smith. David
Speaker 1: Booth stood looking out over a strange, silent landscape. Ahead
Speaker 1: of him was a large, nondescript field, a tree line
Speaker 1: going down it, and a gravel path that curved around
Speaker 1: from in front to behind him, leading onto a main road.
Speaker 1: To his side was a dull, single story building. Distracted
Speaker 1: by movement above, he looked up to see the shining
Speaker 1: fuselage of a silver American Airlines jet arching through the sky.
Speaker 1: It was strange, he thought to himself, how despite it
Speaker 1: being so close the plane seemed to be flying completely silently,
Speaker 1: with no sound coming from its engines. As it drew
Speaker 1: ever closer, it began to bang oddly to the right.
Speaker 1: More and more it turned until its left wing was
Speaker 1: pointing upwards perpendicular to the ground. Then steadily it began
Speaker 1: to fall. David watched on in utter horror as the plane,
Speaker 1: now seemingly flying in slow motion, continued to fall, still
Speaker 1: turning as it went. Then it plunged nose first straight
Speaker 1: into the earth, exploding with a sickening roar in a
Speaker 1: huge fireball of red and orange, followed by a billowing
Speaker 1: plume of thick gray smoke. David shot up in his bed,
Speaker 1: sweating profusely, struggling to catch his breath as tears streamed
Speaker 1: down his eyes. Under the pale moonlight, he looked out
Speaker 1: at his baby, Justin, sleeping soundly in his crib, then
Speaker 1: turned to see his wife, Pam, lying fast asleep beside him.
Speaker 1: He was at home, in his bed in Hyde Park, Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: It was just a dream, he said to himself. It
Speaker 1: was just a dream, And yet the dream and the
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense of sadness that was now washing over him
Speaker 1: was like nothing he'd ever experienced before. David spent the
Speaker 1: rest of the night lying in bed, staring at the ceiling,
Speaker 1: unable to shake the image of that plane smashing into
Speaker 1: the ground as vivid then in his mind as it
Speaker 1: was when he was dreaming it. When morning finally came,
Speaker 1: he didn't have the words to explain it to Pam,
Speaker 1: so he just washed and shaved, same as he always did,
Speaker 1: and drove off to work. It was Tuesday, May fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine. The following night, David Booth had the
Speaker 1: dream again, the same dull building to his left, the
Speaker 1: same American Airlines plane arching silently, horrifyingly through the sky,
Speaker 1: its wings turning until it was almost upside down, before
Speaker 1: slamming into the ground in a devastating ball of fire.
Speaker 1: And once again David woke with tears streaming from his eyes,
Speaker 1: crippled by a profound sense of sorrow. Then it happened
Speaker 1: again the next night, and the next, and the next.
Speaker 1: By Tuesday, twenty second of May, David had had the
Speaker 1: same dream for seven nights in a row. Whenever he
Speaker 1: remembered it the next day, it wasn't in that hazy,
Speaker 1: fragmentary way that you try to fix a dream in
Speaker 1: your mind. It was like a crisply embedded memory of
Speaker 1: what he'd experienced the day before. Twenty three year old
Speaker 1: David Booth, an office manager at the agency rent a
Speaker 1: Car Reading, was a bright man with a long, patrician
Speaker 1: face and plaintive, thoughtful eyes. He liked to play the
Speaker 1: guitar and listen to Emmy Lou Harris, and had a
Speaker 1: ponchant for self help books. What he didn't have any
Speaker 1: time for was spooky stuff or any of that occult nonsense.
Speaker 1: But this strange, incessant, terrifying dream was tearing him apart.
Speaker 1: It even left him too scared to sleep come the evening.
Speaker 1: He tried to keep himself awake as long as possible,
Speaker 1: sitting alone in the darkness long after his wife Pam
Speaker 1: had gone to bed, watching the Tonight Show, then the
Speaker 1: Tomorrow Show, and even the test cards that came after.
Speaker 1: But gradually his eyelids would begin to droop, and before
Speaker 1: he knew it, he was back in that strange, eerie
Speaker 1: field again, watching hell fall from the sky. Slowly, over time,
Speaker 1: he began to wonder what if it wasn't just a dream.
Speaker 1: On that Tuesday, May twenty second, Booth arrived at his
Speaker 1: work with one thing on his mind. He didn't know
Speaker 1: what he would say exactly, but he had to tell
Speaker 1: someone what he was going through. If nothing else, he reasoned,
Speaker 1: maybe by sharing his terrifying experience, he might bring it
Speaker 1: to an end. He found a number for the Cincinnati
Speaker 1: office of the Federal Aviation Administration and gave them a call. Eventually,
Speaker 1: he was put through to Ray Pinkerton, assistant manager of
Speaker 1: the Airway Traffic Facility. Ray listened patiently to David as
Speaker 1: he recounted the strange dream he'd been having every night
Speaker 1: for the past week. He didn't want to sound crazy,
Speaker 1: he said, but what if the dream was some kind
Speaker 1: of premonition? Much to David's relief, Ray Pinkerton didn't make
Speaker 1: fun of him, nor did he dismiss him as some
Speaker 1: kind of kook. To Pinkerton, the unnerving tremble he could
Speaker 1: hear in David's voice was enough to convince him that
Speaker 1: he should at least take him at face value. Whatever
Speaker 1: the man was going through, he thought, it was clearly
Speaker 1: very real to him. The fact that David begged Ray
Speaker 1: not to tell the press about the call, that he
Speaker 1: simply wanted to get it off his chest was also unsettling,
Speaker 1: but Ray didn't really know what to say. He certainly
Speaker 1: didn't believe in premonitions. In the end, he agreed to
Speaker 1: pass the information up the chain, hoping that would at
Speaker 1: least give David some reassurance. Later that afternoon, Ray called
Speaker 1: Public affairs Officer Jack Barker in the FAA's Atlanta office
Speaker 1: and relayed everything. David told him how he claimed to
Speaker 1: have dreamt about an American Airlines plane that banked oddly
Speaker 1: to the side and almost flipped upside down before it
Speaker 1: crashed into the ground, and how the engines had been
Speaker 1: strangely silent when it did so. Ray also did its
Speaker 1: best to recount the various landmarks that David pointed out,
Speaker 1: the dull, single story building, the gravel path curving round
Speaker 1: and leading onto a main road, and the wide open
Speaker 1: field where the plane came down. There was something else, too,
Speaker 1: although David had no idea what it meant. For some reason,
Speaker 1: the number forty and the word Danbury, which he assumed
Speaker 1: was related to the town of Danbury in Connecticut, kept
Speaker 1: popping into his head. Like Ray, Jack Barker didn't dismiss
Speaker 1: the dream out of hand, either. For years, his own grandfather,
Speaker 1: a sea captain, had told a chilling story about how
Speaker 1: he'd once been standing on the deck of a ship
Speaker 1: as it sailed between Key West and South America when
Speaker 1: he was suddenly struck in the chest by an albatross.
Speaker 1: The event had so shocked him he'd made a note
Speaker 1: of it in the ship's log, recording the precise time
Speaker 1: it happened. When he returned home, he received the devastating
Speaker 1: news that his daughter had died from yellow fever. According
Speaker 1: to the grandfather, the time of her death was exactly
Speaker 1: the same time the albatross had collided into him. But also,
Speaker 1: just like Ray, Barker was at a loss with what
Speaker 1: to do with the information, even if the dream really
Speaker 1: was some kind of premonition. Aside from identifying the plane
Speaker 1: as American Airlines, they had nothing substantial to act on.
Speaker 1: There was nothing to identify what specific plane or flight
Speaker 1: it was, nor to pinpoint exactly where the crash was
Speaker 1: supposedly going to occur, and they certainly weren't about to
Speaker 1: ground all American Airlines flights until they worked it out,
Speaker 1: potentially thousands of flights a day. Barker agreed to log
Speaker 1: it with American Airlines Cincinnati office just in case, but
Speaker 1: beyond that there was nothing else to be done. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: it was around this time that an American Airline's DC
Speaker 1: ten flight one nine one, bound for Los Angeles, was
Speaker 1: taking off from Chicago's O'Hare Airport. About thirty minutes into
Speaker 1: the flight, much to the captain's alarm, the planes left
Speaker 1: engine suddenly failed. Thankfully, with its two other engines working fine,
Speaker 1: he was able to turn the plane around and land
Speaker 1: safely back in Chicago later that night. David Booth had
Speaker 1: the dream again. On Friday, May twenty fifth, da VI.
Speaker 1: It woke once more in the early hours of the morning,
Speaker 1: sweating profusely with his heart banging in his chest, and
Speaker 1: once again came that unbearable wave of sadness. It had
Speaker 1: now been ten days straight since he began dreaming of
Speaker 1: the plane crash. But things were different this time. The
Speaker 1: sadness that had usually evaporated by mid morning refused to
Speaker 1: leave him. Three hundred and twenty miles away to the north.
Speaker 1: Back at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a bright sun lit up
Speaker 1: the late spring sky outside Gate K five on the tarmac.
Speaker 1: American Airlines DC ten flight one nine one registration number
Speaker 1: N one one AA was ready once more to make
Speaker 1: its regular journey to Los Angeles. Inside the gate, one
Speaker 1: by one, passengers for the two forty five PM flight
Speaker 1: began filing in twenty six year old Margaret Stax from
Speaker 1: a K Moos, Michigan, was excited to be heading out
Speaker 1: to her first book by Its convention. Forty seven year
Speaker 1: old author Judith Wax and her fifty one year old husband,
Speaker 1: Sheldon were also heading to the convention. Five years ago,
Speaker 1: when her daughter finally left for college and her son
Speaker 1: joined the Harry Krishna movement, Judith began writing again within
Speaker 1: a year. She was a witty and astute essayist in demand,
Speaker 1: and now she was heading to the convention as a
Speaker 1: celebrated author of a memoir she'd published only a few
Speaker 1: weeks ago. She and Sheldon, who was going in his
Speaker 1: capacity as managing editor of Playboy Magazine, were joined by
Speaker 1: Sheldon's colleagues Mary Sheridan and Vickie Hayder. It was Vicky's
Speaker 1: first time away from her one year old son Sean.
Speaker 1: Though she was excited for the trip, her son was
Speaker 1: all she could think about. Catherine and Joseph Benneck were
Speaker 1: taking their eleven year old sons Stephen, on a short
Speaker 1: break to make the most of the Memorial Day weekend,
Speaker 1: while newlyweds Barbara and Peter Warner were still giddy with
Speaker 1: excitement after getting married only three days ago. The couple
Speaker 1: were on their way home from an all too brief honeymoon,
Speaker 1: but looking forward to sharing it all with their families.
Speaker 1: One after another, the passengers continued to arrive for the
Speaker 1: two forty five pm flight to Los Angeles. Twenty four
Speaker 1: year old Ray DeVito escort it its girlfriend, Deborah Maruzzi
Speaker 1: as far as he could before the pair made their
Speaker 1: good wyes and Deborah headed off toward the gate. The
Speaker 1: couple had been seeing each other for two years and
Speaker 1: still found it hard to be apart. Back in departures,
Speaker 1: Ray took a seat by one of the windows facing
Speaker 1: the runway so he could watch the plane take off.
Speaker 1: Around two PM, a call went out to those waiting
Speaker 1: hopefully on flight one nine one's reserved list. Among them
Speaker 1: was thirty four year old Glenn Nichols, a communication specialist
Speaker 1: who just spent the last three weeks at a training
Speaker 1: course at the Bell System School. Glenn introduced himself to
Speaker 1: the staff at the counter. He was in luck. They
Speaker 1: told him a seat had just come available on the
Speaker 1: sold out flight. Then a young woman appeared behind him,
Speaker 1: a little flustered. She didn't want to be rude, she said,
Speaker 1: but was there any chance that she could have the seat?
Speaker 1: Seeing how desperate she was, Glenn happily agreed to let
Speaker 1: her take it. The woman smiled with relief and thanked
Speaker 1: Glenn profusely before joining the rest of the passengers, while
Speaker 1: Glenn walked off to find another flight. Finally time for
Speaker 1: the passengers to board the plane. There were two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty eight in total, along with eleven working crew
Speaker 1: and two off duty flight attendants hitching a lift to
Speaker 1: their next flight. One by one, they took their seats
Speaker 1: in the plane. Mary and Richard cap, both in their fifties,
Speaker 1: fastened their seat belts, then held hands as pilot Captain
Speaker 1: water Lux welcomed them all aboard through the speaker system.
Speaker 1: This would be their first vacation in ten years. Elsewhere,
Speaker 1: Susan and Stephen Lang from Bull Valley near Woodstock, wondered
Speaker 1: anxiously how their children, three and a half year old
Speaker 1: Joy and eight year old Bryson would cope without them
Speaker 1: while they were away, but it wouldn't be long, they
Speaker 1: reminded themselves. They'd be back home with them soon. With
Speaker 1: every one on board and settled into their seats, the
Speaker 1: no smoking sign was lit up and the attendants began
Speaker 1: their safety briefing. The flight was scheduled to take roughly
Speaker 1: four hours and would include one hot meal and a
Speaker 1: movie shown on a handful of screens dotted about the cabin.
Speaker 1: Before that, however, Captain Lux invited the passengers to watch
Speaker 1: the plane take off fire the cockpits in flight camera.
Speaker 1: The camera was a unique feature of the American Airlines
Speaker 1: d C ten that allowed passengers to see directly out
Speaker 1: of the cockpit for the entirety of the take off process,
Speaker 1: as if they were flying the plane themselves. At just
Speaker 1: after two fifty six p m. Eleven minutes behind schedule,
Speaker 1: Captain Lux received word from air traffic control that they
Speaker 1: were now clear to make it out to the runway.
Speaker 1: He fired up the plane's engines and slowly eased it
Speaker 1: away from the gate. A few minutes later, Flight one
Speaker 1: nine one was perched at the end of runway thirty two,
Speaker 1: right as it waited for an incoming plane to land.
Speaker 1: Up in the air traffic control tower, Controller Edward Rucker
Speaker 1: was supervising. At three oh one, he gave Captain Lux
Speaker 1: and First Officer James Dillard the green light. American one
Speaker 1: nine one cleared for takeoff. American one nine one underway,
Speaker 1: replied the Captain. Rucker watched from the tower as the
Speaker 1: plane nudged onto the end of the runway, and then,
Speaker 1: after a brief pause, it began to take off steadily.
Speaker 1: It gained speed. There's eighty knots, said Captain Lux, as
Speaker 1: the plane continued to accelerate. All the while, something unseen
Speaker 1: was happening inside the plane's left pylon. A fracture that
Speaker 1: had begun weeks ago and had only grown bigger with
Speaker 1: every vibration from every flight since then, had now grown
Speaker 1: to nearly a foot in length. Rucca continued to watch
Speaker 1: as the plane powered forward, going from eighty to one hundred,
Speaker 1: then to one hundred and fifty miles per hour, and
Speaker 1: beyond V one, the point of no return, from where
Speaker 1: it is impossible to abort a take off without catastrophic consequences.
Speaker 1: At one hundred and seventy five miles per hour, the
Speaker 1: plane's nosewheel began to lift up from the tarmac. As
Speaker 1: it did, Mark Rucca saw something utterly horrifying. The plane's
Speaker 1: left engine was moving independently of the plane, as if
Speaker 1: it were trying to take off on its own. It
Speaker 1: bounced and jostled for a moment, then completely disconnected, flew
Speaker 1: up over the wing, and fell with a crash onto
Speaker 1: the runway. He blew an engine, cried Ruccia in terror
Speaker 1: as he watched Flight one nine to one ease up
Speaker 1: into the sky. Even still, Rucca knew the plane was
Speaker 1: capable of flying on two engines, provided it got enough speed.
Speaker 1: Keeping his eyes fixated on the jet, Rucca radioed the
Speaker 1: cockpit American one nine one, do you want to come back?
Speaker 1: But there was no reply because, unknown to Rucca and
Speaker 1: the flight crew, the cable for the cockpit voice recorder
Speaker 1: had been damaged when the engine fell off. All Rucca
Speaker 1: could do then was watch and pray. At first, it
Speaker 1: looked as though it would be okay. The plane, or
Speaker 1: bit jettisoning vast streams of silver hydraulic fluid from its
Speaker 1: left wing, continued its usual trajectory into the air, but
Speaker 1: then it started to bank oddly to the left. On
Speaker 1: take off, Captain Lux and First Officer Dillard had no
Speaker 1: doubt seen the warning light telling them that the left
Speaker 1: engine had failed. In response, Dillard swiftly raised the nose
Speaker 1: to fourteen degrees and reduced the plane's speed from one
Speaker 1: hundred ninety to one hundred seventy six miles per hour,
Speaker 1: standard procedure for an engine failure. But what he and
Speaker 1: LUs didn't know was that the engine hadn't just failed,
Speaker 1: it had completely broken away from the plane, destroying numerous
Speaker 1: hydraulic systems in the process. As a result, they no
Speaker 1: longer had control over the left wing slats, meaning now
Speaker 1: the speed at which the plane could stall was far
Speaker 1: higher than the pilots realized. So when First Officer Dillard
Speaker 1: reduced speed, he would have been utterly horrified to find
Speaker 1: the left wing suddenly beginning to stall, And then the
Speaker 1: plane began to tilt and tilt more and more until
Speaker 1: the right wing was pointing straight up perpendicular to the ground.
Speaker 1: From the eighty Sea Tower, Rucker and his colleagues could
Speaker 1: only watch on in helpless horror down on Tooey Avenue,
Speaker 1: about a mile north of O'Hare Airport. Service station manager
Speaker 1: Richard du Sec, distracted by a strange rumble in the sky,
Speaker 1: looked up just in time to see the bizarre site
Speaker 1: of a plane sailing past the window, tilting so far
Speaker 1: over it had almost become inverted, white liquid streaming from
Speaker 1: its left wing where an engine should be. Then the
Speaker 1: strange rumble stopped, replaced by an eerie, ominous silence as
Speaker 1: the plane began suddenly to fall from the sky. Du
Speaker 1: Sec screamed for his sixteen year old assistant Alan Rodgers
Speaker 1: to get down as the plane slammed into the ground,
Speaker 1: exploding in a giant, red and orange ball of fire.
Speaker 1: Glass rained down all around them as the windows blew
Speaker 1: out from the force of the explosion. Fourteen year old
Speaker 1: Mario Hubbard, from the nearby two emobile home park, which
Speaker 1: the plane had just crashed into, was out biking with
Speaker 1: friends when he heard the explosion, followed by the sight
Speaker 1: of the huge fireball and a thick cloud of black smoke.
Speaker 1: Mario raced back, grateful to fight his home had not
Speaker 1: been destroyed. In a daze, he began to wander between
Speaker 1: the trailers, the heat from the flames becoming ever more
Speaker 1: intense as he inched closer and closer to the crash site.
Speaker 1: All about the ground was littered with debris and hot
Speaker 1: ash fell from the sky. Then he saw something peculiar
Speaker 1: lying between two trailers, a human arm American Airline's flight
Speaker 1: one nine one plane registration N one one o a
Speaker 1: A was in the air for about thirty seconds before
Speaker 1: it turned almost completely over and slammed into a wide
Speaker 1: open field next to an old single story storage hangar,
Speaker 1: just beyond a gravel path that curved round before joining
Speaker 1: a main road. From there, the wreckage continued forward, colliding
Speaker 1: with three mobile home parks about a mile north of
Speaker 1: the runway. With twenty one thousand gallons of fuel in
Speaker 1: its tanks, it exploded in a vast ball of flames
Speaker 1: that reached a hundred feet into the air, igniting power
Speaker 1: lines and three mobile homes. Police officer Mike Delaney, having
Speaker 1: watched the whole thing from inside its car, raced immediately
Speaker 1: to the scene, Parking up as close as he could.
Speaker 1: He hurried through charred foot high grass toward the epicentre
Speaker 1: of the crash. It was strange. Despite the odd section
Speaker 1: of a wing or piece of fuselage, there was little
Speaker 1: sign of the plane at all. It had been almost
Speaker 1: completely vaporized. Instead, all around were just eerie remnants of it,
Speaker 1: scorched pages of in flight magazines flapping in trees, pieces
Speaker 1: of twisted, blackened metal still smoking on the ground. Then
Speaker 1: he saw a single foot lying in the grass, and
Speaker 1: a pair of shoes with only the legs sticking out
Speaker 1: of them. Elsewhere, dark smoke was rising from a blackened torso.
Speaker 1: Then he saw a head. It was clear to him
Speaker 1: then that no one had survived. Back in Cincinnati, around
Speaker 1: eight pm later that evening, David Booth was at home
Speaker 1: with his wife Pam, watching an adaptation of the John
Speaker 1: Jake's American Revolution era novel The Rebels. He'd felt low
Speaker 1: all day, unable to shake the profound sadness that had
Speaker 1: refused to dissipate since he'd woken once again from his
Speaker 1: terrible dream. At a break in the show, a newsflash
Speaker 1: popped up on the screen. An image appeared, and David froze.
Speaker 1: It showed the wreckage site of an American Airline's flight
Speaker 1: that had just come down outside of Chicago's O'Hare Airport,
Speaker 1: killing all two hundred and seventy one people on board.
Speaker 1: A bright aluminium covered DC ten, just like the one
Speaker 1: he'd been seeing in his dream. David slumped to the
Speaker 1: floor on Friday night, as rescue workers and investigators continued
Speaker 1: to draw the crash site, David Boom lay down to sleep,
Speaker 1: this time for the first time in eleven days. He
Speaker 1: didn't experience the dream, and nor did he ever again.
Speaker 1: When he and the rest of the world saw the
Speaker 1: infamous photo of Flight one nine one captured by Michael Laughlin,
Speaker 1: who had witnessed the crash from inside the airport, he
Speaker 1: couldn't believe his eyes. There was simply no denying it. Now.
Speaker 1: He thought he had seen a vision of the future,
Speaker 1: and he had not been able to stop it, to
Speaker 1: stop the plane from taking off and killing every one
Speaker 1: on board. Down at the FAA's Atlanta office, Jack Barker
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it either, though he would also never be
Speaker 1: able to explain it. He couldn't help wondering if there
Speaker 1: was anything more they could have done, though he knew
Speaker 1: in his heart there was nothing. There were inconsistencies between
Speaker 1: David's dream and what actually happened. He said it was
Speaker 1: the right wing and not the left, that was missing
Speaker 1: an engine, and that the plane had tilted to the right,
Speaker 1: not the left. However, to many this seems a trifling
Speaker 1: difference considering the general accuracy of what was an exceedingly
Speaker 1: rare event in civil aviation. Despite David's initial desire to
Speaker 1: keep out at the spotlight, there was simply no denying
Speaker 1: the eerie similarity of his dream and the crash. On
Speaker 1: May thirty first, he appeared on Channel five w e
Speaker 1: w STV to share his story. David was down to
Speaker 1: earth and genuine, a far cry from the usual characters
Speaker 1: that try to pedal psychic powers, and though he no
Speaker 1: longer had the dream, he became increasingly rattled by its
Speaker 1: apparent implication, especially because those two other elements that had
Speaker 1: accompanied it, the name Danbury and the number forty, appeared
Speaker 1: to have not been accounted for. There was no one
Speaker 1: on board with the name Danbury, nor did the number
Speaker 1: forty seem to correlate with anything specific, such as the
Speaker 1: flight number or plane registration, and David couldn't let it go.
Speaker 1: After all, he'd already been right once. What if he
Speaker 1: began to wonder, Danbury was the place Danbury as he'd
Speaker 1: first assumed, and the number forty was a sign that
Speaker 1: something was going to happen forty days after the initial crash.
Speaker 1: Even if there was only the slightest chance that he
Speaker 1: might be right, David wasn't about to let anything happen again,
Speaker 1: so this time he went public, telling everyone and anyone
Speaker 1: that a crash was going to occur in Danbury, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: on July fourth, nineteen seventy nine. As the day of
Speaker 1: July fourth approached, residents in Danburry couldn't help but get
Speaker 1: a little nervous about all the talk in the news
Speaker 1: of David Booth's ominous new prediction. Lifeguards at the nearby
Speaker 1: Hanging Rock State Park even devised an alarm signal should
Speaker 1: a plane suddenly fall out at the sky and head
Speaker 1: toward them, four sharp blows on the whistle, followed by
Speaker 1: the instruction to run like hell. But in the end,
Speaker 1: only rain fell from the sky that day. Fearing he'd
Speaker 1: misunderstood something, David revised his prediction, saying it would happen
Speaker 1: in the next few days instead. But still no plane
Speaker 1: crashed in Danbury. It seemed whatever powers of premonition David
Speaker 1: once had had now left him. As for the victims
Speaker 1: and their loved ones from Flight one nine one, in
Speaker 1: the days Following the tragedy, it seemed the entire city
Speaker 1: of Chicago came together to mourn the loss, which included
Speaker 1: two individuals killed on the ground when the plane collided
Speaker 1: with the mobile homes. Following an investigation, it was found
Speaker 1: that neither pilot was culpable for the crash or the stall.
Speaker 1: In fact, not one of thirteen pilots taking part in
Speaker 1: specially devised simulations of the event were able to prevent
Speaker 1: the destruction of the air craft. In twenty eleven, in
Speaker 1: Lake Park, at the northwest corner of Lee and Two Avenues,
Speaker 1: about two kilometers east of the crash site, a two
Speaker 1: foot high brick wall featuring two hundred seventy three bricks
Speaker 1: each named for one of the victims was constructed in
Speaker 1: memory of all who lost their lives that day. David
Speaker 1: Booth never did find a satisfactory answer for what the
Speaker 1: word Danbury might have been referring to, and nor did
Speaker 1: any of the many amateur sluts and puzzle enthusiasts who
Speaker 1: pitched in with suggestions to the media in the months
Speaker 1: following the store. As for the number forty, there was
Speaker 1: one intriguing interpretation suggested by a man from New York
Speaker 1: shortly after David's story was first published. If every letter
Speaker 1: of the alphabet he said were given the number one
Speaker 1: to twenty six, with A being one, B being two, etc.
Speaker 1: Once applied to the words American Airlines, the resultant numbers
Speaker 1: add up to one hundred and fifty one and what
Speaker 1: is one hundred and fifty one plus forty one nine one?
Speaker 1: This episode was written by Richard McLain Smith