Accident details

The Lovettsville Air Disaster

-	ACCIDENT DETAILS
Date:	August 31, 1940
Time:	2:41 p.m.
Location:	Near Lovettsville, Virginia
Operator:	Pennsylvania Central Airlines
Flight #:	19
Route:	Washington D.C. - Detroit
AC Type:	Douglas DC-3
Registration:	NC21789
cn / ln:	2188
Aboard:	25   (passengers:21  crew:4)
Fatalities:	25   (passengers:21  crew:4)
Ground:	0
Summary:	The aircraft was flying through a thunderstorm in turbulence when it nosed over and plunged to earth near Short Hill Mountain. The disabling of the pilots by a severe lightning discharge in the immediate neighborhood of the airplane, with resulting loss of control was the initial explanation for the crash. With limited accident investigation tools at the time, the most likely cause was the plane flying into wind shear. It slammed into the ground at a 100 degree angle with it’s engines running at full throttle. U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota killed. The last communication from the plain’s captain or co-pilot was their report of reaching 6,000 ft.

Writing Prompt

Your job is to write a fictional narrative (historical fiction?) about the last minutes onboard Pennsylvania Central Airlines flight #19. What was it like for those passengers on that flight? What did they see? What did they hear? What did they do? Nobody knows. You can write it from any perspective. You will tell their story. Use a graphic organizer to help you place events in sequence. Your final copy is due 6/11/14.

In a thunderstorm which delayed it for nearly half an hour at Washington's airport, a Douglas DC-3 of Pennsylvania Central Airlines took off one night last week for Pittsburgh. Twenty-three minutes later, over the foothills of the Blue Ridge range near Lovettsville, Va., 36 miles west of Washington, something happened. Farmers attracted by a crash found the plane strewn over a clearing into which it had apparently plunged full tilt. Killed and mangled were all 21 passengers, its crew of four. The force of the crash was so great that, strapped in their seats, many of them were literally cut in two by their safety belts.

The news of the worst crash in the history of U. S. aviation ended 17 months of safe operation. It stunned Washington. It had political repercussions: because among the dead was Minnesota's 62-year-old Farmer-Labor Senator Ernest Lundeen, whose successor will be named by Republican Governor Stassen; because after the crash in 1935 which killed Senator Bronson Cutting of New Mexico, Senator Lundeen voted to establish the independent Civil Aeronautics Authority (for air safety, development and regulation), and CAA was recently transferred to the Commerce Department. The crash also was a direct blow to several Government bureaus: aboard the ship, as it happened, were able younger employees of Internal Revenue, FBI, ICC.