Mayday Over Wichita (4 page)

There was no response, only silence.

3

IMPACT

You know, it just seems the Good Lord must have looked the other way for a moment
.

—Cora Belle Williams, 1965
⁴³

It was a cold, quiet morning. Little was stirring throughout the city. The sun peeped over the Kansas horizon at 7:43 a.m. but hardly warmed the frigid air. Steam billowed from chimneys atop small houses up and down Piatt Street, and icicles hung like pristine chandeliers from doorways. It was the “lazy kind of Saturday morning,” one reporter remembered, “when even sapphire blue skies and dry streets could not tempt many people to brave the 11 degree chill.”
⁴⁴

Cora Belle Williams was nestled in her favorite swivel chair and gazing out of her living room window at 2048 North Piatt, taking in the idyllic scenery. Joe Martin Jr., a twenty-five-year-old army veteran, was preparing to leave his home at 2031 North Piatt in order to drive his teenage brother, Gary, a junior at Wichita Heights High School, over to a friend's house. Clarence Walker had just laid out his clothes for the day and started running his bath water inside of 2101 North Piatt. Others were either asleep or just starting their mornings, too, in the close-knit, African American neighborhood. It was an ordinary Saturday, nothing out of the norm.
⁴⁵

Also stirring about that morning, the children inside of the House family residence were watching
Mighty Mouse
, an important part of their Saturday morning cartoon ritual. The strong aroma of bacon and eggs drifted from room to room. Sonya House, short and petite with a bright disposition, was wearing her muumuu dress and cozy house slippers. She had just cooked a hearty breakfast for her nephew and son, who were enthralled by the cartoon mouse on the living room television. All was peaceful, calm. Sonya's father, the tall and sharply dressed Robert T. House—wearing a white dress coat, slacks and black-framed glasses—was returning from Razook's Thriftway Market at 2148 North Piatt, just a few yards away from their home. Robert, who was originally from the tiny town of Dover, Oklahoma, was a retired railroad worker and father of ten girls. He was running an errand that morning while his wife, Mary A. House, was out with one of their daughters.

The tranquil morning, however, was interrupted just before Robert returned home. Sonya was disturbed by what she thought was the roar of the television set in the next room. She could hear the noise from her bedroom and assumed, at first, that one of the children had playfully turned up the volume. As she approached the living room, it only grew louder. Troubled by the awful noise, Sonya remembered thinking to herself, “I better turn that TV off; it's going to explode!”
⁴⁶

She quickly discovered the roaring sound was not
Mighty Mouse
. It was coming from outside. Walking into the living room to turn down the volume, she saw the children's eyes were transfixed on the front window, observing a most horrific sight just beyond the glass. A thundering, giant gray object was overshadowing the tiny houses, coming closer with every second. The imminent terror cast by the seething mass was breathtaking. It was as if a colossal spaceship were landing in their neighborhood, like something right out of a science fiction novel. Panic ensnared Sonya's cheerful countenance, her face froze with fear.

As she neared the front window to get a better view, there was Raggy 42—engines screaming, going to pieces and plummeting toward the earth at several hundred miles per hour with its ill-fated crew aboard. She then saw her father, Robert, desperately running toward the house, terrified by the heinous sight behind him. For those in the immediate vicinity of the distressed KC-135, Sonya realized with dread that there was no escape. Alone next door, Mrs. Fred Balenton could only watch in horror as the massive shadow bore down on her home. “It was a terrific noise,” she recalled. “I just hollered out and said, ‘It's going to hit the house!'”
⁴⁷
They were trapped.

S
HOCKWAVE

Four miles away, at a cathedral near the intersection of Central and Broadway Streets, Larry McDonough was about to marry his fiancée, Kathy Angley. Suddenly, the priest burst from his office and called the congregation's attention to a north-facing window. The scene outside the window “looked ominous,” Larry remembered.
⁴⁸
A menacing plume of black smoke was rolling upward from north Wichita, spreading across the sky like a dark pall. It was a foreboding sight.
⁴⁹

Three miles away, Capt. Earl Tanner was relaxing on his day off from the Wichita Fire Department (WFD). Shortly after 9:30 a.m., his house shook abruptly, and his windows rattled. Then, his phone rang. It was Fire Chief Tom McGaughey, who told Tanner, “Hit the road…It's a big plane!”
⁵⁰

Two and a half miles away, at 13
^th
and Waco Street, twelve-year-old Barbara Frederickson was sitting in class at Holy Savior Catholic Church when the children dashed toward the window, frightened by an awful roar outside. “I saw smoke trailing from the rear,” said Barbara, “then the plane dropped out of sight. I saw a bright glare that hurt my eyes.”
⁵¹

Nearly a mile and a half away, a shopkeeper working at 21
^st
and Market Street recalled the front door to his business being swiftly blown open with a gust of wind and his walls shuddering from a quick vibration.

Ruby Brown, who lived five blocks from the crash site, said she was awakened by a high-pitched “whistling and spitting” that sounded like a monster outside of her bedroom window. “It was just like an earthquake. The floor trembled beneath me. I've been in an earthquake before,” said Ruby, “and that's just what it felt like.” Ruby ran to her front door and discovered that “everything was all black as if somebody had blotted out the sun. The smoke had an awful smell, and it began to choke me, so I closed the door and watched from my window.”
⁵²
Just beyond the wall of smoke and fire, her neighbors were fighting for their lives.

Two blocks away, ten-year-old Victor Daniels was stirred by a terrible rumble overhead and the ground shaking violently. Running toward Piatt Street to find out what happened, he encountered chaos, panic and grisly images—Victor's father, grandmother and three cousins were inside of 2037 North Piatt, now consumed with implacable fire.
⁵³

Mildred Hill was working in her small carryout restaurant a block and a half away from the impact point. A thick, steel door located at the back of her business was thrust wide open by the vehement force of Raggy 42's collision. “I had a kitchen knife stuck in the door by the lock to help hold it shut. It snapped that kitchen knife in two like it was a matchstick,” said Mildred. The heat wave that followed felt “just like you were standing right up against a hot stove…I had to hold the door shut to keep it out or I wouldn't have been able to stand it,” she remembered.
⁵⁴

Aerial view of Piatt Street burning.
Kansas Firefighters' Museum
.

One block southwest of the impact point, at 1950 North Minnesota, Mrs. Edward Johnson was drinking her morning coffee in her kitchen when a three-foot-long slab of metal from Raggy 42 pierced the roof, nearly decapitating her.
⁵⁵
One of the wings from Raggy 42 sheared off and cut the Allens' residence at 2065 North Piatt in two—slicing through the front room and bedroom but, amazingly, leaving the occupants unharmed.
⁵⁶

A sixteen-year-old boy, Stu Markey, working as a carryout only yards away at Razook's supermarket, described the terrifying scene he witnessed while putting groceries into a car:

I was walking back to the store when I happened to look up. I didn't hear anything, but I saw this huge plane barely above the rooftop. The plane was banking to the left, and smoke was pouring out of the midsection. I looked at it again and dived behind a car. The concussion was so strong it rocked the car. When I looked up again, it seemed as if the whole ground was on fire with flames shooting higher than I've ever seen. I ran back to the store
.
⁵⁷

Some thought it was an earthquake; others thought there was an explosion at the Derby Oil Refinery nearby. Many witnesses remembered hearing what sounded like a tornado just before the impact.
⁵⁸
The heat wave and concussion from the fallen tanker were far-reaching. Window glass on cars and houses instantly shattered for several blocks. The large display windows at Razook's supermarket burst almost immediately.
⁵⁹
Automobiles were flipped upside down like pancakes, trees were uprooted and straightaway torched, lampposts became twisted metal wires and houses were violently pockmarked by flaming debris hurled from the wreckage. Homes once full with furniture and people were now scattered. “Stoves, refrigerators, hot water tanks, and even the bathing facilities…the bath tub, shower stalls and toilet stools, were completely blown clear out in the backyard,” recalled witnesses.
⁶⁰

Fragments from the tanker shot out like missiles, ripping through walls and ceilings, while the shockwave carried by the explosion hurled residents from their beds and across their living rooms. As Cora Belle Williams at 2048 North Piatt remembered, “The explosion picked my chair up off the floor, tumbled me out of it and threw me across the floor.” The window she had been peacefully gazing out of only seconds earlier was now in pieces. “I grabbed my daughter and ran out the back door, I tried to get into the front yard, but the heat was too much,” said Williams.
⁶¹

Ola M. Sanders, who was relaxing inside her home at 1627 North Ohio when the crash occurred, described the frightful morning:

We were indoors, watching television, drinking coffee. All of a sudden there was a “whomp!” and the windows and doors bowed in and out, like they'd sucked in a deep breath and let it out. We ran outside to look, and to the north, we could see this huge cloud rising. We thought the Russians had dropped a bomb on us…we saw all the people standing around and the houses on fire. It was like everybody was in a state of shock, just standing there
.
⁶²

Death and destruction claimed Piatt Street that morning. Few made it out alive. At 204 South Main Street, above Wichita's original 1892 City Hall Building, the lofty clock tower read the time: 9:31 a.m. Four minutes had passed since Raggy 42 departed the McConnell runway.

4

FIRE ALL AROUND

Scorched and flaming, fateful jet
,

While upon a homeward flight;

Lost control, nosedived into the earth;

Leaving fuel clouds black as night!

—Ellen Anderson, 1965
⁶³

What many thought to be an earthquake or massive bomb exploding was in fact the earsplitting crash of Raggy 42 smashing nose-first into the area of 20
^th
and Piatt. The plane buried itself fifteen feet—the height of an average one-story home—into the ground, leaving an enormous impact crater similar to that of a meteor strike. Over “300,000 pounds of steel, fuel and flesh” spiraled down all at once with tremendous force.
⁶⁴
It crashed so quickly that most felt only the impact and then saw an eruption of red flames bursting in all directions. The thick steel structure of Raggy 42 crumpled like tin foil as it cut into the city street. The booming sound of oxygen tanks, pressure tanks and hydraulic lines exploding caused many to think ammunition had been aboard the aircraft (a rumor the air force would later dispel).

The worst part, however, was the fifty tons of jet fuel that erupted into a five-hundred-foot-high fireball, permeating the tiny homes on Piatt Street. Ten-year-old Sharon Johnson, who lived a half a mile away at 1842 North Pennsylvania, remembered seeing the gigantic fireball as she looked out her kitchen window. Watching the plane smash into the ground and then ignite into a monstrous inferno—covering nearly five acres—was too overwhelming for the young child. She fainted.
⁶⁵

Delwood Coles, thirty-four years old, had just climbed into his car at 2047 North Piatt to pick up a friend. But as he leaned forward in his front seat to turn the ignition, the KC-135 hit. The torrid jet fuel incinerated Delwood in his vehicle so rapidly that he was unable to react—a situation reminiscent of Pompeii in AD 79, when Mount Vesuvius erupted, scorching unprepared victims in place and leaving their bodies frozen in ash. Delwood was later found by firemen, in mid-turn of the key, his skeleton still leaning forward within the burned-out car frame.
⁶⁶

Clarence Walker, fifty-five years old, was preparing to take a bath inside his home at 2101 North Piatt when his living room exploded with fire. His wife screamed in terror as their television, pictures, furniture and family heirlooms melted beneath the scathing heat. They staggered about, frantically looking for a way out of what had suddenly become a death trap. Clarence darted back into the bathroom, trying to escape through the window, but found it sealed shut. “[T]hen the oxygen got so low I couldn't breathe,” he remembered, “and I got down on my hips in the bathtub and said, ‘Lord, here I am. I'm ready to go!'” Much to his surprise, Clarence was given another chance: