United Airlines Flight 409 was a scheduled flight departing from Denver, Colorado to Salt Lake City, Utah on October 6, 1955. The aircraft registration number was N30062, a Douglas DC-4. The aircraft crashed into Medicine Bow Peak, near Centennial, Wyoming killing all 66 people on board (63 passengers, 3 crew members.) Passengers included members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and military personnel. At the time, this was the worst crash in U.S. commercial aviation history.
Flight 409 left Denver, Colorado at 6:33 AM on October 6, 1955. This was 83 minutes after its scheduled departure time. The flight path 409 was expected to take was north of Laramie, Wyoming, then over the town of Rock River, Wyoming, and onward to Salt Lake City.
The plane did not report in over the town of Rock Springs at 8:11 AM as expected. With the plane's status unknown, the Civil Aeronautics Authority was notified of the missing craft. No radar was in place for civil aviation in this region in 1955. With no radar traces, manual searches were required to find the aircraft.
TheWyoming National Guard dispatched two planes, one of which found the aircraft's wreckage atop Medicine Bow Peak. The pilot of the search plane, Mel Conine, speculated that the plane may have been taking an unauthorized short cut away from its specified flight plan in an effort to make up for its 83 minute delay out of Denver.
Study of the crash site suggested a nose up attitude and an unusually low airspeed of the plane, implying that the plane was attempting a climb at the time of its crash. The reasons for this are not explicitly known, but several theories exist:
· An altimeter indicating an inaccurate altitude, leading the pilot to believe he was higher than he actually was
· Mountain obscuration by clouds, preventing visual sighting of the mountain peak before too late to react to prevent the crash
· Turbulence, specifically downdrafts, around Medicine Bow peak, pushing flight 409 into the mountain
Possible incapacitation of crew by carbon monoxide emanating from a faulty cabin heater was speculated upon based on recovery crew observations that crew bodies appeared 'discolored'. This theory was never proven.
Recovery of passenger and crew remains were extremely difficult, due to the terrain the aircraft crashed on. The recovery effort was completed on October 11, 1955. After investigation of the site was completed, United Airlines requested that remaining debris be destroyed by the military. Explosives and napalm were used to destroy them, although destruction was never completely accomplished. Small fragments of flight 409's airframe still exist on this mountaintop.
Flight 409's crash, and other crashes which occurred shortly after convinced the U.S. Congress to improve airline safety procedures, and increase the use of radar for civil aviation.
United uses the flight 409 designation today on its New York (La Guardia) - Denver - Seattle/Tacoma route.
Photo of Mirror Lake Taken 2008 by Jim Parker, Cheyenne, Wyoming
Photo of Memorial Plaque Taken 2008 by Jim Parker, Cheyenne, Wyoming
Flight 409 — 50 years ago
BY NATE GREEN
Laramie Daily Boomerang Staff Writer
On the morning of Oct. 6, 1955, a United Airlines DC-4 crashed into the face of Medicine Bow Peak, killing all 66 people aboard. It was the worst commercial aviation accident in the nation’s history.
To this day, pieces of the airplane can still be found scattered among the boulders at the base of the cliff.
Flight 409 left Denver en route to Salt Lake City at 6:33 a.m. Passengers aboard the plane included members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir returning from a European tour, recently sworn soldiers going to basic training in California and two infants.
The scheduled route called for flying north over Laramie, turning west over Rock River — the tiny town about 40 miles northwest of Laramie — and continuing toward Salt Lake City.
The pilots were expected to radio in when they passed over the city of Rock Springs at 8:11 a.m. When they failed to do so, the Civil Aeronautics Agency was notified of the missing aircraft.
There was no radar coverage in those days. The Wyoming Air National Guard in Cheyenne sent two search planes.
Mel Conine, a 35-year-old veteran of the Korean War, was one of the pilots sent to find the missing airliner.
Conine had a hunch that Flight 409 might not have crashed along its scheduled course. It was a common — but unauthorized — practice for pilots traveling from Denver to Salt Lake City to make a shortcut by going through the mountains instead of going around them.
Conine’s hunch led him to Medicine Bow Peak, the 12,013 foot-high scarp about 35 miles west of Laramie. The peak had been covered in clouds earlier in the morning, but it was exposed by the time Conine flew over.
Large black oil stains trailed down the face of the cliff, where the plane’s engines had rammed into the rock.
Though heavy winds prevented Conine from flying closer, he could see part of Flight 409’s fuselage and mechanical parts scattered in the crevices of the cliff.
Conine had seen many plane crashes as a military pilot, and he wasn’t surprised by the wreckage.
“That type of business doesn’t allow for many mistakes,” he said.
As news of the crash spread, local law enforcement and rescue personnel, as well as members of the University of Wyoming Outing Club, headed to the site.
It was cold, windy and threatening to snow when they arrived that afternoon, but a small group of would-be rescuers climbed over the rough, snowy, boulder-strewn terrain leading to the cliff.
Bob Foster, who was commander for the Civil Air Patrol, was one of the first to arrive at the scene.
“As we walked along the tail slope of the mountain, we started to run into the wreckage, landing gears and main struts of the wing,” Foster said in an interview with the American Heritage Center. “And then you look to where we saw the plane crash and you see those airplane parts a quarter of a mile away — it’s obviously going to be a really bad scene. You don’t expect to find any live people.”
William R. Daly was a UW graduate student and a member of the Carbon County Rescue Unit. He recalled looking down from a windy ledge and seeing a strange sight.
“The air was filled with these pieces of paper,” he said. “It turned out to be mail that was in the airplane. While I was there, we looked around in the wind section. That was the place that I saw the body of this woman. She had no head, no arms, just the upper torso.”
Another person at the scene was Frosty Kepler, a UW geology student and rock climber. Kepler was shocked to come upon the ravaged bodies. Mostly they were disconnected parts, barely recognizable forms.
“I can remember things like the person that was the most recognizable was a black sailor who was in the very back of the plane,” Kepler said. “… You could actually identify the whole body. I mean, you could actually see a body. The other body I think I recall fairly vividly was a small baby that was probably 18, 12 inches long. … I’m sure there are some things that I blacked out. I just don’t really care to remember.”
The University of Wyoming opened its summer science camp, located about six miles from the wreck, as the base of operations, and an organized recovery effort began the next morning.
On Oct. 7, nearly every newspaper in the country ran stories about the air crash.
“It was an awesome sight and one that I hope I never see again,“ wrote Hod Campbell in the Rocky Mountain News. “The few bodies I saw were mutilated and identification would be hard to establish in many cases. The area is inaccessible by horseback or jeep, and the job of removing bodies is going to have to be done by manpower. The job of getting up the hill makes the trip extremely rough, with a climber limited to very few trips. It’s going to take a long time to complete the job and a lot of men.”
Approximately 300 workers arrived the day after the crash to help with the recovery on the daunting cliff.
These included members of the Civil Air Patrol, the University of Wyoming Outing Club, the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group, the Colorado Mountaineering Club, local and state law enforcement, the National Guard and officials from United Airlines.
Many Laramie rock climbers volunteered their skills.
“It was very cooperative,” said Kepler. “It was a major, major event in this town, and everybody tried very, very hard to do whatever they could in any way.”
The first day of recovery suffered from disorganization and too many people on the rock face. They tried to devise a system of ropes and pulleys to deliver the bodies from the cliff.
Richard Murphy, one of the leaders of the recovery, recalled the dangers in the American Alpine Journal: “Not only did those working above inevitably dislodge rocks on those working below, but also pieces of airplane periodically clanged their way down the mountain … This meant that all parties except the highest were continually ducking for cover as the warning cry ‘Rock!’ or the thin metallic reverberation of an airplane part echoed down the face.”
On Saturday, it was determined that only the most experienced mountaineers would be allowed onto the upper reaches of Medicine Bow Peak.
University of Wyoming climbers strung a cable and pulley system down from the cliff. The bodies were lowered from the higher ledges by rope and placed in body bags, which were then attached to the cable and lowered farther.
They were then packed on horses that a local rancher had volunteered and transported to a temporary morgue at the science camp.
Recovery of the bodies was completed by Tuesday.
After the crash investigation, United Airlines requested that the military destroy the remains left on the mountain.
A team from Fort Collins used a cannon and explosives in an attempt to dislodge the tail section from its perch. Later, seven fighter planes from the Colorado Air National Guard were dispatched. Each plane was loaded with two tanks of napalm. The crew reported 14 direct hits on the crash site.
Despite the attempts to destroy the wreckage of Flight 409, pieces of the plane still litter the site of the crash: shards of aluminum, wiring and engine parts.
Mel Duncan, a historian from Cheyenne, was an aircraft mechanic for the National Guard at the time of the Flight 409 crash. He has since written a book about the incident, and he was instrumental in having a plaque placed along state Highway 130 in 2001 in memory of the victims.
Duncan has researched the crash investigation reports and newspaper articles from the time, and he has spoken with people involved with the recovery.
The cause of the crash is still open for conjecture.
One early theory considered that a cockpit combustion heater leaking carbon monoxide had caused the flight crew to fall unconscious. Some of the people involved in the recovery said the bodies appeared discolored, which might have been caused by poisoning.
Duncan believes that the pilot was trying to steer the plane over the mountain when it crashed. The plane apparently hit the rocks with the nose tipped up, he said. And the fact that so many of plane’s parts were found intact indicates that it wasn’t traveling at top speed.
A combination of conditions likely led to the crash, Duncan said:
The flight was 83 minutes late when it left Denver, and the pilots apparently decided to take a shortcut to make up for the lost time. This led them into a difficult path over mountainous terrain.
The altimeter might not have been calibrated correctly. Duncan said that the altimeters used then didn’t readjust themselves to variations in air pressure, and it’s possible that the instrument showed the plane to be flying higher than it actually was.
The Medicine Bow Mountain Range is notorious for the turbulence it causes pilots. Those who flew near the crash site afterwards reported finding a strong downdraft there.
Clouds often obscure the peak. The pilots might not have seen the danger until it was too late.
“You can say, ‘Well if he hadn’t taken a shortcut, it wouldn’t have happened.’ That might be true. ‘Well, if the weather was good, it wouldn’t have happened.’ That might be true. Or ‘If the altimeter had the right setting.’ That might be true. All these things come together,” Duncan said.
Flight 409 held the record for the worst air disaster for less than a year.
On June 20, 1956, a Venezuelan plane crashed off the New Jersey coast, killing all 74 people aboard, Ten days later two airliners collided over the Grand Canyon, killing 128 people.
According to Duncan, the Flight 409 disaster, and the two crashes following, led to advances in commercial airline safety,
“This series of accidents was the impetus that drove Congress to update the air control system, adding radar and procedures to promote safe flying,” Duncan said.