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The doomed Boeing 247 aircraft on a previous flight over Chicago.

(The Boeing Company)

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t is an 80-year-old mystery, buried in forgotten FBI files, and played out in faded newspaper headlines pasted long ago into the now-fragile black pages of an old family scrapbook.

On the afternoon of Oct. 10, 1933 — in the days of Chicago gangsters, Busby Berkeley musicals, the waning days of Prohibition and the height of the Great Depression — one of the most advanced and fastest airliners of its time taxied from the United Airlines terminal at Newark Airport in New Jersey, bound ultimately for California.

On board the new, 10-seat plane were two young pilots, a 26-year-old flight attendant from Chicago planning to get married in the fall, and just two passengers. An executive with the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Co., who had been booked for the flight, missed it by 20 minutes after his taxi driver got lost coming out of the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan.

Cleared for takeoff, the Boeing 247 roared down Newark's paved runway, its painted striped propellers a spinning blur of red, white and blue behind the synchronized drone of the twin Wasp radial engines on the wings. Tucking in its wheels as it climbed, it banked into the setting sun and headed west.

After a brief refueling stop in Cleveland, the plane continued on to Chicago with two additional passengers and a new pilot. In the back, Warren Burris, a radio operator for United, was seated as a passenger on the right side toward the rear, admiring the twilight view out the window. Continuing a letter to his parents, he told them he could see the lights of Toledo. “What a ride!” he wrote.

The pilot who had moved into the command seat in Cleveland, 25-year-old Harold “Hal” Tarrant, checked in by radio on schedule at 8:39 p.m. Central Time. By now flying in a light rain over North Liberty, Indiana, at an altitude of 1,500 feet, the ship was cruising at 180 mph. Tarrant said he could see two red navigational beacon lights marking the way ahead, like a white stripe on a dark highway.

“Everything is okay,” he reported.

Twenty minutes later, Tarrant missed his next radio check.

The plane was never heard from again.

In the Indiana farming community of Chesterton, Joe Graf was playing a game of hearts with Marion Arndt and Johnny Licinski that Tuesday evening at about 9 p.m. when they heard a loud boom overhead. Running outside, Graf said he could see a yellow light circling down at a terrific speed. They knew it was a plane.

“She’s in trouble,” one of the farmers said.

Just to the south in Valparaiso, George Caprous, the owner of the Bluebird Gas Station, also heard the blast. He saw a ball of fire shooting from the sky.

An explosion ripped through the plane. Within seconds, the entire tail broke off, just forward of the lavatory. Burris was swept out of the cabin and ejected along with another passenger. Their bodies would be recovered the next day near the mostly intact tail. The crippled aircraft, left uncontrollable, plunged down in a power dive and half loop. Investigators know Tarrant cut the throttles as the doomed ship corkscrewed to earth, unable to do much more than watch the white hands on the black altimeter rapidly unwind in what one witness described as a howling descent that was mercifully short. The plane was inverted when it struck the ground. Its right wing was torn off in one piece, the left one crumpled from the tremendous impact, as the airliner erupted into a huge fireball.

Nobody on board survived.

At first, it appeared to be a terrible accident — at a time when airplane crashes were all too common. A fuel leak, possibly. Structural failure also was suspected. Some believed the plane had been struck by lightning, and there was even a theory it had been hit by a meteorite. Mounting evidence of foul play, however, led to an FBI investigation, headed by Melvin Purvis, the head of the Chicago office who would later gain fame as the G-man who gunned down John Dillinger.

The airline — which had invested heavily in its new fleet of Boeing 247s and was critically interested in finding out if the planes were flawed — brought in a top lawyer from New York, Col. William Donovan, who would go on to become America’s top spy master as head of the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.

Investigators would ultimately conclude that some kind of explosive device brought down the plane — the first airline bombing in history. But who was responsible, and why?

More than 320 pages of microfilmed FBI reports — filed away in Washington and so old they could not at first be found in response to a Freedom of Information Act request — provide some answers, but also add to the mystery. Witnesses have died and evidence is gone. Newspaper accounts bear witness to the disaster, but offer few clues.

Even today, experts who have examined the reports agree that it was almost certain that a bomb brought down the plane. But they can only speculate as to why.

The United 23 crash site near Chesterton, Indiana.

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ewark Airport in 1933 was bustling. Then the busiest commercial airport in the country, it served as the air gateway to New York, which did not yet have an airport of its own. United Airlines, at the time a subsidiary of Boeing, only recently had launched transcontinental air service from Newark to Oakland, California, and the 247— the Dreamliner of its day — was the cutting-edge backbone of its fleet.

Commercial air service in the early 1930s was still in its infancy. Flying was faster than train, but an incredibly expensive proposition for all but the wealthy and business travelers in a hurry. The Fokker F10, a Dutch-designed aircraft with a fabric-covered fuselage of steel tubing and plywood-skinned wings, was a mainstay of many airlines. But the plane, which could carry up to 12 passengers, fell out of favor in the wake of the 1931 crash of Transcontinental and Western Air Flight 599 in a Kansas cornfield that killed famed Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. Others flew Curtis Condors, an odd-looking biplane airliner, or the slow, uncomfortable and aging Ford Tri-motor.

The Boeing 247 was a game changer.

“It is often referred to as the first modern airliner,” says John Little, assistant curator for the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which holds in its collection the last airworthy Boeing 247, now undergoing restoration.

Little called it a revolutionary airplane. Setting the pattern for aircraft design for decades to come, the 247 was filled with innovations. All metal with an aluminum alloy skin, retractable landing gear, an autopilot, inflatable boots to remove ice from wings and two-way radio, the new airliner was faster than the best military fighter then being flown by the U.S. Army. The cabin had soundproofing, individual heating controls at each seat and a lavatory in the back for passenger comfort, Little says.

More importantly, the new transcontinental airplane significantly cut the time it took to fly across country by 50 percent. Even with refueling stops, a 247 could fly from Newark to California in less than 20 hours.

Taking to the air for the first time on Feb. 8, 1933, the Boeing 247 gave United an immediate competitive advantage. Several were sent to the Chicago World’s Fair that year for a promotional tour, a historical photo shows an aerial view of one plane flying high over the Century of Progress fairgrounds. On its right wing, in large block lettering, was the registration number NC13304.

And on the afternoon of Oct. 10, 1933, that same showcase airplane was being prepared for a scheduled flight out of Newark.

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he flight was designated as Trip 23, with a 4:30 p.m. departure time. According to FBI investigative reports, mechanic Edmund Kolakowski did his usual pre-flight inspection of the aircraft that afternoon. He checked for loose rivets, the rudder hinge fittings and the tail. Another mechanic, Paul Doan, hooked up a tow bar on the tail wheel and found a nail in the tire. He took it off to replace it and when he returned, saw the cargo compartment door was ajar. Doan told the FBI he looked inside and saw the bags belonging to the flight attendant, Alice Scribner, whose name was on a leather satchel, and latched the door.

Scribner was new to flying. A sepia photograph of her in a family scrapbook, still kept by a niece she never knew, shows a pretty, petite woman in stylish, short-cropped hair. Her father was a former Wisconsin state legislator. After graduating from teacher’s college, Alice had taught school in Portage County for a year, and then became a nurse, graduating from Bellin Memorial Hospital in Wisconsin. Meeting United’s height and weight restrictions — less than 123 pounds and not any taller than 5 feet, 2 inches — she had joined the airline only recently. A newspaper clipping in the family scrapbook noted her assignment to the Newark to Chicago route just a few weeks earlier, on Oct. 1, 1933.

Alice Scribner

There were only two passengers on the first leg of the outbound flight. Neither had to pass through any kind of airport security, which did not exist at the time. Indeed, just about anyone could walk up to the plane. Dorothy Dwyer, 25, of Arlington, Massachusetts, was flying to Reno in what seemed like a madcap adventure to marry her newly divorced fiancé. She had missed the 4 p.m. flight out of Newark because of a flat tire in Rhode Island, and rushed to make the 4:30 flight.

Also on board was Emil Smith, 44, returning to Chicago after coming to New York to see the first two games of the 1933 World Series between the New York Giants and the Washington Senators. Airport workers told the FBI he had a bottle of liquor that he was forced to surrender before takeoff, and a mysterious package wrapped in paper that he would not relinquish. A blue-eyed army veteran who had been stationed in the Hawaiian Islands until he was honorably discharged in 1920, Smith, friends said, was known to drink, but never to be intoxicated. As far as anyone knew, he did not work. For a time he owned a grocery business. Jobs were scarce as the Depression lingered, but he did not seem to have money problems, living with an aunt back in Chicago, Anna Riedl.

She received a Telegram via Western Union from him that morning: “Leaving New York today by plane. Everything OK. Love-Emil.”

Before he left Newark, he purchased flight insurance, payable to his estate upon his death.

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apt. Robert Dawson was the pilot for the first leg of the trip, a one-time barnstormer who would become a celebrity of sorts in the 1950s as one of United’s top pilots. His co-pilot was 28-year-old A.T. Ruby, who had taken up aviation at the University of Illinois. United that year was beset by labor problems and Ruby had complained to his brother of being pressured to join the fledgling pilots union. On one trip, he complained to his brother that the command pilot, who favored the union, donned a heavy fleece flying suit and turned up the ventilation, letting him shiver silently in the right-hand seat.

Scribner had a thermos of hot coffee stowed in the back to serve to passengers, along with an assortment of sandwiches and magazines kept in a compartment near the rear door. With the cabin all but empty, Dawson stepped out of the cockpit about a half hour before landing to chat with his passengers. With both seated in the second row, across a narrow aisle from each other, Dawson later told investigators he sat on the edge of a seat behind them, leading forward to talk.

“Are you enjoying the trip?” he asked Smith.

"Very much so," he replied, appearing congenial as he joked with the pilot and Dwyer.

The stop in Ohio was brief. The plane had parked at Gate 3 as the crew filled the empty tanks and took on two additional passengers. The night was cool with a raw wind blowing and Smith did not want to leave the cabin.

“Has he been drinking?” John Halpin, the airline’s passenger agent in Cleveland, asked Scribner. “Why doesn’t he want to get off the plane?”

The interior of the Boeing 247

Told to leave while the plane was refueled, Smith reluctantly reached up to the cargo netting strung overhead where he removed the mysterious wrapped package he had brought on board. He walked away with it tucked under his arm and both hands stuck down inside the pockets of his top coat to keep warm, the FBI was told.

The new passengers were Burris, heading to Chicago for a work assignment, and Frederick Schoendorff, 28, of Chicago, manager of a company that made refrigerators. Friends described him as affable and well-liked by everyone.

Dawson spoke briefly with Hal Tarrant, who would pilot the next leg of the trip, before leaving the airport to go home.

A two-year veteran of United, Tarrant was the son of a well-to-do Chicago North Shore merchant. He experienced a brush with death a few years earlier in a tragic sailing accident on Lake Michigan that killed a friend. Recently married, his wife, Bessie, was waiting for him at the terminal in Chicago.

The plane had been on the ground in Cleveland for no more than 20 minutes when it took off for Chicago. Unlike today’s airliners, there were no black boxes. No cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders. There was no radar to track the plane. That would not come along until World War II. But investigators concluded that everything had been normal until just before the plane was set to land in Chicago.

Tarrant reported in by radio through several checkpoints. While the weather was not optimal, there was a 7,000-foot ceiling and the plane cruised easily at 1,500 feet, following the red navigational beacons set on the ground every five miles along its route.

As part of Scribner’s duties, the flight attendant passed out a comment card to passengers about 25 minutes before arrival. Schoendorff, riding in seat number 5, just behind Smith and Dwyer, had written that he was “quite satisfied with his ride.”

After missing a final radio check, Trip 23 failed to arrive in Chicago as expected. An hour later, the airline’s station manager received a brief teletype message. Local police were reporting that the missing aircraft had crashed and burned in the vicinity of Chesterton, Ind.

By the time United officials from Chicago reached the scene, it was 11 p.m. and raining. The State Police were deployed around the wreckage and five bodies had already been removed. By daybreak, the tail and the two other bodies were located, along with the thermos bottles Scribner had used to serve coffee.

Souvenir hunters soon descended on the scene of the crash. The propeller of one engine was missing a blade and investigators never found it. Decades later, in a 1999 interview as part of an oral history project conducted by the Westchester Public Library in Chesterton, local resident Howard Johnson finally disclosed what happened to it.

“Donald Slont, who later ran Flannery’s Tavern, was on the local fire department. Of course, the fire truck went out there immediately when the alarm was sent out. When they picked up their stuff from the fire truck to come home after they had done everything that they could, one of the propellers was lying on the ground. It had broken off. Don was one of these guys that just laid his hands on anything that he could see, and he grabbed it,” Johnson recalled. “When they were investigating the thing, they couldn’t find that propeller so they thought the propeller had come off and that’s what made it crash. And here Donald had it all the time. I think it had red, white and blue stripes around it so that when the propeller turned, it looked like a circle of red, white and blue.”

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nvestigators considered every theory from wing flutter, which could have caused metal fatigue similar to bending a paper clip too many times, to the possibility a meteorite had struck the craft. But there was also something curious. There were puncture holes throughout the remains of the rear lavatory. The airline blankets stored in a cubby in back had holes blown through them — like shrapnel. To those on the scene, it was clear what happened — a bomb had gone off. The accident investigation quickly turned criminal and within days, the FBI was put in charge.

Rumors abounded. There was talk of gangland involvement. And questions as to whether the labor strife within the union had sparked some kind of deadly retribution.

The FBI at first zeroed in on Smith and his mysterious package, according to the investigative files. They tracked his calls from room 720 at the Roosevelt Hotel, located at 45th and Madison in New York, including several to Patsy Marshall, who lived at the former Forrest Hotel on 49th Street. She first denied knowing Smith, but finally admitted that she had met Smith on Friday night, Oct. 6, at the corner of 45th Street and Broadway. He had told her he was lonely in New York. He had invited her to his room to have a drink. She said she refused his invitation, telling the FBI it was a “flirtation” and they had simply exchanged telephone numbers.

The investigation files also noted the “difficulties” at the Burris home. And of the troubles the bureau had interviewing the wife of the radio man.

Agents interviewed mechanics in Newark and Cleveland. They questioned Dawson, the pilot who got off in Cleveland, who was angered by the interrogation and the suggestion he might be responsible, recalled Darryl Hicks, a writer who worked with Dawson on his 1990 autobiography, “Born to Fly,” before the pilot’s death in 2001.

“You were the only one who was on the plane that night and lived to tell about it. Everyone else died,” Dawson remembered the FBI agent questioning him.

In the end, though, no suspect was ever identified. One by one, each passenger was crossed off the list. The determination that it was sabotage, however, gave United some breathing space. With the company invested so heavily in the 247, the forced grounding of the plane because of design flaws could have killed the airline.

The story gradually faded from the front page. And the FBI lost interest. On Sept. 7, 1935, the new special agent in charge of the Chicago office, D. M. Ladd, wrote that all leads in connection with the investigation had been “completely exhausted.” He requested permission to consider the case closed.

It was granted on Sept. 27. The letter was signed by J. Edgar Hoover.

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he mystery of United 23 remains unsolved.

Robert Benzon, a former senior investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board who examined the FBI investigative files of the 1933 crash at the request of a reporter, says the evidence as to what happened was pretty clear.

“No question that it was a bomb. They nailed it,” says Benzon, who lives in Virginia. “That type of damage is pretty unique. Everyone thinks when an airplane crashes, everything is destroyed — but the damage is pretty distinctive most of the time.”

Benzon, now retired, is well known for leading the 1996 investigation of TWA Flight 800, which exploded off Long Island shortly after takeoff, along with the “Miracle on the Hudson” crash, after U.S. Airways flight 1549 flew into a flock of geese. He notes that while a plane can sustain a lot of damage and still keep flying, even a small bomb can cause a crash if it goes off in the right place, and that’s what he believes happened 80 years ago this month over Indiana. It would not have taken much more than a stick of dynamite, he says.

“Airplanes are made to fly sleekly. When you start destroying the framework, the aerodynamics are enough to rip it apart,” he says.

When the explosion aboard the United plane went off, the entire tail came off in one piece and the aircraft spun out of control. Yet the FBI files included reports from Underwriters Laboratory and other experts who could find no traces of the actual explosive used, notes Chris Baird, an aviation buff in Arizona who has researched the accident over the years on his website, arizonawrecks.com.

“My feeling is that someone stashed the bomb there to transport it and didn’t retrieve it, or couldn’t retrieve it, perhaps after an earlier flight,” Baird says.

Benzon believes it was taken aboard that afternoon, but thinks it odd no fragments of a detonating timer or device were found — no wires, clock parts. Nothing. Still, the retired NTSB investigator calls it a “solvable event.” He says the FBI gave up early and the Commerce Department — which was in charge of U.S. accident investigations before the NTSB was created — took a backseat.

In a fictional account, Benzon’s chief suspect would have been Burris, the airline radio technician, not Smith, who was the leading suspect for a while. “He’s dead; can’t talk to him. So the FBI tries to interview his unstable wife and gives up with no apparent follow-up,” he says. “An aviation radio technician could build a detonator in his sleep, and would know airplanes inside and out.”

Smith, though, who had been sitting in the front of the plane, was clearly at the back, near the lavatory, when the bomb went off there.

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oday, the crash is little more than a footnote in aviation history.

As advanced as the Boeing 247 was at the time, it was obsolete the day it rolled out of the factory. Designers had wanted to make it bigger and faster, but United pilots resisted, thinking it already too big to land at most airports.

At the same time, TWA wanted to order the new planes. However, Boeing refused to take the order until it first completed all 60 planes earmarked for its own United subsidiary. So TWA went to Douglas Aircraft, which built a plane that evolved into the DC-3, the far superior landmark airliner that can still be seen in the air today. Its military version was flown by Benzon himself during the Vietnam War, converted to perform electronic surveillance.

The year after the crash, Boeing was forced to spin off United Airlines in the wake of a congressional inquiry looking into how the Post Office awarded its lucrative air mail contracts. Today United is the world’s largest airline.

Alice Scribner was the first United Airlines flight attendant to lose her life in a crash. She is buried at Liberty Corners Cemetery in Portage, Wisconsin, not far from where she grew up. Her funeral at St. Paul’s Methodist Church in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, was presided over by the Rev. R.A. Barnes, who was to have officiated at her upcoming wedding. She is still remembered today by her niece, Mary-Jo Guy of Marietta, Georgia.

“My mother just loved her so much. She never got over it,” says Guy, who still has the scrapbooks begun by her father, filled with newspaper clippings from the crash, photographs of Alice and letters from those who knew her.

In 1940, Alice’s younger sister, Velma Scribner, walked down the aisle in a handmade peasant frock that had been imported from Paris. Described as eggshell in color, with a bodice smocked at the neckline, it was trimmed with embroidery on the sleeves and front.

The dress was not new. It had been intended as Alice’s wedding gown.