'68 midair plane collision leaves small Cessna wedged in airliner

Chris Foran | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

An airliner and a light plane collided in midair about 11 miles southwest of Milwaukee on Aug. 4, 1968. Three people, all in the smaller plane, were killed.

The planes came together with such force that the smaller plane, a Cessna, was wedged into the side of the North Central Airlines plane. The North Central pilot, Ted Baum, landed his plane at what is now Mitchell International Airport with part of the Cessna — still carrying the bodies of the three who were killed — embedded in the airliner.

"That pilot did a fantastic landing job," a federal official told the Milwaukee Sentinel, in its front-page story on the crash on Aug. 5, 1968.

Baum's co-pilot, John A. Mazur, was at the controls at the time of the collision, and was the only person on the Milwaukee-bound airliner who was injured. The Cessna slammed into the compartment just behind where the co-pilot was sitting.

Mazur told the Sentinel he didn't see the smaller plane until just before impact. Baum, who took over after the collision, said they didn't see the plane because of the "tremendous" number of bugs on the plane's windshield, The Milwaukee Journal reported Aug. 6.

In an Aug. 12 story, the Sentinel also raised the question of the role of "novice" pilots in such crashes. Although the Cessna's pilot, Rick Stenberg of Elk Grove Village, Ill., was 19, he had 200 hours of flight time before the crash. (Also killed in the crash were Stenberg's passengers, 19-year-old Virginia Robinson and her 12-year-old brother, Richard.)

The inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board found a different answer.

On Sept. 3, 1969, The Journal reported, the NTSB blamed the North Central crew for the crash. The board said the airliner had been warned three times by the control tower that the planes' paths were close. Noting the bugs-on-the-windshield issue, the board said the pilots still should have requested a new heading — something the NTSB noted pilots were loath to do.

Because the airliner was traveling above and behind the Cessna at more than twice the smaller plane's speed, the NTSB said, the young pilot never saw the airliner coming.

Our Back Pages: 1968

About this feature

On Wednesdays this year, the Green Sheet's Our Back Pages will look back at 1968 in Milwaukee, sharing stories of the events that shaped and reflected a changing city as reported and photographed by the Journal Sentinel's predecessor newspapers, The Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel.

Special thanks and kudos go to senior multimedia designer Bill Schulz for finding many of the gems in the Journal Sentinel photo archives.