273 BRICKS: The Ghosts of Flight 191
Just after takeoff, the left engine detached from the plane’s wing. The moment of distress was captured by Canadian photograph Michael Laughlin in this now infamous photograph. (Michael Laughlin via Wikipedia)
On a glorious day in late May, 1979, several hundred passengers at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport waited aboard American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, for departure to Los Angeles. It was the Friday before Memorial Day and, despite being cramped on board a commercial flight on such a fine afternoon, the travelers were glad to have escaped the bustle of the world’s busiest airport on one of its busiest days of the year.
The passengers and crew of Flight 191 were in the most capable of hands: those of Walter Lux, an expert DC-10 pilot with some 22,000 hours of flight time. The plane itself was no rookie either, having traveled 20,000 smooth, solid hours since its first trip. Everyone on board settled in for an easy ride, surely dreaming about the long weekend ahead.
At a minute before 3 p.m., the plane was cleared to begin its taxi to the runway’s holding point. Then, at 3:02 p.m., with everything ready to go, the DC-10 started down the runway. All was business as usual until, just after takeoff, one of the engines lost power.
The events that followed are legendary in the annals of aviation history. A strange, vaporous substance began pouring from the fuel lines where the engine finally tore away from the wing, taking the pylon with it. Despite the loss, the wing soon stabilized and 191 continued its sure ascent. But only Briefly. Not ten seconds later, at a height of about 300 feet, the craft began to bank left, first slightly, then sharply. The nose of the plane fell, losing control. Flight 191 dove earthward.
The port wingtip hit ground in sync with a massive explosion that totally destroyed the plane. All 271 passengers and crew members were killed instantly, along with two residents of a nearby mobile home park, marking the shocking tragedy as the deadliest air disaster in American history.
Bewildered by the enormity of the event, Chicagoans watched in disbelief as news reports detailed the events of the afternoon. The nation joined Chicago in demanding answers from the airline, the airfield, and the National Transportation Safety Board: Why, when ordinarily a plane could finish its flight with one missing engine, did the loss of Flight 191’s engine seal its doom? The question would initiate a grueling investigation into the flawed maintenance methods leading to the crash of that supposedly serviceable DC-10. But the answers were long in coming and, meanwhile, residents of the area surrounding O’Hare had puzzles of their own to solve.
In the hours after the crash, a number of houses in the far northwest corners of the city echoed with the sounds of knocking at their doors and windows. Residents who responded, among them a number of retirees and off-duty police and firefighters, found no sign of visitors. The mysterious rappings occurred again and again. Neighbors returning home that evening experienced the same knockings. Over the next several weeks, sporadic reports of unseen callers continued to be turned in to the police.
At last, as the crash site was finally cleared and the final strips of detective’s tape removed from its boundaries, peace came again to most of the Northwest-side homes, whose owners could only pray that their transient neighbors had found a better place to stay. For the most part, they seemed to have done just that—with a few exceptions.
Since the crash of Flight 191 in the spring of ’79, a few lone souls have apparently lingered in the vicinity of their final hour, sending up wails and moans from the field where they met their end. Dogs at the Chicago Police K9 training facility next to the Des Plaines mobile home park still seem to sense something that their trainers don’t. The training facility is located at the field where the plane went down. Some local residents who walk their dogs along Higgins road reporting run-ins with a figure they call the “Steaming Man”–a gentleman in business clothes who seems to have waves of steam emanating from his trench coat. He is agitated. He walks quickly. He smells of jet fuel.
Before the cemeteries of Rest Haven and St. Johannes were moved to make way for the new runaway at O’Hare, mourners reported feeling touches on their shoulders and arms and whispers and sounds after the crash, as if the victims were drawn naturally their to a place of rest, despite the whoosh of departing flights overhead.
Inside the airport, at least one of 191’s passengers remains, forever retracing his final actions before boarding the doomed DC-10. For more than three decades, near the spot where a pay phone used to stand near the terminal’s lounge, passengers at O’Hare have watched as a somber male figure wraps up a last-minute conversation on an invisible telephone, turns expectantly toward the ill-fated gate, takes a few determined steps . . . and vanishes.
Some years ago now, in the 1990s, I spoke at a meeting of the Criterion Bar Sherlockian Society one evening in the Des Plaines area. A couple was there who were forensic dentists. I had spoken about the ghostlore of the crash. They came up to me afterwards. They were in school when the crash happened. They had been called to the scene as part of their studies. Because of the intense heat of the fuel, they told me, there were no remains for them to examine. Everything had been vaporized.
Many years later, I remembered their story when the hospitals prepared for the deluge of victims of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001. And waited. And waited.
As has been the case after many of Chicago’s disasters, we also have waited and waited—and waited—for a memorial for the victims of the terrible Flight 191 disaster. A memorial which never came. Summer after summer arrived and departed as we heard the planes depart and arrive, holding our breath and remembering. Hearing and telling the story. We are hearing those stories again this weekend on the 45th anniversary of the “Crash of ‘79”— as the ghosts still walk.
And yet the only memorial ever built has been by schoolchildren. Everyone who can should go and visit it. It’s in a beautiful park not far from the crash site, and it’s a low wall built of bricks inscribed with the names of the victims of that cruel summer. There is a brick for every one of the passengers and crew members who died.
273 bricks.
