This column originally appeared in the September 18, 2009 issue.
The Indianapolis metro area experienced its worst air disaster ever on September 9, 1969. On that overcast Hoosier Tuesday, an Allegheny Airlines DC-9 and a private plane collided in midair over Shelby County, just southeast of the city near Beech Grove. Bodies and plane parts from the larger plane struck several mobile homes in a nearby court. Miraculously, none of the residents or any of the students packed into two school buses in the court was injured. The crash took the lives of 78 passengers and crew in the airliner along with the pilot of the private plane.
The morning dawned bright and clear and looked like a perfect day for flying. These mornings had been rare recently and pilot Bob Carey wanted to get his last few required hours in before taking the private pilot checkride scheduled for next week. The forecast was for some scattered clouds to move in later in the day, but his small plane could easily fly above them. A light breeze was blowing from the northwest and the visibility was 15 miles with temperatures in the 60s. After lunch, Bob got his Piper Cherokee airplane ready and was “wheels up” a little after 3 p.m. from Brookside airport near McCordsville. Bob Carey’s flight plan included a trip to Purdue University airport in Lafayette, on to Kokomo, before returning to Brookside. Due to inclement weather moving into northwestern Indiana, Carey changed his plans at the last minute, and decided instead to fly to the Columbus (Indiana) airport.
Bob Carey loved to fly. He had moved with his family to Indianapolis in August of the previous year from Manchester, New Hampshire. Carey had begun flying in New Hampshire, accumulating enough flight time to enable him to fly solo, and, after settling into Indianapolis and finding employment as a plumber, he had once again resumed his training on March 6, 1969. He had flown 39 hours in the PA-28, had passed his FAA written examination, and was in the last stages of obtaining his private license. His wife, Lorraine Carey stated that “the only thing he loved more than flying was his family.” The Carey’s had 6 children: Michael, 11; Thomas, 9; Darlene, 8; Kathleen, 6; Charlene, 4; and Lisa, 8 months.
Flight 853 left Boston at noon scheduled to arrive in Indy around 3:30, flown by James Elrod. James Elrod was an experienced pilot and one of Allegheny Airlines’ best. He become a commercial pilot in 1945, and had served with Allegheny for 19 years.
The first officer of flight 853, William Heckendorn was 26 years old and had taken up flying immediately after leaving the U.S. Army. In a prophetic premonition of what would happen that day, Heckendorn’s father remembered Bill leaving the house that afternoon for the airport, and how one of the family members had begged Bill not to leave.
The Cherokee had filed a flight plan with Weir Cook Airport in Indianapolis, and controllers knew it would be in the sky after 3 p.m. ATC was tracking Allegheny Flight 853 on the radar scope, flying southeast of Indianapolis. The crew of Flight 853 acknowledged ATC’s clearance, and the plane descended, breaking out of the clouds somewhere around 3,000 feet,
Unseen on the radar scope was Bob Carey’s Cherokee, flying south directly below Flight 853 at 2,500 feet.
The two aircraft converged at an estimated rate of 350 miles per hour, each completely oblivious to the other’s presence. There is some evidence that Capt. Elrod did see the Piper, because the cockpit voice recorder captured the statement “I’m going down” as the impact is happening. Pilot Carey, in the much smaller Piper, most likely never knew what hit him. He died instantly.
The little plane was cut in half by the collision, the DC-9 slicing it cleanly in two at a 45 degree angle right across the cockpit. The propeller of the smaller plane still spun a few times cutting into the underside of the DC-9. The rest of the small plane, including the left wing, fuselage, and cockpit containing the body of the pilot, scraped along the underside of the plane.
The force of the impact sheared off the entire tail of the DC-9. Witnesses on the ground reported seeing objects they thought were passengers falling from the plane. The remains of the small plane fell to the ground, along with the tail of the DC-9. The right wing and engine of the Piper fell to the ground a couple of hundred feet to the south. Witnesses described the other pieces of both planes as “fluttering” to earth, taking “forever” to hit the ground. Pilot Carey’s body, still strapped into his seat, was the only body that was found intact. No autopsy was performed, because it was obvious what had killed him.
Exactly what happened to the DC-9 and its passengers is harder to surmise. Witnesses to the crash don’t agree; some say the plane hit the ground upside down, some say the plane “spun in” nose first, and one described it as a “barrel roll.” The plane hit the ground at an estimated 400 mph.
The plane crashed into a soybean field, about a hundred yards north of a mobile home park known as “Shady Acres.” Some eyewitnesses actually watched the two aircraft for several seconds before the impact, one woman even shouting to her husband that “I think they’re going to hit!”
A school bus had just stopped to let off some children at the park, and the crash scattered debris and bodies all around it. The driver of the bus told a reporter that he had to move several body parts away from the bus, so that the kids would have a clear path to get off. Amazingly, Captain Elrod somehow managed to make sure that his last act as a pilot was to keep his terrible fate away from the residents and those children.
The first people on the scene were the residents of the trailer park. They quickly discovered that there was nothing they could do. The police were on the scene within 15 minutes, and by 8 p.m, over 500 emergency personnel were on the scene.
Several witness accounts talk about the gruesome scene. The locals appeared first on the scene and stated that they were finding personal items and body parts spread over an area nearly a half mile wide. A credible witness claimed that one of the passengers survived for about 10 minutes after the crash, having been cut in half from the waist down and caught in a tree. The stories of disembodied heads, fingers, and toes being found for days after the crash are too graphic to be detailed here.
The total death toll was 83. Of this number 51 were identified. Of those identified the bodies of all but three were returned home for funeral services — those three were buried in Shelbyville. A memorial service was held in the rain at Forest Hill Cemetery in Shelbyville on September 17th with 32 caskets laid to rest there, each containing the remains of victims, divided evenly by weight among the caskets, who could not be identified.
The NTSB decided that the crash was caused by pilot error, a pronouncement that some consider dishonors the memory of 3 very fine pilots whose life dream it was to do what they loved best . . . to fly.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.”, “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on facebook.
