There are relatively few things that all crashes have in common, but one is that they leave mourners behind: fatherless children, desperate widows, bereaved parents, stricken siblings, and grieving friends. Another thing that is common for all airplane crashes is that they are spectacular and utterly chaotic. The degree of violence and destruction is uncommon, and an untrained observer at a bad crash might think that nothing at all could be gleaned from the devastation. The third thing is that most airplane wrecks are avoidable. There is usually a chain of events that cumulatively lead to a mishap, and that is why an expert for every system on the aircraft is present during an investigation. If that chain of events can be broken, an accident will not occur, but a tired mechanic might inadvertently leave a bolt untorqued, or an overzealous boss might put undue stress upon a pilot or refueler. An engineering error may have occurred, or a miscalculation. There is potential for breakage in virtually every part on the airplane and for every person who has or had anything to do with that part. There is a fourth common point in aircraft accidents: no one ever thinks that he will be involved in one and certainly never be the cause of one. Another seeming commonality among aircraft mishaps is that they often occur in remote, rough country in extremely inclement weather. I have worked crash sites high in the Rocky Mountains, deep in gorges and river channels, down sheer, vertical cliffs, and awash in the dunes of deserts. My first investigation was in the mountains where it was wet, cold, windy, and remote.
Jets generate a lot more thrust when intake temperatures are cold, and so my takeoff had been quick, utilizing only a couple thousand feet of runway. Acceleration and climb were crisp and active, the airplane feeling spirited and young. This was an airplane in which I had a lot of experience and had learned to know her sounds and feel. She was also lovely and fast, pleasing to the eye, responsive, and had so much energy, especially in cold weather. I was having an affair with her, enjoyed everything about her: I loved to fly this bird and knew exactly how far she would let me go. In that, she was perfectly predictable: all one had to do was to know her intimately and give her the respect that she deserved. We debriefed the mission, had a cup of coffee, and were doing the administrative details when the squadron commander called me to come to his office immediately. He told me that there had been an airplane crash, and I had been appointed investigative duties in Idaho. I was to go home and get my investigation kit and suit case, while he cut TDY orders and arranged an airplane to get me up there. “Don’t forget a heavy coat and a rain slicker,” he said. “It’s up in the mountains."
We loaded our gear on and crawled aboard a UH-1H helicopter and flew off to the east. Past Cour d’Alene. There was a lot of snow in the mountains. Everything was covered with either snow or water. It was a cold, lifeless day, gray as a felt fedora. It was a fitting memorial to the end of a young man’s life, and a welcoming ceremony to his family, whispering haughtily that they can have him no more. They may not see him nor hear him, nor touch nor love him, for his athletic young body—except for hideous bits and pieces—was scattered among the elements of an indifferent earth far away in remote Idaho mountains.
It was a bad accident, evidence of extreme violence scattered over a spray of about hundred-fifty feet wide and about four hundred-fifty feet long. Pieces were found twelve hundred feet from the crater, but the angle of impact had been quite steep, somewhat confining the scatter of wreckage. Tops of trees down to mid-trunk were sheared, marking the approach of the airplane. There was wreckage of indescribable numbers and shapes, all torn and scorched. There was scorching on the trees and the perimeter area of the crater, which was half full of water with the sheen of jet fuel floating on top. The crater was gouged out of dirt and rock in a relatively clear area on a rocky slope of about eight or ten degrees. It was a jagged hole, some fifty-five feet wide and thirty feet long and appeared to be about twelve or fifteen feet deep, but I knew that the engine would be deeper. I smelled JP-4 and scorched pine, and some unpleasant rubbery something. There was a faint hint of the sweetened stench of burnt human flesh. About twenty other men were in various poses of observation, marking evidence, measuring the field of wreckage, and searching the perimeter. There was a large military tent about a hundred yards uphill of the crater and off to one side, and I smelled coffee. I gathered up my tools, camera, and wits and went to work.
Captain Juan Caesar Oberdorff, deceased, had been an excellent pilot. He was in prime physical condition, alert, proficient, and a regular officer that marked him as a career professional. All his papers were in order, flight physical current, evaluation rides all up to speed and well-flown. The airplane had apparently been in good working order. After two weeks’ inspection of the crash site, we had all the parts that we were ever going to get. All the pieces were there, engine at cruise speed, no lost or separated parts prior to impact. Neither oxygen nor fuel had been contaminated. There was little left of the ejection seat, but there was enough to tell us that it had not been used, although it was in working order. Little flesh remained, but again, enough to confirm the absence of drugs, alcohol, or self-medication. Engine specialists reconstructed their junk and were able to ascertain engine speed, IGV position, nozzle position, and mechanical functions. The engine, before it crunched into the mountain, had been perfect, running at 92% rpm, stable, and this was verified by the nozzle, which was precisely coincident with that setting. Hydraulics, life support, ordnance: all were declared safe and functioning as advertised. The weather had been night, clear and ten, half-moon, starlight conditions. Two miles to the north was a taller mountain with a microwave tower and bright lights, designed to help with navigation as well as to warn of the towering obstruction. There should have been no vertigo or confusion. Captain Oberdorff should not have been lost: his TACAN was properly tuned, radio frequencies were proper, and the conditions were such that he could look outside and see where he was.
So, what happened? Pilot error? Nothing mechanical could be found. Pilot mental breakdown? emotional breakdown? suicide? There was no evidence for any of it, but a clear cause could not be uncovered. We spent weeks trying to ferret it out from among a hundred thousand pieces. We interviewed everyone concerned, including his wife. We even read his diary. He had not been drinking and he was not a smoker. He had not violated crew rest. He had just…crashed. The board finally chalked it up to “unknown” causes with definite implications on “operator factor.” Obviously, if the machinery were working correctly, then the flesh must have failed, right?” No one could justify the “just…crashed.” There had to be reasons. One of them might have been the inconclusive status of the oxygen mask. There was a bit of a tooth with mask rubber impregnated upon it, which indicated that the mask was on or near his face, but the bayonet clips and receivers could not be found, or identified. It was possible that the mask was disconnected on the left side of the face, but we found precious little of the mask…or the face, either. Most of the body had been obliterated. I had to hand it to the board, though. We learned a lot and eliminated a lot of causes. Some guy even calculated the impact dynamics as a symmetrical triangular pulse that resulted in a stopping distance of seventy-two feet in a couple of thousandths of a second. He was moving about 600 feet per second in a 40,000 pound airplane, so that those many millions of foot-pounds of energy came to a stop in 72 feet. That was an instantaneous 104 g’s, or there about.
I could not help but think of the last crushing microseconds of Captain Oberdorff’s brief life, how pieces of airplane began to crumple and tear, presenting sharp, jagged edges to him as he was thrown hard forward into the restraints. At about 30 g, his eye balls popped out, and by 40 g his aorta had ruptured. The nylon belts began to slice into each shoulder and the muscles in his abdomen separated, allowing intestine to extrude and rupture. By 50 g, his body was flying apart and being butchered by metal debris, rocks, and glass, and a gross fire was engulfing the entire airplane, now about nine feet into the earth. The engine mounts had shattered, and the heavy engine—still spinning about 8,000 rpm—flew forward into the upper cockpit. Flesh, fire, and elements entangled into the earth. Plastic from the control stick was found fused to a thumb bone. Metal from the rudder pedals had imbedded in them the bones of his feet and the rubber of his boot soles. His head had flown forward into the restraints and kept going, separating at the atlas bone, the heart had been ruptured, and there was an instantaneous spray of most of the soft tissue and all the fluid in his body, virtually vaporizing him. Those fluids flew into the intense fire and steamed, and then became elemental: they existed no more. There had been extreme violence, immeasurable violence, for a thousandth of a second, a hot fire, and then nothing. For him, absolutely nothing, not even a “him” anymore. The only good thing is that his death was instant: surely he felt nothing at all as he passed from we who live to whatever it is out there for those who die. He made that trip in a hell of a hurry.
This whole crash thing bothered me. We had not found cause. We really knew no more than we did when we started: we had a good airplane and an excellent pilot doing routine interceptor exercises in clear, night conditions. Neither was I happy with the pathology report: Multiple severe injuries of entire body caused by deceleration and ground crushing forces with cockpit and ground impact. For crying out loud, I knew that much when I received orders to go up there.
The autopsy report was clinical, cold, and dehumanizing, as it must be for accuracy’s sake. It read, in part:
“Remains totaled 13 kg of fragmented and distorted human tissue…hair-covered skin, striated muscle tissue, tendon, connective tissue, bone fragments, pieces of small bowel, stomach, and lung. Part of the right hand, less thumb and small finger and dorsal skin, were recovered and included fragments identified as pieces of control stick. The largest section of human tissue was 0.8 kg of striated muscle and bone fragments welded to rubber and nylon material identified as the left calf restraints of the anti-g suit. The specimens were grossly contaminated with fuel, mud, plastic, metal, and glass fragments.”
Further dehumanizing the macabre sack of dead pilot, it stated: “numerous putrefaction peaks occurred in all soft tissue sections. Lactic acid was not obtainable due to lack of identifiable brain tissue…Multiple extreme injuries, dismemberment, burned, ground impact. Final anatomical diagnosis: Aircraft accident, clinical with (1) extreme fragmentation of body, and (2) extreme charring of remains.”
What a dismal, hideous set of circumstances! A perfect example of waste: all the miracle of life and perfection of engineering terminated in a putrefying gob in a scattered pile of junk. To exacerbate this awful event, we could not find the cause of all this grief and waste.
We were almost completed with our work when winter drove us out. The last days in the field were filled with cold and blowing snow. There was no warmth, nor comfort to be had. The base helicoptered a fresh, hot meal in everyday at noon, and that was the high point of the day. They allowed us to alternately rotate back to the BOQ every other day for showers, mail, phone calls, and sanity. Finally, we assembled at a conference room and completed the investigation by finishing the casualty report and electronically sending it to all pertinent addressees:
“Casualty Report: final supplemental death report, non-battle.” It was dated and supplemented. All addressees were listed. “Name of casualty: Oberdorff repeat Oberdorff, Juan Caesar. Grade: Captain.” It covered location, unit, date and hour of death, cause of death (jet plane crash per certificate of death), insurance, and status of disposition of remains (ready). This was the culmination to a lot of preceding preparatory work. Some unfortunate chaplain and commander had been tasked to personally deliver the grim tidings to the wife. It was done an hour and a half after the accident, about the post-midnight time that her husband would have been expected home. How does one do that? How would you carry such a burden to a pretty, young woman, that her husband and lover and father of her children has just been made dead forever (so many kilograms of mutilated flesh)?
In the initial casualty report, we had done some background investigation to assure that Captain Oberdorff was all that he had seemed to be, and that message—in part—said: Condolence letter of information: all sources of information have been investigated and no unfavorable information has been discovered that would make it inadvisable to send a condolence letter. Thus, a commander had written a condolence letter to Mrs. Oberdorff and to the dead captain’s parents.
A large document of some three-inch thickness was collated from its various sources: my own, physical and physiological findings, psychological findings, background, experience level, proficiency, type of mission and background, operating conditions, and so on. To these were added the findings of pathologists, engine manufacturers, POL experts, instrument technicians, meteorologists, ordnance men, and airframe engineers. In all, there were twenty-two sections, with color photographs underscoring the gore and violence. At last it was broken down into costs: several million dollars for airframe and weapons, so much for property damage, and $260,000 for the pilot, whose remains I could but see over and over again at night, in the haunted places of memory that only awaken when the eye lids are closed—bits and pieces of charred human flesh consigned to vials, jars, and a body bag. Twenty some-odd pounds of grotesque stuff remained of a 220-pound athlete. We now had the completed mishap investigation and peripheral documents and all addressees notified, but we still did not have a cause. Then, we went our separate ways for the winter.
I felt the lethargy of spirit and the disquiet of an unsettled soul, and it never really goes away. I was home with Her for Christmas, but it was difficult. Captain Oberdorff did not ruin the holiday and festive season, but he dampened it. I wondered what manner of Christmas Mrs. Oberdorff and her children were having, and I grieved for them. She had been an attractive woman, petite, and dark-complexioned. Her short black hair had just been stylishly cut. On the day of her husband’s death, she was busy doing the things that pretty women do for their men. Two days later, I interviewed her in her living room in base housing, semi-permanent stuff where Uncle Sam stuffed his soldier families.. There had been the furniture and rugs of his tours in Southeast Asia and Europe. It seemed to mock us. The beat of the French wall clock reminded us of a heart beat that was no more, of the temporary nature of human time. She never really cried, but her eyes were overflowing, soft tears coursing down her smooth cheeks. Several times she halted her speech and sobbed, and apologized. She reminded me of a small girl, a child that needed protection, who was too vulnerable to the hurt of death. I wanted to take her to my breast and assure her that everything would be okay, but it would not be okay, and nothing I could do—nor anyone else—could remove the anvil of pain weighting down her fluttering heart. The questions that must be asked of her…God, how I hated this job! Each question was about him or the two of them, personal details about his last meal at home, how they had been getting along, illnesses, drinking…such personal, intimate, prying stuff. If her husband had been as tough and thoughtful as she was, then our loss was great indeed. While she was not alone, the burden of company and well-wishers was not useful nor desired. There were other pilots’ wives attempting to aid and to help do things, but she would have a thousand things to do, all unpleasant: what to do about the in-laws, what to tell the kids, when and how to evacuate the government’s house, where to move, what of his belongings to keep and what to dispose of, how to provide for herself and her babies… She had the nagging notion that these women were wondering what had been wrong with her husband to make him crash. That’s weird, somebody crashing an airplane. The church ladies would come bearing their good will and food, and she would scream at them in her mind: “LEAVE ME ALONE. GO AWAY. CAN’T YOU SEE THAT I AM TRYING TO PUT THE PIECES OF ME BACK TOGETHER? LET ME CRY AND TRY TO TELL HIM GOODBYE. YOU CAN’ T HELP ME. PLEASE, GO AWAY, AND TAKE YOUR FOOD AND YOUR HUGS AND YOUR HAPPY LIVES AND HUSBANDS WITH YOU…” At the same time she would be reaching out for something, someone to help her make it through all this horror.
That night I had attempted to sleep in the BOQ, but it was futile. My furies were noisy and sleepless, and the pictures on the screen of my memory were haunted and ugly. At last, I think that I dozed, but there was a dog barking in the night in disjointed, disturbing beats of racket, that ruined whatever rest there might have been in such night as this. Empty darkness—shorn of intimacy, devoid of familiarity, usher of cold and misery and the deaths of young captains—was filled with no substance beyond the eternal yapping of some dog. Mrs. Oberdorff would be fitfully tossing in her big, empty bed only a few hundred feet from here. She would be hearing this same dog barking at shadows and imagined creatures. She would be exhausted and terrified at her own imagination, trying to remember her husband without the gore and…and whatever remained of him. There would be serious theological and philosophical questions, and she would remember forever the last unkind word that she had said to him, and she would cry and cry, and there would be no relief, no respite, no way to ever be whole or happy again, nor even sleep, for sleep awakened her monsters and hideous, bloody images. We would each be woefully tired when the winter-dimmed yolk of sun emerged. Could this have been the beginning of the chain of events that triggered the captain’s fatality, a dog barking in the night?
Christmas cheer, bright colors, gifts, music, family. She and her two babies disturbed my thoughts. How was she coping? Where were they? Did they manage to have a Christmas? Was she trying to substitute some other man for him? Only time would sear over her wounds, but the event would be there in the middle of the night, or at the whiff of his cologne, or a certain mental picture. It may stop hurting some day, but it would never go away because we are hostage to our mortality, and no ransom is sufficient to purchase our escape. As for his parents: nothing on earth is as devastating as the loss of your child.
Snow had come in heavy doses before we finished the site investigation, but we
had no choice but to wrap it up when we did. It was agreed that certain among us would reconvene in the spring, as soon as the site was clear of snow, or clear enough to comb over the area again. All winter, I worried about evidence that may be lost forever because of the weather. No one was satisfied with our finding of “unknown causes.” Again, I thought of the widow Oberdorff: she should be relieved of the burden of not knowing what happened to him. Further, we needed to assure that the cause was not an incipient event that would kill another pilot.
In April, a number of us met at Fairchild, secured gear, and returned to the
crash site. Snow was gone from this mountain, and in its place small flowers were budding. Baby shoots of grass and green plants were making themselves known early in the year. There was the gash where the airplane impacted. It was filled with water. Melt water ran in small rivulets off the slope, gathering together into larger creeks, finally tumbling white and muddy into runoff that would fill the Snake River. The spray pattern of wreckage was still noticeable, but much diminished by the cleansing of snow and the runoff of pure water and new growth. We combed the site, fore and aft, side to side, and in ever-increasing circles. Most of us were on hands and knees, noses near the ground, attempting to see unnatural protruberences.
It should not have been found, so camouflaged with its surroundings it was. Beneath a spray of tiny blue flowers there was a chalky substance, half the size of my small finger. It was white and blue-gray. It was a piece of Captain Oberdorff’s skull that I found three hundred and twenty feet from the crater. Attached to the inside of it was a small bluish-gray feather, from the common mountain hawk. The pathologist confirmed that it appeared to be the left occipital bone, and that the feather was attached on the inside of the skull. The feather was not casually attached: It had been driven into the bone on the inside of the man’s head, its quill virtually fused. The feathers were bent and crooked with little strength, rather wilted from the winter snows, the water, and I can only imagine what other fluids. There was some charring, which had been leached somewhat by the elements: we would not have found this evidence last year. All of us felt the excitement of this find, but dared not reveal any of it until the laboratory confirmed what we knew.
What we knew was this. A hawk had also been flying that night, and his flight path and Captain Oberdorff’s coincided in that instant of time and under the physical laws that gave the bird the energy of half its mass times the square of the collision velocity divided by g . This impact to Captain Oberdorff’s face was equivalent to an anti-aircraft artillery round. The bird had at least penetrated the canopy, perhaps the instrument panel and aircraft body, and struck the pilot in the face. It obliterated the oxygen mask and face visor, and blew the captain’s head off, leaving only this one little feather on the inside of his skull at the back of his head. The exploded head and helmet flew out of the wreckage before the airplane had progressed into the ground. Later we found other corroborating evidence on a piece of mask and a piece of helmet. But that was enough. The laboratory proved it, and we sent amended findings to all addressees. I was very glad to prove for Captain Oberdorff that the fault of this tragedy had not been his, and I wanted to share this with his wife.
To me, this really did not qualify as an accident: it was an act of God, or an act of fate. What are the chances of flying at night and hitting a bird? About the same as being rattle snake-bitten in the winter? About the same as a brick coming out of the wall of a high rise building, falling 40 stories and hitting you on the head? It is ridiculous. How do we prevent it in the future? Ground all hawks? Stop flying? Put noise-makers on the airplane? It made me wish that some human error had occurred, something that we could address. It would be more digestible if there had been a broken part, or a dog having barked all night long. This…this was a total waste, in which nothing could be retrieved; a wonderful young man was splattered all over a mountain side, leaving more than a dozen other people victimized. The price of admission was high, the show a bust.
She had moved to Pennsylvania to enroll in school and finish her degree. Her apartment was midway between the university and her parents’ home. Most of her belongings were in storage, and her life was still in shambles, but she had begun her long recovery. Her dreams were awful, and her nerves were shot, but it had become necessary that she do something weighty to make a real start in the turning around of her life. Sleep came hard, and she was in counseling. She agreed to meet me in the lobby of the student union building. I saw her from afar approaching with an irresolute walk, as if her self-confidence had failed, but she was shapely and petite, and dressed in a black skirt. Mourning? I walked down the steps to her, and she offered her small hand. We made inconsequential talk for a few moments, and then sat on a concrete park bench beneath a large shade tree. I revealed our findings and assured her that Captain Oberdorff was entirely blameless, that the squadron shared with me their deepest regrets and the standing offer of any aid she required.
She was still very pretty, but her mouth was down-turned with spider web wrinkles forming at the corners. Her eyes lacked the luster that had surely been as bright as a beacon once. Purplish bags underscored them, but she was a survivor and a mother, and she still had two babies to rear, the last of the flesh of Captain Oberdorff. One day Mrs. Oberdorff would be whole and happy again. She would find a good man to comfort her and to help her raise her children. She thanked me for coming to her and telling her that her husband had been killed by a bird. She could scarcely understand how such a thing could be, but she accepted it. She had to know, she said, what he looked like when we found him. I could not tell her the truth, so I lied. I told her that his remains had been removed before I arrived, but I understood that he was remarkably preserved. I could see the wheels turning in her mind that wanted to know why she had not been allowed to view the remains, but it was an area that she decided to avoid. It was wise of her: she did not want to know what he looked like. I don’t think that she bought it, but she accepted it. A look of relief came to her visage, and she thanked me and turned away. I had managed to ease one of her nightmares. I watched her walk away from me and into her new life, consisting of memories and emptiness, an empty vessel that she must begin to fill with whatever she expected her future to bring. It was peculiar how the intimacy of death had caused me to see her in such detail, her even white teeth and intelligent eyes, the color of her shoes, a faux pearl necklace, a wedding ring… I wanted to intervene here and remove some of her pain and carry it for her, for there to be someone to help bear this burden. I wanted so desperately for something kind and good to come to her. Instead, I watched her walk with her hesitant little steps—as if she did not know for sure where she was—through the well-trimmed hedges and the mix of the campus. She would bear it alone, a pathetic beauty, a victim who was hurt and unsure, but whose dignity shown clear and bright. That made it even sadder: such a thoroughbred should not be so ill-used. She did not wish to ever have anything to do with the Air Force, or aviators, or military people again, and I could not blame her. I would not know for a long time how she had done with her decisions. Now I only knew that her life and dreams blew up in her face and many women never recover. I hoped she did. I believed she did, because it made the whole affair more bearable for me.
Subsequently, over the years, I was present at too many other crash sites, and each left its unnatural gash in the earth with a plume of chaotic debris and offal, its deep human wounds, its victimized women and families, and its irreparable damages. It is a moribund fact that we survivors have no choice but to accommodate: life goes on, as it must. These casualties, especially in wartime, are too common to us, and we can not build our fences taller than we are, nor allow tragedies to sear our souls and scar our spirits too badly, but they add weight. One can’t just leave them behind, so we carry them with us, and they come to be very heavy baggage that can never be put away. Finally, one looks back, and—perhaps not realizing how sad he has become—espies those sparkling pieces of his life, now long gone. Too late, he realizes that the essence of completeness and happiness are those things that glowed in his hand once, and shine no more. Those losses do not subtract weight: rather, they add until we bend, and our own sparkle fails.
Her name was…….Claire…..and she was a crystal soldier.
Absolutely beautiful, sir.
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