thirty feet deep, or about one-fifth as long as the aircraft itself.
That fact alone was a terrifying testament to the force that had
catapulted everyone on board into the hereafter with frightening ease.
The entire fuselage, Kaplan figured, had collapsed like an accordion,
fore and aft, and its fragments now rested in the depths of the impact
crater. Not even the empennage, or tail assembly, was visible. To
compound the problem, tons of dirt and rock were lying on top of the
aircraft’s remains.
The field and surrounding areas were peppered with bits of debris, but
most of it was palm-sized, having been thrown off in the explosion when
the aircraft hit the earth. Much of the plane and the passengers
strapped inside would have disintegrated from the terrible weight and
velocity of the impact and the igniting of the jet fuel, which would
have caused another explosion bare seconds later, before thirty feet of
dirt and rubble combined for an airtight mass grave.
What was left on the surface was unrecognizable as a jet aircraft.
It reminded Kaplan of the inexplicable 1991 Colorado Springs crash of a
United Boeing 737. He had worked that disaster too as the aviation
systems specialist. For the first time in the history of the NTSB, from
its inception in 1967 as an independent federal agency, it had not been
able to find probable cause for a plane crash. The “tin-kickers,” as
the NTSB investigators referred to themselves, had never gotten over
that one. The similarity of the Pittsburgh crash of a USAir Boeing 737
in 1994 had only heightened their feelings of guilt. If they had solved
Colorado, many of them felt, Pittsburgh might have been prevented. And
now this.
George Kaplan looked at the now clear sky and his bewilderment grew. He
was convinced the Colorado Springs crash had been caused, at least in
part, by a freakish rotor cloud that had hit the aircraft on its final
approach, a vulnerable moment for any jetliner. A rotor was a vortex of
air generated about a horizontal axis by high winds over irregular
terrain. In the case of United Airlines Flight 585, the irregular
terrain was supplied by the mighty Rocky Mountains. But this was the
East Coast. There were no Rocky Mountains here. While an abnormally
severe rotor could conceivably have knocked a plane as large as an L500
out of the sky, Kaplan could not believe that was what had befallen
Flight 3223. According to air traffic control, the L500 had started
falling from its cruising altitude of thirty-five thousand feet and
never looked back. No mountains in the United States were capable of
throwing off the formation of a rotor that high. Indeed, the only
mountains nearby were in the Shenandoah National Forest and were part of
the relatively smallish Blue Ridge Mountain chain. They were all in the
three- to four-thousand-foot range, more hills than mountains.
Then there was the altitude factor. Normally, the roll experienced by
planes flying into a rotor or other freakish atmospheric condition is
controlled by aileron application. At six miles up, the Western
Airlines pilots would have had time to reestablish control. Kaplan was
sure the dark side of Mother Nature had not torn the jet from the
peaceful confines of the sky. But something else clearly had.
His team would shortly return to their hotel, where an organizational
meeting would be held. Initially, on-scene investigative groups would
be formed for structures, systems, survival factors, power plants,
weather and air-traffic control. Later, units would be assembled to
evaluate aircraft performance, to analyze the cockpit voice recorder and
the flight data recorder, crew performance, sound spectrum, maintenance
records and metallurgical examinations. It was a slow, tedious and
oftentimes heart-wrenching process, but Kaplan would not leave until he
had examined every atom of what had recently been a state-of-the-art
jetliner and almost two hundred very much alive human beings. He swore
to himself that probable cause would not escape him this time.
Kaplan slowly walked toward his rental car. An early spring would come
to the dirt field: soon, red flags would bloom everywhere, tiny beacons
signifying the location of remnants of the flight.
Darkness was settling in rapidly. He blew into his frigid hands to warm
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