Saturday 12 December 2015

This Anniversary Snuck Up on Me

Today (December 12, 2015) is the 30th Anniversary of the Arrow Air Crash, the worst civil aviation disaster in United States Military history, and the worst disaster in Canadian aviation.

Short form of what happened: The facts are that on December 12, 1985, a Arrow Air DC-8 took off from Gander International airport, with a crew of six and 248 soldiers of the 101st Airborne. The soldiers were flying home for Christmas after serving as peacekeepers in Beirut. The plane left the runway and immediately crashed, belly flopping into the woods overlooking Gander lake. All were killed. (It actually could have been worse - the crew had the choice of taking off over the lake or taking off over the town of Gander. As somebody who grew up there, I can be glad the pilot choose the lake route, as if the incident had happened over the town, the DC-8 would have taken out the local fire station on crashing, and Gander would have a name like Lockerbie, Scotland.)

As to the causes of the crash, well, it is a mess. I could do an effortpost on this subject, but it is safe to say the causes are controversial, and several questions remain in a superposition that are unlikely to collapse into an answer anytime soon. Unlike in America, the remains of the DC-8 were disposed of after investigation, so there is nothing left to base further inquiry on. The DC-8 was very run down, with its cockpit monitors capturing nothing, and its flight recorder a 1950s model so badly out of adjustment, the only data recorded was when the DC-8 left the runway. FBI explosive experts sent to Gander to help with the investigation (like in the later Lockerbie bombing, where the FBI helped extensively) were mysteriously recalled and sent home as soon as they arrived, and the crash was almost immediately attributed to ice on the wings.

Later investigation by CASB, the body charged with air crash investigation, only managed to confirm that ice on the wings could not have been the cause. CASB and its chief investigator (in his first and last air crash investigation, his previous experience in air crash investigation being limited to a two week FAA course taken in Los Angeles) doggedly maintained the ice on the wings thesis in the face of further evidence. Here's our first superposition - CASB did this because [they were really incompetent / somebody told them to make the findings as uncontroversial as possible.] Ronald Reagen actually had several reasons to ask his BFF Canadian PM Brian Mulroney to intervene. For one, Arrow Air was used by the CIA to smuggle weapons to Iran, a larger piece of the yet-undiscovered Iran-Contra affair. For another, Reagen's popularity reached its lowest point with the bombing of the Beirut barracks by terrorists. Given these involvements, it is possible Reagen called on Mulroney fearing these things, but in fact Arrow Air crashed for some other reason.

The DC-8 stopped in both Cairo and Cologne before flying across the Atlantic. In Cairo, some of the soldier's gear was unloaded to make room for large wooden crates, approximately coffin sized. This cargo was accompanied by 2 well dressed men assumed to be secret-squirrel types by the soldiers. Later investigation also revealed that security on the apron was lax, with 'lots and lots of guys' hanging out with the baggage crew. These were apparently Hawk missiles being returned by the Iranians. An anonymous phone call to Reuters in Beirut the morning of the crash claimed the wreck was the result of the Islamic Jihad, working with an Egyptian terrorist group, and that the bomb was set to go off as the airplane was landing in the United States, but the flight had been delayed in Cairo. This call was repeated to the American Consul-general in Algeria, and to an Italian news agency. (The 1980s saw what us moderns would call a shitload of terrorist bombs claiming airliners; something that we've sort of forgotten.) Post-mordem analysis of the deceased flight crew revealed hydrogen cyanide in the blood of 6 of 8, with the flight engineer having already received a lethal dose. The medical examiner ruled out anyone being able to survive the crash, which meant the crew was breathing toxic fumes before the crash - consistent with a fire. It turns out most of the remains that could be tested showed signs of elevated carbon monoxide levels, elevated hydrogen cyanide levels, or both. Any sort of mention of these toxicology results was absent from CASB's final report. (CASB later tried to dismiss the toxicology findings by saying that every person that had these elevated levels had also survived the crash for about 30 seconds. Two problems here - the number of people with these elevated levels is about 150, and apparently despite surviving these 150 people made no attempts to escape the flaming wreck. Firemen on the scene testified that saw no signs of people surviving the crash.)

Then there is the matter of the #4 engine, which apparently had its thrust reverse extended, or was possibly at idle at the time of the crash. These could have been the causes of the crash by itself, but were never investigated by CASB, so it remains just another cat, state unknown, in a box as far as explanations go.

And that's the gist of it really - CASB did such a bad job for whatever reason that finding the real cause of the crash would have been easier had the DC-8 gone done mid-Atlantic. The whole affair was investigated by a Canadian supreme court justice. CASB claimed that it was Ice on the wings that caused the crash, and some of CASB's board of directors said an explosion, most likely a terrorist bomb. The supreme court justice, Willard Estey, found that the evidence supported nether conclusion - a minor vindication of the minority report, and a big stamp of "yes, the investigation was screwed" over the whole portfolio. The bereaved of the Arrow Air flight managed to get the matter an actual congressional hearing, who then managed to get someone from transport Canada, who claimed 1) there was no evidence whatsoever that ice was the cause of the crash, 2) but that didn't stop him from signing off on the report saying ice was the cause of the crash, because "nobody asked him", and 3) it wasn't ice, it was "freezing mist." The congressmen called him crazy and derelict in his duty. Of course, saying that, the second day of the hearing was also the last one, when the committee rather abruptly gave a prepared statement saying that 1) them Canadians clearly fucked up, and 2) we refer the whole thing to the Attorney General and the executive (IE the President) to keep a eye on the whole thing.

So, the memorial is a nice place. It is situated on the North shore of Gander lake - The lake runs roughly east-west, 20 km long but only 2 km wide, a deep loch of a lake. The surrounding hillsides are black spruce, birch, and fir. Juniper has grown up in the paths carved by the airport firetrucks that raced to the crash. The statue itself is just after where the runway lights end, down a road marked with the somewhat incongruous "Screaming Eagle Head" of the 101st airborne. All of this is beneath the level of the nearby trans-Canada highway, which isolates the memorial from the highway noise. People walk their dogs there.