Continental Airlines Flight 11

Continental Airlines Flight 11

A Continential Boeing 707 similar to aircraft involved
Occurrence summary
Date	May 22, 1962
Type	Bombing (suicide committed as an insurance fraud by a passenger)
Site	Union Township, Putnam County, near Unionville, Missouri
Passengers	37
Crew	8
Injuries	0(1 initially)
Fatalities	45(44 initially)
Survivors	0 (1 initially)
Aircraft type	Boeing 707-124
Operator	Continental Airlines
Tail number	N70775
Flight origin	O'Hare International Airport
Destination	Kansas City Downtown Airport

Continental Airlines Flight 11, registration N70775, was a Boeing 707 aircraft which exploded in the vicinity of Centerville, Iowa, while en route from O'Hare Airport, Chicago, Illinois, to Kansas City, Missouri, on May 22, 1962. The aircraft crashed in a clover field near Unionville, in Putnam County, Missouri, killing all 45 crew and passengers on board.

Continental Airlines Flight 11 memorial erected in Unionville, Missouri

Flight 11 departed O'Hare at 8:35 p.m. The flight was routine until just before the Mississippi River, when it deviated from its filed flight plan to the north to avoid a line of thunderstorms. In the vicinity of Centerville, Iowa, the radar image of the aircraft disappeared from the scope of the Waverly, Iowa, Flight Following Service. At approximately 9:17 p.m. an explosion occurred in the right rear lavatory, resulting in separation of the tail section from the fuselage. The aircraft broke up and the main part of the fuselage struck the ground about six miles north-northwest of Unionville, Missouri.^[1]

Witnesses in and around both Cincinnati, Iowa and Unionville reported hearing loud and unusual noises at around 9:20 p.m., and two more saw a big flash or ball of fire in the sky. A B-47 Stratojet bomber out of Forbes Air Force Base in Topeka, Kansas, was flying at the altitude of 26,500 feet in the vicinity of Kirksville, Missouri. The aircraft commander saw a bright flash in the sky forward of and above his aircraft's position. After referring to his navigation logs he estimated the flash to have occurred at 9:22 p.m. near the location where the last radar target of Flight 11 had been seen. Most of the fuselage was found near Unionville, but the engines and parts of the tail section and left wing were found up to six miles away from the main wreckage.^[1]

Of the 45 individuals on board, 44 were dead when rescuers reached the crash site. One passenger, 27-year old Takehiko Nakano of Evanston, Illinois, was alive when rescuers found him in the wreckage, but he died of internal injuries at Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital in Centerville, Iowa, an hour and a half after being rescued.^[2] Another of the victims was passenger Fred P. Herman, a recipient of the United States Medal of Freedom.

FBI agents discovered that one of the passengers, Thomas G. Doty, a married man with a five-year-old daughter, had purchased a life insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha for $150,000, the maximum available; his death would also bring in another $150,000 in additional insurance (some purchased at the airport) and death benefits. Doty had recently been arrested for armed robbery and was to soon face a preliminary hearing in the matter. Investigators determined that Doty had purchased six sticks of dynamite for 29 cents each, shortly before the crash, and were able to deduce that a bomb had been placed in the used towel bin of the right rear lavatory.^[1]

Author Arthur Hailey based a subplot of his 1968 novel Airport on the Flight 11 bombing.^{[citation needed]}

Notably, until 2009 Continental Airlines still used Flight 11, on the Paris-Houston route; flight numbers in the USA involved in fatal accidents are more commonly retired. Effective October 25, 2009 Flight 11 was replaced on the Paris-Houston route by flight 33.^{[citation needed]}

In July 2010, a memorial was erected near the crash site in Unionville, Missouri on the anniversary of the crash.^[3][4]

See also

	Missouri portal
	Aviation portal

• Lists of accidents and incidents on commercial airliners
• Air safety
• 1962 in aviation

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "CAB report for May 22, 1962 incident involving N70775, Docket No. n/a, File No. 1-0003." (PDF). Civil Aeronautics Board. Adopted July 26, 1962. http://ntl1.specialcollection.net/scripts/ws.dll?file&fn=8&name=*S%3A\DOT_56GB\airplane%20accidents\websearch\052262.pdf.  (a text version is also available)
   (if links above fail to load report, visit http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net and select "Historical Aircraft Accident Reports (1934-1965)", then retry report links)
2. ^ "Unraveling the crash of Flight 11...", Sun Herald
3. ^ "Flight 11 Memorial Dedication". Putnam County Historical Society. http://www.putnamcountyhistoricalsociety.com/index.html. Retrieved 24 May 2010. 
4. ^ Riek, Jim (6 November 2008). "A Forgotten Tragedy". KOMU-TV. http://www.komu.com/satellite/SatelliteRender/KOMU.com/ba8a4513-c0a8-2f11-0063-9bd94c70b769/750feef0-80ce-0971-004b-b926cdbaf146. Retrieved 24 May 2010. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• Criminal occurrence description for Continental Flight 11 at the Aviation Safety Network