I'm using this directory to collect information about the crash of US NC 15376, Pan American flight 203, October 3, 1941. This flight started at Miami Florida at 07:33 EST and was destined for Buenos Aires, Argentina.
It never arrived. Instead it crashed on landing at it's stop in San Juan Harbor, Puerto Rico. I am interested in this flight because my father was the flight mechanic on the plane.
As I collect information about the flight and crash I will post it here. Presently all I have is some pictures of the parts of the aircraft (a Sikorsky S-42 seaplane) as they were being scalvaged from the harbor. I also have the Civil Aeronautics Board report on the accident.
I found it interesting that the plane sank in only 15 feet of water. They refer to the heroic efforts by a Mr. Harold Roebuck, a native Puerto Rican, who "repeatedly dived and swam through the partially submerged cabin, freeing passengers and removing them from the wreckage. This action was attended by considerable hazard and physical discomfort as the surface of the water was covered gasoline from the wreckage."
Two children, aged 1 and 2 were killed in the wreck. A mother and her 3 year old were in seat belts, but she was holding one of the younger children and a steward was holding the other. They were thrown on impact and they couldn't be found after that until their bodies were recovered. After the accident it indicated that Pan American set up a strap system to secure infants to those who were holding them. That seems beyond what is done today.
The report concluded that the wreck was the fault of the pilot, Captain Charles A. Lorber. He was landing the plane with the nose too low and had turned off the engines too soon. This was compounded by a slight cross wind that was moving the plane to the left somewhat and the fact that he was landing downwind with a 3 Mph tail wind. Apparently sometimes the flight engineer is responsible for managing the engine speeds. The choice is up to the captain. In this case captain Lorber was managing the engine speeds himself - fortunately for our father (or perhaps not ?, he might have been able to prevent the accident by running the engines longer). Our father felt that captain Lorber was incompetent and should have managed the landing safely.
Here are four pictures from the salvaging operation. The images initially seen on taking the links below are 1/4 sized images of the originals as copied from the original photographs kept in the Pan American archive in the Richter Library of the University of Miami. My cousin, John Hester, sent me copies of the photographs and the CAB report. By clicking on the images one can go to 1/2 size versions and finally to full size versions:
The initial 1/4 size JPG images are about 100 KB, the 1/2 size JPGs are about 400 MB, and the full size JPG compressed imagea are about 2.5-3 MB in size (high quality compression). I don't recommend going beyond the 1/2 sized images for most purposes.
Here is a page from "Pan Am, An Airline and its Aircraft", by R.E.G Davis that describes Pan AM's S-42 fleet. This page incorrectly lists the date that NC 15376 was lost as March 10, 1941. This mistake was apparently due to a misinterpretation of the European method of writing dates, taking 3/10/41 as March 10, 1941 instead of October 3, 1941 as was intended.
Note: Many of these materials are subject to copyright restrictions from the Richter Library. The page from the R.E.G. Davis book are copyright by R.E.G. Davis and by Mike Machat. They are placed here for the private use of myself and those who I am working with using this material.
