Iowa remembers Flight 232’s crash landing in Sioux City

July 19 marks the 35th anniversary of the worst aviation incident in Iowa history. United Airlines Flight 232 had reached cruising altitude in a Douglas Aircraft DC-10 trijet for a routine flight from Denver to Chicago when a loud banging sound was heard by passengers and crew while over Cherokee, in northwest Iowa.

The aircraft, on Autopilot, inexplicably slowed and then began banking to the right. As Captain Al Haynes and First Officer, William Records, attempted to correct for the deviation, they discovered that the ailerons and rudder would not respond when the pedals were pushed and the yoke yanked to the side, which should have corrected the plane’s course.

From the cockpit instrument panel they discovered gauges indicated zero pressure in the hydraulic lines that connect the pedals and the yoke to the control surfaces on the wings and tail.

Having been trained in the DC-10, both members of the flight deck had been informed that complete hydraulic failure in the aircraft was impossible, yet the plane would not change course or speed when addressed through all standard procedures.

Desperate as the aircraft circled in a spiral and dropped lower by the minute, had some corrective action not taken place, the DC-10 and the 296 souls on board, would have lost aerodynamic lift and plummeted to the ground outside Cherokee.

Haynes, however, relying on his long experience as a pilot, he, quickly thought of the fundamental principles of aeronautics, and, to compensate for the hard right turn spirals the plane was making, shutdown the left engine, increasing power to the one on the right.

Since every indication was that there was no power in the engine attached to the tail (the #2 engine), this meant that the entire 500,000-pound aircraft, passengers, and cargo, would have to remain aloft on the thrust of a single power plant.

The technique was successful, and in communicating with air traffic control, it was decided to try to turn the plane around and set it down on a little used runway from a World War II air base at what was now Gateway Airport in Sioux City.

An instructor from a DC-10 training facility was identified as a First Class passenger and brought forward to the cockpit to assist in adjusting power to the engine.

To execute the turn and keep the plane flying toward Sioux City would require starting and maintaining a specific amount of power to the left engine.

Straightening out the flight in a southwesterly heading was achieved, however, with Gateway coming into view on the horizon, it was realized that they were descending at too rapid of a rate and the plane could smash to pieces on impact.

Needing more speed to remain airborne a little longer, Haynes ordered that the left engine be lit to nearly full power to match the thrust of the right engine. Unfortunately, the power plants could not match each other in thrust, which caused an imbalance in lift on the wings resulting in one wing dipping and striking the runway first.

Ripping the wing apart, this initiated a massive fireball as the fuel in its tanks ignited and the momentum from the remainder of the aircraft forced the fuselage and its remaining wing to cartwheel over one another until coming to a rest in a cornfield on the edge of the airport.

Luckily, there had been about a half hour advance notice the stricken airliner was going to attempt a landing at Gateway. As a result, emergency personnel from throughout the region were able to respond. Furthermore, the Iowa Air National Guard was based at the airport and engaged their equipment and personnel immediately upon hearing of the plane’s diversion to Sioux City.

Smoldering as it settled in to the field and came to a stop, the cockpit had shattered and sprayed glass upon the crew, who hung upside down as rescue responders rushed to the crash site. As soon as they arrived and hefted the cockpit segment of the aircraft off the ground by forklift, the instructor who had volunteered to manage the throttles, walked out almost unharmed. The First Officer had been pinned inside and suffered broken ribs and was carried out, in pain, but conscious.

Captain Haynes, who appeared to have faired the worst of the crew, was found with his head lodged between the yoke and the instrument panel. A saw was brought in to cut off the yoke and Haynes was placed on a stretcher. It was reported that as he was carried to the ambulance parked on the runway, he was crying, saying “I killed all those people, I killed all those people.”

In fact, if he had not taken control over Cherokee, the entire wide body airliner would have dropped nearly 40,000 feet out of the sky and all would have perished on impact.

Had it not been for one of the engines not reaching the same power level as the other, the plane would have set down level and, most likely, despite a hard landing, the passengers and crew would have walked away with minor scrapes and bumps.

As it was, of the 296 souls aboard the aircraft, two thirds survived, with 184 able to either walk out or recover fully in nearby medical centers. For having lost the ability to adjust control surfaces on the airframe, the survival rate was considered remarkable and Hayne’s actions helped to rewrite safety procedures for future flights of the DC-10 and improve overall safety for the aviation industry.

After three months of hospitalization and recovery, Haynes returned to the left seat of the cockpit once again to resume regular commercial flights at the end of October. Two years later, he was forced to retire under the auspices of the F.A.A. regulation mandating that jetliner pilots were not allowed to command an aircraft after they reached the age of sixty.

The author of this column sent him a note stating that it is regrettable someone of such knowledge and devotion to aviation would be forced out of the cockpit in the profession he loved so much that was willing to return to it after one of the most harrowing flights and acts of bravery in the history of commercial aviation.

Fitting to the character he showed on that flight, he sent back to me a photograph of the DC-10 signed with his warmest regards.

In the investigation following the odyssey of Flight 232, it was determined that a hairline crack had started and spread in the disk that held the fan blades in place, which were to spin and suck air into the #2 jet positioned above the tail of the fuselage on the plane.

That crack then expanded and split the disk in half, sending it and the blades attached to it, into the hydraulic lines of the aircraft, causing all the hydraulic fluid to flow out either into the air or body of the plane.

With that decision by the National Transportation Safety Board (and others concurring), all DC-10 airframes were grounded and the hydraulic system reconfigured so that the dissipation of fluids, and the loss of control surfaces of the aircraft, could never happen again.

The trijet then went on to become one of the most popular, and served the longest term of production, of any Douglas commercial aircraft. That satisfaction record was made possible, in part, by the valor and intrepidity shown by Captain Haynes and his crew over western Iowa 35 years ago this month.

If you remember that fateful day or wish to honor those lost and the valiant crew who fought to save all, in 2014, a memorial was dedicated at the Larsen Riverfront Park in Sioux City overlooking the Missouri River.

Captain Haynes spoke eloquently and emotionally at the dedication ceremony acknowledging the 24th anniversary of the troubled flight. As a centerpiece, and reminder, of the caring and unselfish actions shown by crew and the region’s emergency responders, a statue stands at the center of the memorial garden depicting a photograph seen on front pages of newspapers around the world as a weary, soot and sweat covered colonel from the Iowa National Guard carried a three year old boy to safety from the wreckage.

The boy survived and the image endures as a lasting memory of the extraordinary bravery found in the face of adversity on that hot summer day in Sioux City.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.