This cache will bring you to
the site of the Electra Air Crash Memorial in rural Perry County,
Indiana. This site used to be Stage 2 of the old
~ GET YOUR KICKS ON SR-66 ~ #1 LAFAYETTE SPRING
multi-cache, which has since been archived. This historic spot
deserves a cache, though, so I decided to hide a new one here to
bring people to this spot. NOTE: To read a stirring narrative from
a first responder, click on the “Related Web Page”
link above.
From Wikipedia
(edited):
Northwest Orient Airlines Flight
710, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, crashed near Cannelton, Indiana on
March 17, 1960. The flight carried 57 passengers and 6 crew
members. There were no survivors.
Flight 710 was a regularly
scheduled flight departing Minneapolis-St. Paul to Miami with a
stop at Chicago Midway Airport. Radio contact with the Indianapolis
Control Center was made at approximately 3pm local time. About 15
minutes later, witnesses reported seeing the airplane break into
two pieces with the right wing falling as one piece and the
remainder of the craft plunging to earth near Tell City in southern
Indiana.
The craft's fuselage plunged
into an Ohio River country farm and disintegrated. The Federal
Bureau of Investigation sent agents to the scene to determine
whether there was any violation of Federal law. Such an
investigation would include the possibility of sabotage. State
Police Sgt. Joe O'Brien said that the plane was last heard from
over Scotland, Ind., about 60 air miles from the crash site. He
said the pilot, Capt. Ed La Parle, had reported no trouble and the
weather was clear.
So much wreckage rained over a
wide area, as the plane came apart in the air, that it was first
believed that two planes had collided. However, the Federal
Aviation Agency and the State Police said that all the pieces they
could find were from one plane — Northwest's Lockheed Electra
Flight 710. A wing and two engines of the wrecked turboprop were
found about five miles from the place where the plane's fuselage
hit. Almost nothing was left of the craft. Hours after the crash, a
column of blue-gray smoke still rose from the crater, about 25 feet
deep and 40 feet wide.
Among the victims were Judge
John A. Sharbaro of Chicago, 71-year-old jurist who helped
prosecute Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb for the "crime of the
century" murder of little Bobby Franks in 1924; the wife and three
children of Morris Chalfen, producer of the "Holiday on Ice"
skating shows (they were flying from their Minneapolis home to a
Florida vacation); Masami Nakamura, 43, a Tokyo police
superintendent touring the United States; and Mrs. Andy Frain of
Chicago, mother of six and wife of the nation's top expert on
controlling crowds at such gatherings as the World Series and
presidential conventions.
NASA, Boeing and Lockheed
engineers determined that the probable cause for the accident was
in-flight separation of the right wing while cruising at 18,000
feet due to flutter caused by unexplained reduced stiffness of the
engine mounts.
The citizens of Perry County and
the Cannelton Kiwanis Club raised funds for a memorial at the site
of the 1960 crash. Dedicated in 1961, the Kiwanis Electra Memorial
marks the site. It is located on Millstone Road, which may be
reached via Indiana highways 66 and 166, eight miles east of
Cannelton, Indiana.
Cannelton newspaper editor and
civic booster COB Cummings wrote the words which are inscribed on
the memorial along with the names and symbols of the religious
faiths of those who died aboard the plane. The inscription reads:
"This memorial, dedicated to the memory of 63 persons who died in
an airplane crash at this location, March 17, 1960, was erected by
public subscription in the hope that such tragedies will be
eliminated."
There is plenty of parking
near the memorial. You are searching for a decon container. BYOP!
Enjoy your visit!