/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/a6/f6/a6f69982-d239-479d-b8ed-1442d130b16b/opener_-_mitch_dobrowner_lightning_strikes.jpg)
When a Team of Meteorologists and Combat Pilots Set Out to Understand Thunderstorms, They Made Flying Safer for Everyone
Key takeaways
- Mitch Dobrowner The 22 passengers who boarded Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19 out of Washington, D.C. on August 31, 1940, would have had little reason to worry about arriving safely at their final destination.
- Everhart shut off the electricity and stepped onto the back porch.
- Another Lovettsville resident, Lydia Jacobs, heard the strike, too, followed by a sound resembling a “scream” or a “siren.” When Jacobs peeked out her window, she saw a streak of fire shooting across the clouds.
Mitch Dobrowner The 22 passengers who boarded Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19 out of Washington, D.C. on August 31, 1940, would have had little reason to worry about arriving safely at their final destination. It had been 17 months since the last fatal commercial airline accident in the United States, a record at the time. The flight’s captain, Lowell V. Scroggins, had 11,000 hours of flying experience, more than seven times what the Federal Aviation Administration now requires for airline pilot certification. And the aircraft, a rugged DC-3, the era’s quintessential airliner, had flown in that morning from Detroit without incident; the day before, it had undergone a routine inspection of its propellers, wings, radios and all other critical equipment. Even its interior had received a good scrub and polish. Just before 2:30 p.m., Flight 19 fired up its twin 1,100-horsepower engines and began its ascent.
About 55 miles northwest, in Lovettsville, Virginia, Dorothy Everhart was tinkering in her home when suddenly, according to an incident report later compiled by the newly established Civil Aeronautics Board, she heard what she thought was lightning strike her house. Everhart shut off the electricity and stepped onto the back porch. To the west, she could see black clouds assembling over a clump of mountains. A lone airplane was headed straight into the storm. Everhart lived along a well-trafficked flight route, and she was accustomed to airplanes overhead, but this plane was flying “lower than most of them go,” she recalled. Then a brilliant flash bleached the sky, momentarily blinding her, but she couldn’t miss an “awful roaring.”
Another Lovettsville resident, Lydia Jacobs, heard the strike, too, followed by a sound resembling a “scream” or a “siren.” When Jacobs peeked out her window, she saw a streak of fire shooting across the clouds. Flight 19 appeared to Jacobs as “a burnt-up building floating through the air.” Within moments, Flight 19 plunged to the ground and slammed into a nearby alfalfa field, where it was demolished on impact, killing everyone on board.