Episode 7 – The Lovettsville Air Disaster and lightning strikes on planes

Strap in this week, because its all about lightning. We’re looking at one crash in particular, the Lovettsville Air Disaster which took place on August 31 1940 near the town of Lovettsville in Virginia, the United States. There were 21 passengers and 4 crew on board and all 25 died in the accident, including U.S. Senator Ernest Lundeen from Minnesota. As you’ll hear, his death was regarded as extremely sinister because he was under FBI investigation at the time. But we’ll get to that in a while. The plane was a brand new Douglas DC-3A operated by Pennsylvania Central Airlines. It was flying through an intense thunderstorm at 6,000 feet en route from Washington to Detroit. The journey for the doomed passengers and crew had started in Washington and there was a planned stopover in Pittsburgh but the plane took off late due to thunderstorm activity around Washington. Numerous witnesses reported seeing a large flash of lightning shortly before it nosed over and plunged to earth in an alfalfa field. With limited accident investigation tools at the time, it was at first believed that the most likely cause was the plane flying into windshear, but the Civil Aeronautics Board report concluded that the probable cause was a lightning strike. "Trip 19", as it was designated, was under the command of Captain Lowell V. Scroggins with First Officer J. Paul Moore. The pilot and copilot had over eleven thousand and six thousand hours experience respectively, although only a few hundred of those hours were on DC-3s. A new airline employee was flying in the third seat between the two pilots called the jump seat. He’d only just been hired on August 26th.