The car is beautiful. Where did you end up going for it? This exclusive place of Dallas connections with? They've more cars for more dealerships than anywhere else.
You have to put me in touch. What a cult. It's Dunadial. Where?
Dunadial? There's an accent on the E. Do you mean...? Yes, I got it on Dundial cars.
Lift! Please. You're going past Kamaage. Oh, Kinsh!
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I'm Ash. And I'm Elena. And this is Mobed. Mobed.
Hi, honey. How are ya? Oh, good. This is where we chit-chat a little bit.
Yeah, you better get used to it. This is where you fast forward if you don't like the band-tah. Imagine we just talk like the entire... Everybody's like, I actually don't like it either.
Even people who like it are like, go fuck yourselves. Go fuck yourselves with that. It's Mobed in the morning. It is.
And, you know... We got a stomach bug in the house. No, no, don't say that because... When am I gonna...
If it's a full-blown stomach bug, it's gonna blow through everybody. No, I mean, I'm not saying it's like neurovirus or anything. Neurovirus will blow through everybody. It might just be like a little virus.
That's all. Yeah, we had a... My fellow parents will understand that nothing is good. When the pukin stats, you hold your breath for a couple of days, especially if you have other people in the house.
Well, again, through it, you know, it was just a tough night. That's okay. I'm here almost against my will today. Yeah.
She came over to me this morning and I said, hello, sweet one, stay away. I said, oh, sweet one, stay away. I said, oh, good to see you. But honestly, she's like a...
She's a real one because she's so funny. She just... It's my youngest and she throws things off. Like, it's nobody's fucking business.
You gotta say, she came down the same. Yeah, she came down the same. Because I was just awake all night. Like, that's just the way it is.
And so I came downstairs very early and just decided to sit by myself down the street and eat it a minute to reach me. I was just like, you know what, I'm just gonna sit by my middle and everybody wakes up. And she comes, Taryn, downstairs. She slept pretty good towards the morning.
Yeah. So, she came, Taryn, downstairs. I was like, oh, hey, girlfriend, like, how you feeling? And she goes, amazing.
She throws her hands up in the air. And I was like, great, right? So that's wonderful that you feel amazing. She's a trooper.
I love her. We're all tired. And you know, it's just one of those things. I didn't even deal with that, luckily.
I left just in time yesterday. I got a text like an hour after I got home. I knew it was coming, I felt it in my gut. Yeah.
Because I just know her and I know her face and her actions. I was hanging out with the lady after work and the kids were off at activities and stuff. And that's when she started feeling crappy. And she walked in and she said, I have a headache.
And my tummy hurts. And I said, it was so good to see you guys. I love that. I love taking a good look with this.
And I literally looked at John and I was like, I just know it. I was like, no, you're just like, I'm out. She's not showing. Because at first she just had a headache.
Oh, that's what it was. But she didn't look right. And she just talked about her coloring. And I just know where I just know.
It's like a, it's a mama thing. You just know you've known your gut. Just her vibe too. I said, I'm getting the fuck out of here.
It was off. Yeah. And I'm going to, like, I don't know how like fellow people who take care of other people feel. Because this can be of any age and any persuasion.
But one of those things that you fear when you have kids is like that you're like, I have to take care of someone else's puke. Like that's scary. If you don't like, if you're not good with that stuff, that's a fear. You don't like puke.
I mean, some people are just not faced by it really, like which I envy. Weirdly, I'm not. That's the thing. I mean, I don't have kids.
I don't like it. I don't like watching it in a movie. I don't like watching it anywhere. It immediately makes me feel nauseous.
And so, but then you have kids and I'm still in that place where yesterday, she was not feeling well. I was like, oh no, she's going to. I get very nervous. And then like, John's the common.
And then as soon as it happens, I'm totally fine. Like I can jump right into like console, clean up. It's just the like, it's the anticipation of it. That is the worst part for me.
And John can handle that anticipation so well. So I think it works very well because he's able to chill with the anticipation and I can go like full into while it happens. Yeah, I've been here for other ones. And usually like, there's been times where they're like, just with me and like, you're doing something.
And I'm like, oh, they act like, and I just start cleaning it. Yeah, I'm like, oh, here we go. I like, you know, yacked a lot in my earlier days. Like partying, saying my friends, yacked.
And I helped them. We were all yacking together. Yeah, I'm used to yuck. So yeah, that's yacked up.
Puking with morbid. But everybody stay healthy out there because those summer viruses are killer. I know. And yeah, we've gone like a long time without something like that.
And it was about to happen. Here you are. Here we are. Here we go.
We're doing what we can. Yeah, the odds are not in our favor. So that's why we might be a little kooky today. Look crazy.
Very limited sleep behind me. I've been sitting like shit this week. Yeah, the sleep has been shitty this week. I think it might have something to do with like the heat waves that East Coast got, which was fucking gnarly.
You know what? I'm ready. I'm ready for September and October. I got it.
You got there with me? I got it. I was sitting in my office the other day and the AC, like it was working, but I wasn't. And I'm so lucky to have AC.
I think I'm lucky stars all the time. But when it's so hot like that, I think it broke like 98 or something like that. When it's so hot like that, it just can't catch up. Oh, yeah.
Oh, we broke 100 less. Yeah, that makes sense. So I was sitting upstairs and I was just like, oh, fuck. Just give me September.
Yeah. Because I like my house at least, even when it's like that outside. I like my house to be fucking freezing. So that I can sit there in my sweatshirt and pretend like it's cozy weather.
Yeah, I'll put the fireplace on and everything. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. But not when the AC is not working.
No, like probably. I just can't. It's nothing for me. I've said it before.
I'll say it again. This is nothing for me now in summer, but we'll get through it. You know, we're going to we're through June. So almost.
So you're in the future. Yeah, you guys are through June right now. So that's good. Once you get to July 4th, summer's halfway over.
There you go. So that's that's all I'm thinking. Yeah. And we got a lot of stuff planned for the summer that is going to be fun.
It's going to be fun. I thought it was we're done with this summer. I'm serious. It's going to be amazing.
Fall is going to be a thing of fucking beauty in so many ways. Seriously, amazing. Seriously, it's going to be amazing. I can't wait.
Can't wait. So yeah, we were watching. I think we mentioned this again. I have no idea what episodes come out, but that won't be a thing for too much longer.
It we were talking about it on like the spooky episode, the Crescent Hotel episode. Yeah, Ashton. I think we were talking about it before the episode. I don't know if we talked about it on what we say.
Because you just are my friends. So I don't know if I tell you like in real life or not. But we were talking about ghost hunters because I think we were talking about how like taps had gone to some other place. I think we did it before the episode.
Yeah. And I was saying how like I was watching ghost hunters for an episode like to look at this particular place. And as I was watching it, I was like, all I want to do, I've never felt a stronger urge in my life than to sit in a room that's completely decorated for Halloween and fall. That's the other thing.
That's the other thing. I want my fucking Halloween. Already. And I want it to be cool outside.
I want to watch the leaves falling outside my window. I want to have something that I just fall baked in the oven. I want to have something delicious. Oh, no, no, no, no, no.
You're so basic. I want to fucking pump his voice out. I want to be wearing a Halloween sweatshirt and I want to have a cozy blanket on me. Halloween themed Halloween themed.
And I want to be watching just a marathon of ghost hunters, scariest places on earth. Pocus pocus. Pocus pocus. Food network, Halloween baking challenge.
I want to be doing all that. I was like, I've never felt a stronger urge in my life. I'm going to cry. I feel like I'm going to fucking cry right now.
So deep in my soul, I can't even contain it. You won't get this. But it's like that SpongeBob episode. He's like, I need it.
That's how I feel. I got it. But yeah, we're almost there, everybody. And if you love summer, then I hope you're having a wonderful summer.
I like summer. I'm not going to find one, but I'm ready for fall. I'm ready. I've had like a month.
What's my birthday passes, which is technically in spring, but in my mind. I'm like, all right, all done. All done. I'm all done.
That's what you can do today. But yeah, oh, and in August, you know, my, the paper back of the butcher game is coming out. Hey, oh, I just received the copies. I got mine.
I'm going to post a, I'll post a picture of them because they're very delicious. They look like they first. She's thick. And they look like the butcher and the ren paper back.
So they're going to, I know that's important. It's important to me too, in a series for them to look nice together on the shelf. Oh, they're going to look great. These look nice together on the shelf.
Oh, I haven't even put mine on the shelf. Yeah, they look, they have the same kind of like matte material and everything. So I'm in the market for new bookshelves. Hell yeah.
Yeah. We'll be doing my little like corner room. Yeah. And the shelves that we have are too much right now.
So I got any ones. Yeah, I love your books. I'm going to put your books hell. Yeah.
On display on display each and every day. Hell yeah. Well, maybe I'll see you guys in August because maybe we'll do a couple of events for the book. Oh, yeah, I don't know.
I do. You know how you later. No, no, they just don't know. You don't know.
But we could see. Yeah, maybe. Who knows? So make sure you're pre-ordering the paper back in the butcher game.
You get it anywhere. You know, you get books. You can order books, you know, go do it. I love you forever.
I will anyways, but I'll be there. Is your book available in this like that gigantic print? I don't know. I every time I this is my fault.
Every single time. You know this. Every single fucking time I order a book on Amazon, I either I have a new problem now. So I ordered one book like a couple months ago and it came in like big print meant for like, you know, if you have like some kind of like, if you're older, like you have like a vision impairment.
Yeah, I don't and I don't want that copy. So but I got that copy and I was like, crap. And then I just got for our book club book. I ordered it and I got this like weird small edition that's like so small.
What? What is wrong with me? What the hell? I don't know.
What the hell? What the hell? You just got to really read that description. I guess so.
Maybe this should be that fucking part bigger. Yeah, there you go. That would be a big print figure. I got this one book and it's the most giant print type ever seen.
I kind of made the book look so much longer. I was like, what the fuck did I order? This book, 4000 pages long. And then the next time it's like this tiny ass book with like fucked up margins.
That's crazy. What is going on? What? Yeah, that's crazy.
I don't know if mine is available on that, but I guess read descriptions before you buy books. Yeah, I guess so. That's a PSA. That's a PSA life.
And you can like, you can pre-order it from anywhere. Amazon, you can do it from a Barnes and Noble, small bookstores. We love an indie bookstore. Oh, and like, unlikely story.
Unlikely story. We love our likely story. We love that book story. We love the people that work there.
Oh, the staff of unlikely story is a fucking treasure chest of humans. It really is just we love them. I love them. That's all like the good stuff.
That's all happy stuff. Except you know we're about to get into some shit. Yeah, you're here because you clicked on this episode and you saw the title. Yeah.
So you know that we're talking about the bombing of United Air Flight 629. We are. I also know I have a fear of flying. Yeah.
You know what? I think everyone in the collective nation has a fear of flying right now. Here's the thing. It's still very safe.
Yeah, totally. You know, like it's still, you know, we're going through it a little bit. Am I going to do it? No.
Am I going to do it? I'm not going to tell you what to do? No. And this does just to make it so you already know going into this trigger warning we're talking about a plane crash.
Yes. But it's not a crash in the sense that it just crashed. It exploded because of a bomb, obviously because it's the bombing of. This was also in the 50s, the 1950s, when less protocol, less protocol, but it was still very safe.
It was still a very safe form of travel in comparison to everything else. Oh, yeah. That'll give you a little per like, I need to tell myself that all the time. So I'm just telling you that in case you also are fearing things right now.
That's fair. Trying to help me and I'm trying to help you. Also, again, I've said this every time that we've talked about playing crashes and I talk about my fear of flying, follow pilots on TikTok. Follow them on TikTok.
They will make you feel better. They will explain things about noises and everything else. And when a plane crash happens, they'll so many pilots, maybe I'll find some names and I'll give you some will update you to tell you why that happened so you can feel a little more in the know and why it's rare and why it's rare. So again, if you have a fear of flying, I'm with you.
I feel you. So let's start. Okay. United Airlines Flight 629 started out in New York on the late morning of November 1st, 1955.
It was stopping briefly in Chicago just for some minor repairs, which you know, planes need to do. It was like a propeller part and then it was moving on to its scheduled stop in Denver where it landed a little after 6 p.m. The plane, which was called the mainline Denver, was a Douglas DC 6B, which is 105 foot piston powered passenger and cargo plane that was pretty popular with the US military actually before the end of World War II. Oh wow.
And that's when Douglas started retrofitting them to be part of like commercial airlines, essentially, like compete in the travel market. The model was typically operated by three to four crew members with an additional one to two flight attendants and could accommodate up to 89 passengers. That's a small plane. Yeah.
In 1955 air travel for just leisure was just starting to outpace train and car travel. It was really not a big thing before this. It was becoming a little more affordable than it had previously been. So people were starting to be able to take planes places.
Yeah. As a result, many of the passengers on Flight 629 were taking their first ride on a plane that day. Oh, including. That must be wild, especially like everybody takes a first plane ride at some point, obviously, but you think about taking that first plane ride when plane rides are a new thing.
Yeah, that's fucking terrifying. Like that's a whole difference. Because you have, at least when you take your first plane ride now, you can kind of like know what to expect a whole history of. A whole history of safety protocols and technology and.
You can watch a video about how it fucking happens. You can hear a pilot tell you how it all works out. Even the first time I was cognitive and flu, I was cognitive as a two year old, but you know, I had more cognitive ability as a 19 year old. Yeah.
No, I was 14. Anyways, when you start fucking barreling down the runway before you take off, I remember being like, are we supposed to be doing that? Oh, I still, I've been on how many plane trips and every time I ask, are we supposed to be doing that? Like it's scary.
And then when it lifts off, I say, am I supposed to be doing this? Yeah. And then you're just fluting a fucking tube in the sky. No, but it's just, it's wild.
The whole time you're like, are we supposed to be doing this? That's my original point. I cannot imagine doing that the first time with absolutely baseline zero information. That would be a lot.
Yeah. So these passengers included Patricia and Gerald Lipke who were flying to see Patricia's sister in Portland and also James and Sarah Dory who were on their way to see their son who they hadn't seen in nine years. James Dory had been sick for some time and the couple decided to take the flight after his doctor warned him, quote, his bad arteries might not last long enough to make the trip by car or train. So like this was like their last ditch ever.
Yeah. Others were taking this plane to connect to longer flights. Like Helen Fitzpatrick and her one year old son James, they were going to visit his father in Japan and Daisy King who was traveling to Seattle to catch a connecting flight to Alaska where she was visiting her daughter. When you really put all that, that's what always kills me about these like plane crashes and these kind of things is like when you start looking into like the actual people on board and they're doing such like normal things like I'm going to see my daughter, I'm going to see my dad, I'm going to see my sister.
Yeah. Like these kind of things always just like, oh, they tear me into the view. Now at the time the flight engineers union were eight days into a strike protesting United's recent change in regulation that required all future flight engineers hired by the company also to be qualified as pilots. I feel like it's kind of fair.
It feels right to me. Like I want to drag that situation with a significant number of the airlines flight crew out on strike. The company had to scramble to find a crew that could take the flight. Finally, they settled on pilot Lee Hall, co-pilot Donald White and flight engineer Samuel Arthur.
Several passengers on the flight had been booked on other flights that had been canceled because of the strike. Oh, that always hits so much harder. So sorry, like this. Yes.
So it was actually relief to them when they got confirmation they would be flying out of Denver on flight 629. That always just sends when they're not even supposed to be on this. Exactly. Or the people who just miss it, you know, like those kind of things are just like, oh, those stories always send chills in my final destination.
And it like freaks me out. Now when the plane arrived in Denver, all but 19 passengers got off with the remaining going to Seattle, right after the baggage had been loaded into the cargo hold and the cabin had been readied, the 20 new passengers started boarding. Several of them stopping along the way to make a last minute purchase of life insurance, which I guess was like a common occurrence. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. It was common during this time period for those traveling by air to purchase short term life insurance to cover their time in the air. Oh, wow. Interesting.
Which you could purchase easily from a vending machine in the airport. What? Yeah. I never knew that's crazy.
I had no idea. And also that would send me into cardiac arrest. Yeah. Having to purchase life insurance for my time in the air.
No, can't do it. That's crazy. Can't do it. My friends also when you think about it, like life insurance is just death insurance.
It's really it's wild. They really they just can't call it that much, but they'll have that table and they said no, we can't call it that. Yeah. They were like, this is marketing genius to call it life insurance.
Damn. Yes. Also, I can't imagine pressing a to getting my life insurance. I mean, let me happily board this.
Let's jump on it. And it's like the passenger would just purchase the policy, sign the copy produced by the vending machine, then drop it in a lockbox to be collected by an agent at the end of the day. Wow. In this case, passengers purchase policies from continental casualty and mutual of Omaha at 25 cents for each $6,250 of coverage with a maximum coverage amount of 125,000.
This is wild. Isn't that like that blew my mind? Yeah. Fascity.
I really thought that stopped. I know. I wonder. I was sure.
That will lead several minutes by late passenger flight, 629 finally took off from the runway at 6.52 p.m. I was late. Fuck em, passenger get there on time there. Four of minutes later at 6.56 p.m.
Lee Hall radio at the tower and reported they had passed over the September omnisacean, a radio broadcasting tower several miles northeast of the airport several minutes later air traffic controllers at Stapleton Airport reported seeing a large flash in the sky, followed by two balls of fire falling towards the earth. Oh god. At the same time, a farmer just outside long Colorado reported seeing what he described as quote, a brilliant ball of fire that he said he watched just tear through the sky for nearly two minutes before it got crash landed in a field about eight miles away. Wow.
It wasn't long before authorities learned what those individuals had witnessed. It was the explosion midair of United Airlines Flight 629 and the immediate death of all 44 passengers on board. That's awful. I'm going to read out the names of all 44 passengers.
Yeah. So just sit tight. Jack Ambrose, Samuel Arthur, Brour Brexstrom, Irene Brexstrom, John Bonnellin, Frank Brennan Clarissa Bunch, Thomas Crouch, Barbara Cruz, Carl Deist, John Jardins, James Dory, Sarah Dory, Charles Edwards, Clara Edwards, Helen Fitzpatrick, James Fitzpatrick, Daisy King, Lee Hall, Goldie Herman, Vernal Herman, Elton Hickock, Jacqueline Hines, Marion Hoggood, John Jungles, Gerald Lipke, Helen Lipke, Layla McLean, Frederick Morgan, Suzanne Morgan, Peggy Pettichord, James Purvis, Herbert Robertson, Harold Sandstead, Sally Schilfield, Jesse Sizemore, James Earl Strud, Clarence Todd, Minnie Van Valen, Ralph Van Valen, Donald White, and Alna Windsor. When you read them out like that, it really makes you, yeah, like you grasp how many people just in the blink.
Yeah, like it's, it's sends chills down my spine. It does. And again, the youngest on board and the only real child on board was James Fitzpatrick who was one years old. Oh, yeah.
And I believe the oldest person on board was Layla McLean who was 80 years old. Oh, I know. It's 80. And that's how you go.
That's awful. All you can hope is that it was so fast. I hope that nobody felt any. I hope nobody even knew.
Yeah, which when you know what happened here, it feels like nobody could have possibly had any idea what was happening. That's good. You know what I mean? That's that's the only hope here.
Now, again, although they were more common in the past than they are today, airline crashes have always been a pretty uncommon occurrence. Because again, and John's always telling me this, we see them on the news because they're so uncommon. So they would be real like, yeah, it's like all the car crashes. You couldn't even have one 24 hour news station covering them all.
It wouldn't even so I know it's hard to think of it that way. Sometimes that doesn't cover me at all, but it might work for some of you. The car is beautiful. Where did you end up going for it?
This exclusive place about its connections with. They've more cars or more dealerships than like anywhere else. You have to put me in touch. What's it called?
It's Dune Dial. Where? Dune Dial. There's an accent on the E.
Do you mean? Yes, I got it on Dune Dial cars. Lift? Please.
You're going past Kamaish. Oh, Kimich. No. Dune Dial cars.
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H E L P dot com slash morbid. But however, Flight 629 was the second plane to crash in the region near the Rocky Mountain Range in less than a month. Oh, wow. The previous crash was had occurred about 100 miles away on October 6th after crashing into the mountain sign, aside and killing all 66 passengers on board.
The crash of the previous month was the worst airline disaster in the United States until that period. Oh, and while the explosion of Flight 629 didn't surpass that disaster and you know, casualty number, it was no less tragic. Yeah. Unlike several other crashes, which were relatively well contained to the area where the accident actually occurred, the explosion of 629 created a massive crash site dropping large pieces of flaming debris, luggage and rows of seats with passengers still in them into the yards and fields of the rural community of Longmont, Colorado.
Conrad Hop, a farmer who lived near the primary crash site remembered hearing a big explosion like a bomb went off and he ran outside to see what happened. And he said, quote, I hollered back to my wife that she better call the fire department than I turned around in the plane blew up in the air. Oh, God, which is literally my nightmare. Yeah, I have literal nightmares of seeing a plane fall out of the sky.
It's like the worst thing I can possibly imagine seeing. Do you remember when my mom did? Yes, like actually saw one? Yeah, into a parking lot.
Yeah, yeah. That would, I'd never recover from that. Yeah. Now, Martha Hopt recalled, I ran outside and I remember all the roads were white with lights.
Everybody was already out on the roads doing the same thing. And the hops were just two of a ton of local residents who are rushing out to the Weld County beat fields where the main portion of the plane crashed down, hoping there was something they could just do to help. That's when you like see the like the humanity there where people are just rushing to this flaming thing that fell out of the sky just to see if they can help. Yeah, like that's something.
But people, people, that is people, people. Yeah, people gonna people and then there's people gonna people. Yeah, there's a people people. But when Longmont police chief Keith Cunningham and the other first responders arrived in the field, it was pretty apparent that there was nothing that anybody could do to help.
After just a few minutes of surveying the huge amount of wreckage in the field, a patrolman radio dispatch to report no ambulances are necessary. Yeah, it was fall and the sun went down early at that time of year. So it was fully dark by the time a full team of state and local investigators came to the scene. Despite the lack of any real natural light, it became very evident early on that there was really going to be no survivors.
Author Andrew Field said that they immediately went in there looking for somebody to help, but it was pretty quickly determined. Like there's no one we can do, which is so sad. Yeah, law enforcement and fire officials along with over 100 volunteers spread out across the field and surrounding area to look for bodies and potential survivors, because even though there was no survivors in this particular debris field, they were just hoping. Yeah, and again, you never know, large crash light.
Yeah, and the author field said as they would find bodies, they would station a man with a flashlight to indicate where the body was. So somebody would just stand there with a flashlight next to where a body was so that they could just find them all because they were so scattered. Yeah, he said in pretty soon, the entire field was filled with little points of light. Oh, that's such a horrible visual.
And obviously this experience would weigh very heavily on anyone, and it really weighed heavily on Conrad, Hop Jr., the farmer who first saw it. He was just 18 years old at the time. Oh, God. His father had seen it first, I should say, senior had seen it first.
The junior was 18 years old at the time, and he said finding a body was fairly simple, but later on to try and pick that body up and put it in a body bag. That was the tough part. Yeah, yeah, that will change you as an individual no matter what age you are. Oh, 18.
That's that's a lot. As the Stapleton air traffic controllers had observed, the plane had essentially broken into two large sections, which tore four feet deep holes into the earth when they, upon impact, and burned for hours after landing in the field. The nose of the plane, which had avoided catching fire, was badly smashed, which indicated that it had been the first part to the ground. Inside the cockpit, the bodies of the pilot co-pilot and engineer could all be seen still strapped to their seats.
Oh, that's haunting. It's very upsetting. Fortunately for investigators, the two main sections of the plane had landed mostly intact. They were super mangled, really damaged by the seemingly unstoppable blaze at this point.
That is just keeps going because it's being fed by a steady stream of jet fuel that's leaking from the engine. So it's just nonstop fire. By 9 p.m., the National Guard had been dispatched to the scene to hold back spectators, reporters, and people going to people. People on the steel, giving firefighters the space to finally extinguish the flames.
A short time later, electrical rigging had been set up in the entire field was soon brightly illuminated, showing the full extent of the carnage. Jim Matlak, a publisher of the Longmont Times call, said there was nothing we could do but cover up the bodies. There wasn't a sign of life. Few places in the US are set up to deal with this kind of disaster, this kind of large-scale disaster.
Least of all rural Longmont, like they were just not ready for this. So the coroner set up a makeshift morgue in the Greeley Armory, which was a former National Guard Training Center, and it occasionally served as an event space, and they had to use it as a morgue. The space was inadequate, I would say the least, but at least provided enough private space for the coroner and local medical providers to try to work on identifying victims. While the local Western Union office worked late into the night contacting the families of those passengers through the manifest.
That's awful. In addition, managers from the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company sent more than 40 technicians to the crash site with instructions to add as many telephone lines and equipment as were necessary for responders to complete all of their work that they were doing. Essentially, volunteers and service providers just worked nonstop to build out a literal infrastructure to respond to the strategy. They had to literally create the infrastructure as it was happening, which is pretty impressive.
It is. And you think about the time, the fact that this was so unexpected. This is very deep vibe. Very little resources.
That's very impressive. The following morning, representatives from United Airlines held a press conference to share what little they knew about the explosion and the passengers who died. The airline confirmed that by 7 a.m. all the bodies had been removed to the armory and technicians had started examining the wreckage for clues of what the fuck happened here.
The representatives declined to comment on what could have caused the explosion, saying that witness reports varied a little bit. Some saying it exploded in the air and others saying it exploded when it hit ground. One representative said, it's difficult for us to say what took place. That probably will have to be determined by the civil air and not explored.
Although they were unwilling to identify what the hell happened here, United's president, WA Patterson told the press all evidence now strongly indicates this accident resulted from an explosion in the air. Now, formed as a federal agency in 1938, the purpose of the CAB, which is the civil air and not explored, was to regulate commercial air travel in the United States. But CAB was also responsible for investigating accidents involving air travel, trying to figure out what the fuck happened and to determine who or what is at fault in these situations. After receiving the report about the explosion of flight 629, CAB dispatched a team of investigators to the site led by veteran investigator Jack partial.
Now, the biggest challenge that Jack and his team faced was how fucking huge this crash site was and how spread out it was. It was spread out for more than a mile and it was like rural land that was an active farm. So to move quickly, his team employed a new technique where the land was mapped out in a grid and every piece of debris from the wreckage was tagged with a label and marked on a grid map. That's a smart way to go about that actually.
Yeah, I thought that was really smart. It weirdly makes you think of when you're did you ever learn that in art class where you like map out a photo that you want to recreate and then you do it piece by piece by piece by piece? Yeah, that's what it made me think of. I think it's the same idea.
It's literally the same idea. Now, once everything had been tagged and mapped, the entire wreckage and every piece of debris was transported to an airplane hangar nearby where it was literally recreated exactly as it had been in the B field, laid out completely. Oh, yeah. Wow.
Because they were able to do that with the grid. So yeah, wow, it really is. So literally recreating. It's the exact same premise.
Wow. Yeah. Now, strange to picture in your mind, isn't it? Now, in his 15 years with the CAB, Jack partial had never seen anything like this.
The plane hadn't just crashed into something and you know, mangled when it hit the ground. It had been shredded by what looked like a massive blast and it sent the passengers and contents out across a six square mile area as it plummeted to the ground. Yeah. As far as partial knew, there were a few things that could have caused this kind of thing to happen.
One explanation was that and he said, it was possible that gas fumes had accumulated in a close compartment, thus causing an explosion. But he said it seemed pretty unlikely that there could have been such a substantial buildup of fumes in such a short period of time. Yeah, because it had been in the air that long at that point. And another possible explanation was that a structural flaw in the construction had caused the fuselage to break apartment air.
But this also seemed pretty unlikely since the contents had been blown out across such a big area, which indicated that there was definitely an explosion happening. Yeah, of some kind. The third and most reasonable explanation was that a combustible item, quote, negligently put aboard the plane in the cargo area had exploded. Yeah.
Now, in 1955, the idea that somebody would intentionally bomb an airliner seemed pretty fucking wild to most Americans. Like, it was unheard of. This is not so crazy because I've gone my whole life. Yeah.
I'm tired about that every single time I got on a plane, which is not unthinkable in any way, which is so it's so wild to think that you would back then, why would they think that you would ever have a time where you wouldn't be thinking about? Yeah. You know, like, I don't remember time that we weren't thinking about that. It's so yeah, that's so weird.
Yeah. Now, this again, this is not to say like it had never happened before. Like in previous years, like a number of flights in other countries had been sabotaged and blown out. Right.
And in the US, there were examples of suspected sabotage that couldn't be confirmed. And so they were labeled accidents. Like, you know, a 1933 United flight out of Chicago that exploded over Indiana. It killed all four people on board.
But again, the idea that somebody would intentionally try to kill so many people, including a toddler for any reason seemed completely unfathomable to Americans, especially. So that's why at this point, they were still looking at it as somebody negligently put something that was combustible, right? Somebody played set up on all the key picture in his trash and put which obviously was not a thing. That's all I can think of.
Now, fortunately, Jack partial wasn't most Americans. Partial had been in the industry long enough to know an explosion when he saw one. And to him, the scene looked very much like the 1949 bombing of a Canadian airliner where an explosive device was detonated in the cargo hold. In that one, it ripped an enormous hole in the side of the plane, killing all 23 people on board.
Most significantly, the explosion on flight 629 had ripped the metal of the plane outward at the cargo hold. Oh, yeah. Which suggested that something contained within the luggage section had indeed exploded. Also, the pieces of the wreckage that came from the cargo section smelled like sulfur.
Oh, which forensic chemist Charles Wilson determined to be residue from dynamite. Andrew Field said a lot of people described it as a firecracker like smell that they could detect on the metal. Finally, among the wreckage, CAB investigators took small bits of metal and copper wire that they'd finally determined to be from a timing device. So this is a straight up bombing.
Yeah, taken together, these pieces of evidence all but confirmed Jack Parcels the belief that the explosion of like 629 had indeed been intentional and intentional, which must be the last, I mean, I don't know, no answer is ever a good answer for why something like this happens. But then when you think of like somebody's set out to kill all these people, including a toddler. And why? And everybody's gone.
How do you investigate? Exactly. That's like, that was so upsetting. Now, a few days after the investigation started, chief of the CAB investigation division, James Payton told reporters, we found some things that appear unusual in our investigating the possibility of sabotage.
And this was all confirmed a few days later on November 7th in a report released by United Airlines in that they stated that authorities discovered evidence of a bomb type explosion in the number four cargo pit, which they believe to be the cause of the disaster. The report said the side walls of the compartment were pushed out in the floor pulverized and there were gunpowder type odors on sections of the compartment. In a statement to the press, Parcels said, we don't know what type of explosion that's close evidence. Frankly, we're going to have to await the results of a laboratory examination.
This is the first mid-air explosion we've encountered in some time and we're exploring it from every angle. After finding evidence of sabotage, James Payton, chief investigator of the CAB, brought the FBI in to determine if there had been a violation of a federal statute and to conclusively determine whether the plane had backed and bombed until that point investigators had been basically proceeding as though the explosion was not that they didn't want to like, they kind of knew it was intentional at this point. That's what they were leaning towards, but they couldn't definitively say it until they had concrete evidence. So they were still proceeding as if it were an accident, as if something exploded unintentionally in the cargo hood.
But it's like what? Which I think is a firecracker and exploits. So they know, but I think it's the safest way to approach it so that you can, because I think it's better to go like too less than too much. You need to add than pull back.
And you need all the information before you incite mass panic. Exactly. But with the introduction to the FBI, people were starting to be like, oh, I'm thinking this might be criminal. That would make you stretch your chin.
Yeah, the first hurdle criminal investigators needed to clear was figuring out why someone would want to blow up this plane in the first place. The first and most obvious suspects were the striking United Airlines employees whose negotiations in rhetoric had become a little hostile in the days leading up to the bombing. That would be a big escalation. That'd be fucked up.
In fact, in the days following the explosion, a representative for the Transport Workers Union went so far as to imply that, quote, United might be criminally liable for the death and suggested that all evidence be turned over to a grand jury, quote, for possible manslaughter charges. Oh, fuck. Which is like bolt. Despite all of that rhetoric, the union and striking employees cooperated very much with investigators and were very quickly ruled out as potential suspects.
That's good. And they even established a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of whoever did this. Okay, so we got to make sure different avenues. We did not do this.
The unions reward prompted United Airlines to establish its own fund for reward. And a few days later, they offered an additional $25,000 love for reward for information, which is like good. So everyone did their part here. Like it wasn't the striking workers.
Nice. If the union wasn't behind the bombing, which they were not the most likely scenario was that whoever bombed this flight had done so to kill one or more of the passengers on board. Like they had like a target. Yes, the passengers on flight 629 were a very varied group in terms of age and background.
But with the exception of a few notable businessmen, they appeared really not to have any reason that a death of any of these people would benefit anyone, you know, agents went through the like full background investigations on each passenger, they interviewed family, friends, coworkers, they went deep to determine, you know, who on the plane might have been a target. But their interviews turned up absolutely nothing, so the theory that someone was killed for like anything really was kind of flying out the window, because they even went forward and tried to see could somebody be killed for the insurance money? That went nowhere, because only two passengers, Stuart and Suzanne Morgan, bought more than the minimum coverage. Oh, and they named their teenage daughters as beneficiaries.
Right. So, yeah, they were the ones who were doing the money. So it wasn't now, while several FBI agents interviewed the friends and families of all the passengers, other agents conducted like serious interviews with airline employees at every single stop along the flight. They went deep.
Wow. Starting with its origin in New York and then moving on to the Chicago stop and finally the last stop in Denver. And it was while interviewing the baggage handlers in Chicago that agents got their first break. Okay.