AERONAUTICS: City of San Francisco

Like the wreck of the Titanic, the crash of Transcontinental Air Transport's City of Sau Francisco in New Mexico last week was relatively one of the world's great commercial disasters. It was the first bad one on a U. S. Trans- continental air line. The great trimotored Ford with five passengers and crew of three flew west from Albuquerque, N. Mex., into an electrical storm and oblivion.

First presumption was that lightning had struck the plane, as it struck Major John Wood's plane at Needles, killing him. Relatives prayed for the passengers: Mrs. Corina A. Raymond, wife of George B. Raymond, T. A. T. clerk at Glendale, Cal.; Amasa B. McGaffey, rich Albuquerque lumberman; Harris Livermore, Boston shipping man; Mark M. Campbell, Cincinnati paper salesmanager; William Henry Beers of Manhattan, editor of Golf Illustrated. The crew included Pilot Jesse B. Stowe, Co-Pilot Edwin F. A. Dietel, Courier C. F. Canfield.

T. A. T. suspended service to send every plane on the search. Col. Lind- bergh, the line's technical advisor, and his wife flew from Long Island to hunt. The aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga sent ten planes from San Diego harbor; the Army sent squadrons from Texas, California, Nebraska. Western Air Express pilots, keeping up their service, had orders to deviate from their fixed routes to scan remote terrain.

At the week's end Western Air Express Pilot George K. Rice saw, high up in the forests on Mt. Taylor, 11,289-ft. extinct volcano on the Continental Divide, midway between Albuquerque and Gallup, what seemed small patches of snow. He flew low. In the sunlight, midst trees, gleamed pieces of duralumin. In Pilot Rice's words: "Then we saw the left wing of the plane where it had been cut off by striking a tree. The wing was turned upside down and we could read the [license] numbers 9649. The balance of the plane we saw about 100 yards beyond this point. The plane had caught fire. . . the cabin was in ashes. . ."