DISASTER: No Sign of Life

After an all-night negotiating session, the ten-day-old strike at United Air Lines was over and 900 pilots manned their planes. At San Francisco, Captain James R. Appleby, 32, a veteran of eleven years with the company, was the second man off eastbound, roared up into the night headed for Denver and Chicago. On board the huge DC-6, his 45 passengers, among them a mother & father with their three children, settled back with pillows and magazines for the ten-hour flight.

At 1:56 a.m., the radio at the Denver tower crackled into life. Captain Appleby was south of Cheyenne, Wyo. at 8,500 feet and letting down to land at Denver. That was all anyone ever heard from him. Twelve hours later, search planes spotted the still-smoldering wreckage splattered along the slopes of 10,500-foot Crystal Mountain near Fort Collins, Colo. The DC-6, some 40 miles off its course, had glided into the mountain side at the 8,600-foot level, furrowed a 50-foot-wide path through the pines, skipped a ravine and disintegrated in a burst of flame half a mile beyond. A rescue party labored up the mountain to the scene of the crash, radioed back a too-familiar message: "No sign of life."