Flying into a mountain

Topo map: USGS; doomed flight, June, 1965; click on map

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES. I don’t seem to remember much from my childhood. I do remember the family occasionally going to drive-ins to see such movies as “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963), "Prudence and the Pill" (1968) (gosh dad, what's this movie about?) and, later, “Catch-22” (1970).

I really loved Catch-22. I was 14 or 15. I recall talking about it with my dad into the night. He seemed happy that I was moved by the film. He was encouraging me to think, feel.

I vaguely recall one odd moment in 1965, just before my tenth birthday. Very early in the morning, my father woke us up and told us that a big jet had crashed in the mountains, just a few miles away. It had carried soldiers, he said.

It was a foggy, drizzly night. I stared out the window. I really didn't know what this event meant. It seemed to mean a lot to my dad. (Note: there've been over 70 plane crashes in the Santa Ana Mountains in the last century or so.)

LOMA RIDGE. The worst air disaster in California history occurred at 1:46 a.m. on June 25, 1965. A Boeing C-135 Stratolifter was transporting soldiers to Vietnam. The flight had started in New Jersey and had stopped at El Toro Marine Base. It was supposed to continue west to Hickam Air Force Base near Honolulu, but it never got there.

Runway 34R at El Toro Marine Base points north, right into foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains called Loma Ridge, which rises in some places to over 1,500 feet before petering out in the cities of Tustin and Orange.

As Anthony Pignataro explained in an article in 2000,

 

…Marines leaving Runway 34 always made an immediate left turn to avoid the 1,500-foot Loma Ridge that lies just four miles north of the base. The transport aircraft in the 1965 crash didn't do that. Instead, that plane—operating in near-blind conditions just before 2 a.m.—flew straight into the ridge.

Why Air Force Captain William F. Cordell, the aircraft's pilot, did that remains a mystery: the portion of the official Marine Corps accident report detailing causality is redacted (a standard procedure in military crash reports). But local commercial pilots studying the crash surmise that Cordell was about 30 seconds late in banking left—half the time it takes to reheat a cup of coffee in the microwave. (He Who Forgets History is a Damned Fool, 3/9/00)

83 servicemen died. There were no survivors.

Because of the weather, and despite the brilliant orange flash caused by the crash, search and rescue didn’t find the crash site for four hours. It was just 150 feet below the top of the ridge. Just over the ridge was Irvine Lake. (See topo map above and photo below.)

When it hit, the plane was going about 300 mph at about 1,150 feet. Wreckage was strewn for at least a mile.

According to press reports from the time,“…the plane hit below the crest of an S-shaped ridge, tearing into the earth and skidding to the top. The tail apparently catapulted upward, flinging bodies, luggage and wreckage over two higher hills.” The report, in the LA Times, goes on to say; “…the body of a crewman, possibly the pilot, lay in a 10-ft piece of cockpit 300 yards from the impact point. A hunk of wing lay 100 yards closer to impact, and a piece of engine was all that could be identified at the crash point.” (Tragic Trail)

Most available reports of the crash list the number of dead at 84. In fact, however, 83 died. One soldier who was supposed to be on the flight arrived late, too late to stop the plane, but just in time to watch it take off.

"Eighteen seconds later, I saw a ball of orange flame," he later said. The event appears to have ruined this fellow's life. For an account of his experiences, see Nick Schou’s Memorial Daze (OC Weekly, 5/26/05).

(Here’s a link to a UPI story entitled El Toro Marine Air Station, CA Air Disaster Kills 84, published the day after the crash.)

THE EL TORO AIRPORT. According to Pignataro, when, in the 1990s, Big Money types like George Argyros pushed to have the El Toro base converted into a commercial airport, the plan was to keep 34R and have large planes head straight for Loma Ridge, where, with enough effort, they would just barely clear the hill. (See.)

Critics noted the obvious: the 1965 crash. But officials, says Pignataro, “said they’d never heard of the crash,” despite a full-page spread about it in the OC Register (“The Deadliest OC Disaster,” June 24, 1995).

Further, the accident was never mentioned in the county's 1996 Draft Environmental Impact Report.

Pignataro notes that, following the 1965 crash, the Marines “imposed a ban on almost all transport flights from Runway 34.”

It’s Orange County, Jake.

From OC History Roundup: site of the crash, near Irvine Lake, Santiago Canyon Rd.

* * * * *

FLIGHT OF THE P-1. Less than two weeks after the Loma Ridge disaster, another plane crash occurred, this one in Imperial County—that’s east of San Diego County, alongside the Arizona border. The crash took the life of famed stunt pilot and Balboa Island resident Paul Mantz.

Mantz was filming the final scenes of Robert Aldrich’s action-adventure movie, “The Flight of the Phoenix,” a childhood favorite:

Flying sequences for the film would be provided by Tallmantz Aviation Inc., the popular motion-picture stunt-flying company run by legendary movie pilots Frank Tallman and Paul Mantz. The company, formed in 1961, was based out of Orange County Airport … and had provided Hollywood filmmakers with a number of thrilling aeronautical feats and stunts, including the ones performed in 1963’s It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, in which Frank Tallman flew a plane … through an open-ended airport hanger, a highway billboard (advertising Coca-Cola) and, once finally on the ground, into the glass-sided wall of an airport restaurant. (Notable California Aviation Disasters.)

The film ends with Jimmy Stewart’s character flying an airplane, made from parts of a crashed cargo plane, out of the desert and to safety. Frank Tallman was supposed to do the flying, but he had received an injury to his leg while playing with his young son’s go-kart.

That’s right. Go-kart.

So Mantz did the flying:

Joining Mantz for the flight would be Bobby Rose, the “Dean of Hollywood stuntmen,” who would stand behind Mantz in the open cockpit and double for actor Hardy Kruger….

… Mantz and Rose took off from the airport at Yuma, Arizona, for the scheduled 7:00 a.m. call and flew to the nearby filming location at Buttercup Valley. On the first pass the P-1 rose into the air too far beyond the range of the first camera, so Mantz circled around to make another attempt.

As Mantz came in on his second low pass, the P-1 gradually descended, making an unplanned touchdown on the hardened, sandy ground of the desert. This jarring impact triggered a structural failure of the aircraft’s tail boom section, snapping the P-1’s fuselage in two immediately behind the wings. The aircraft began breaking up, with the heavier nose and open cockpit section somersaulting forward while catapulting the now-detached tail section over and past the forward section. Stuntman Bobby Rose was flung from the crash and survived with a broken shoulder and pelvis, but Paul Mantz was killed instantly, crushed as the heavy nose section rolled over on itself.

The entire crash sequence was captured on film by the movie crew, providing investigators with a dramatic and vivid account of how the crash occurred. (Notable California Aviation Disasters.)

FRANK TALLMAN SMASHES INTO SANTIAGO PEAK. Amazingly, Frank Tallman’s go-kart injury became infected and his leg was amputated. But that didn't slow him down:

Undaunted, he taught himself to fly with one leg and returned to stunting. Within a year he had requalified as a pilot of aircraft ranging from helicopters to military fighter planes. He became the first amputee to hold all FAA licenses. (Notable California Aviation Disasters.)

Thirteen years later, Tallman died in yet another crash, this one in the Santa Ana Mountains, not far from where I now sit (at this moment, I'm looking at Santiago Peak, at about where Tallman crashed):

Famed stunt pilot Frank Tallman was killed two days shy of his 59th birthday when his twin-engine Piper PA-23 Aztec … crashed near the top of the 3,500-foot Bell Ridge [actually, Santiago Pk.] in the Santa Ana Mountains of rural Orange County during a rainstorm….

The nearest weather station to the crash site was reporting a 600-foot overcast and heavy rain at the time of the accident. Tallman was flying VFR (visual flight rules) in what the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) deemed were IFR (instrument flight rules) conditions.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies located the wreckage of the plane near Santiago Peak in the Cleveland National Forest at about 7:00 a.m. the following morning, April 16. An extensive search had been initiated by deputies, Orange County fire personnel, the Civil Air Patrol and a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter after several ground stations in the region had picked up an emergency radio signal around midnight.

Tallman, who was flying alone, was found dead in the cockpit, still secured by his seatbelt.

Among his legendary work was his flying for the film—Catch-22!

Mediation, meditation. Whatever

Gotta love the OC Register. I opened the Reg website this morning and read the headline:

UCI wants $8 million for place to meditate

To meditate? Well, OK. So I clicked on the link, and that took me to an article entitled,

UCI wants $8 million for place to mediate

To mediate? Well, that’s very different, isn’t it? And mediation does seem to be a need over there. Meditation? Not so much.

Then I read the story. It was back to “meditate,” I guess. (Or is it “mediate”?):

UC Irvine is proposing an “unmatched” plan to help students of different religious, racial, cultural and political backgrounds to interact more peacefully — construction of an $8 million Center for Awareness, Reflection and Meditation.

The privately and publicly funded center, says a university document, is “among the highest priorities” of (UCI) Chancellor Michael V. Drake, M.D.

“The mission of the center will be to foster contemplation, self-reflection, and quiet thought and, in the process, promote awareness of and conscientious action by discovering common ground and communicating in an open and respectful manner while practicing good citizenship on campus.”
. . .
The planning document says the proposed center would “build on the strong foundation laid and the lessons learned through such programs as the Olive Tree Initiative. Founded in 2007, the Olive Tree Initiative was established by UC Irvine students working closely with Chancellor Drake and Vice Chancellor (Manuel) Gomez to discuss constructively and respectfully conditions and issues in Israel and Palestine.”….

The comments are all that we’ve come to expect from Reg readers. For instance, “chris zierer” says:

You just can’t make stuff like this up! Only with a liberal uh I mean progressive world view could you find a more asinine way to waste private and more importantly public resources!!!!!

“Cheryl” says:

Unbelievable. These people need a job in the “real” world. They have obviously been lost in academia.

Some readers referred to the planned “meditation” center. Others referred to the planned “mediation” center.

I don’t think they know the difference.

And I’m wondering about this Drake fella too.

Free advertising!

OK, we admit it. This one’s our fault.

Yesterday, when she learned that Gustavo “Ask a Mexican” Arellano was among the three names forwarded to Irvine Valley College President Glenn Roquemore for selection as the 2010 commencement speaker—Rebel Girl nominates the fellow every year, and this is the first year in which he made the finals—she quickly emailed him to tell ‘im the good news.

Seconds earlier, the Reb had been mocking—in a lighthearted way—the curious fact that the recently-distributed flier for IVC’s celebration of Black History Month sported images of various Africans and African-Americans, like — Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi?

The Mockery of Gaffery (—of gaffery that seems to reveal racial insensitivity or cluelessness) is one of the Reb’s favorite things. Sometimes, she choreographs mock-a-thons as though they were necessary, like praying to Mecca, or, in Orange County, invoking the memory of St. Ronald.

In truth, however, this goof was pretty dang funny. Gandhi a black man? Gandhi?! So I joined in the fun. Others did too. T’wern’t just me. (And we weren't mocking any people—we had no idea who created this thing; we focused on the flier.)

I suppose that the flier was sent out by Diane Oaks (Director of Public Info & Marketing). She and her crew, I know, are good, professional and hard-working people, and so I don’t want to point fingers and cause ‘em any grief. It would take a lot to bring us to do that—a truly egregious flub—and this isn’t that at all.

A few minutes later, while the Reb was composing an email to Gustavo for a second time, we received a spam email from Roquemore that announced that one of the other two nominees had been selected. The State Chancellor, I think. Dang!

“I bet he’s a Republican,” I said.

Earlier, the Reb had hatched a plan: first, to expect the big shot State Chancellor* to be selected right out of the gate. That's a lead pipe cinch. But surely he’d turn down this little speaking gig. Then Roquemore would move down to choice #2, an acquaintance of the Reb's. (We knew that Roquemore would never willingly choose Gustavo, who is so manifestly unRepublican, what with his fixation on suppressed and forgotten unfluffy facts.)

The Reb’s plan: to get #2 on the horn before Roquemore did and tell 'em, “Hey, could you wait until next year? When the Prez calls, say you can't do it!”

“Sure, girlfriend!”

That would leave Gustavo as the unavoidable choice. Bingo!

Nice, eh?

“We can ask ‘im to be especially obnoxious!” I said.

Just then, Francisco walked by. “You won’t have to!” he joked. Yup, Gustavo is a pretty edgy guy, by Republican standards. I mean, he knows local history and he's in the habit of tellin' it like it was.

That's seriously unRepublican, dude.

“Maybe he could talk about the Orange Diocese and their pedophile priests!” offered the Reb, laughing.

“Tom Fuentes wouldn't even show up, would he?”

“No f*cking way!”

Har har har!

—It was all in good fun. Really it was. Just having a few yucks.

So the Reb was in the middle of her second email to Gustavo, and we were still joking around. I said: “Gosh, didn’t you just write him about being a finalist? And ten minutes later, you’re gonna lower the boom on ‘im?”

Well, if anybody can take a joke, it’s Gustavo. Rebel Girl said something. I got distracted by a bug or a carpet stain or mold or something.

At some point, not really thinking, I said, “Tell ‘im about that goofy flier!”

We both laughed. Har har har.

Now, who’d o’ thunk that the darned guy would follow up on this dinky “Afro-Gandhi” anecdote?

—Well, um, he's done just that.

Irvine Valley College Celebrates Black History Month with Gandhi, Graffiti Wall, Double Obamas!

Oh, the racialist merriment of the South Orange County Community College District never end[s]! We've previously written about Saddleback College's gaucho-masquerading-as-bandito, and now Irvine Valley College has gotten into the simplistic-approach-to-race game so endemic in Orange County. IVC spokesperson Diane Oaks sent out a campus-wide email yesterday advertising the juco's Feb. 24 Black History Month celebration. Attached was a flyer (above) that is...interesting.

For starters: exactly how is Mahatma Gandhi black?

Yes, Gandhi inspired the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, but there are hundreds of other African-Americans that most folks would put on a poster of notables before the martyr for a Black History Month poster. Whoever made this flyer didn't even have to look far for another face.
. . .
What's worst about these efforts, though, is the urging of students to leave their thoughts about Black History Month on a "graffiti wall." You can make the argument such a move stereotypes blacks as criminals, but my bigger concern is that dumbass coeds will leave nasty remarks about African-American students on it—such harassment has happened at Saddleback College in the not-so-distant past, with less of an invitation.

But the one part of the flyer that's not foolish? Soul food for the IVC celebration. Drudge and his pals might've tried to make a big scandal of NBC serving such grub for their Black History Month celebration, but come on: you're not going to eat pizza for St. Patrick's Day, or kielbasa on Cinco de Mayo. Now, let's see if IVC can sneak in Jackie Robinson into the flyer...

OK, Diane, et al. Gustavo isn’t really being mean here. He gets lots meaner. Really. This is practically nothing. It's practically less than nothing, almost.

And did you notice he praised the "soul food" idea? And you guys used such great fonts! The whole thing really pops!

(I don't think any of us found the "graffiti wall" idea troubling at all. And why not use two images of Obama? These darned kids won't recognize anybody else anyway. Maybe next time add Will Smith and Kobe Bryant. Yeah.)

OK?

And, yes, it’s all my fault. I’ll take the hit. Loose lips sink ships.

But look on the bright side!

Free advertising!

*I looked him up. State Chancellor Jack Scott is actually a Democrat!

We haven’t got a prayer

From the latest issue of Bob Park’s “What’s New”:

Prayer: California Supreme Court rejects superstition:

Bruce Flamm, obstratician and skeptic, fought a millionaire fertility/prayer clinic operator through the California court system and won. The case involved the notorious "Columbia prayer study," in which it
was claimed that prayer increased the success rate of fertility treatments.

Flamm demanded the study be withdrawn. Qwang Cha, the millionaire clinic operator, lost at every level but kept appealing the judgment in the belief that Flamm must inevitably fold.

Bruce Flamm doesn’t fold.

Last week the California Supreme Court refused to consider the Appeals Court decision against Cha.

The boat is sinking faster than we are bailing:

A Special Section of Science magazine this week is devoted to the problem of feeding "an expected population of 9 billion in 2050."

Expected by whom? In the last 40 years, the population [of the planet] has doubled. If it doubles again in then ext 40 the population would be closer to 14 billion. In the entire issue of Science, I did not see a single mention of population control.

In 1798, the Rev. Robert Thomas Malthus, British scholar and clergyman, observed that animals typically produce far more offspring than are required for replacement. This helps to ensure survival of the species, as Darwin noted 50 years later citing Malthus. To avoid excessive population, Malthus
urged "restraint," but the reproductive instinct is far more powerful than Malthusian logic.

I cannot do better than to once again quote Norman Borlaug’s acceptance speech on the occasion of winning the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for the Green Revolution. It bears repeating:

"We are dealing with two opposing forces, the scientific power of food production and the biologic power of human reproduction. Man has made amazing progress recently in his potential mastery of these two contending powers...there can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort."

This, it is clear from the Special Section, has not yet happened.

It's good to smile

• Dear Orly Taitz: what the f*ck? (YouTube) ... “You claim a mystifying combination of professions: lawyer, dentist, real estate agent…”....

• A miscellany of new words and phrases (New York Times) ... “i am a vegetarian with a most discriminating palate, i am a finnickytarian"....

• Community College Offers Students a Guarantee: a Job or Your Money Back (Chronicle of HE) ... The offer applies to only four programs: pharmacy technician, customer-service call-center workers, certified quality inspectors, and home-technology-integration technicians....
• Bolivia to launch satellite into space (Guardian) ... The impoverished South American country, famed more for llamas and Andean peaks than technology, has created a space agency to build and launch a satellite with Chinese help....
• Stunning arial 9-11 photos (Daily News) ... Good Lord, they're for sale!

Another great band, early 80s:


Another band from roughly the same era--perhaps 4 years earlier: Gang of Four. My favorite song of theirs is “I found that essence rare.”

I couldn’t find a decent YouTube video of that song, but you can listen to it here:

Aim for the body rare, you'll see it on TV
The worst thing in 1954 was the Bikini
See the girl on the TV dressed in a Bikini
She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb
For the H-Bomb!

I found that essence rare, it's what I looked for
I knew I'd get what I asked for....

• The Smiths (1982-1987)
• The Violent Femmes (1982-1986)
• The Gang of Four (1977-1982)

Howard Zinn? No, not an Astronaut

Professor No-It-All Gets Attitudinous! Answering Questions That You Never Actually Asked, Yet Ever So Helpfully!

Today’s lecture: I See Dead People. I See Dumb People (And Hear Them, Too)

            Gotta love those otherwise intuitively skeptical, pro-liberation listeners to KPFK (90.7 FM), the non-corporate alternative Pacifica network community radio station which features the BiblioFella on his modest weekly books show. The station is just now fundraising to stay on the air as the singular independent, reality-based community arts and public affairs media outlet in Southern California. Most KPFK supporters seem to at least try, heroically, to stay on that reality-based track, even as status quotidians, mystics, hucksters, New Agers and conspiracy theory types hoe their own row on the rest of the dial and NPR struggles to become a “mainstream” news source, abandoning its original premise of 1970s citizen-owned corrective to the media monopoly. 

              KPFK plays hours and hours of lectures and talks by — and interviews of — Noam Chomsky, Martin King, Harold Myerson, Arundhati Roy, David Corn, Naomi Klein, Barbara Ehrenreich, all practitioners of critical thinking — as against so much of the nonsense offered by the commercial news machine. 

             Still, as if fated with flying monkeys stuck on their backs, even some KPFK listeners cannot shake the ideological weight of the “spiritual” and the religious, especially in language and metaphor. The credulous — religious believers, “truthers,” miracle health cure disciples, positive thinkers — have little room in their brains or conversation for more than one metaphor, more than one book, their Book or construction or theory.  This figurative language-based ideology — often expressed in the assumption of a supernatural — shapes their vernacular and so, their thinking. Unthinking. All can be explained, if only we ignore, well, everything else and embrace some phrase, some rhetorical paradigm, usually exactly the opposite of what we mean. 

            Time, then, for some intellectual self-defense.  (Don't say I never gave you anything!) The tyranny of monotheism and other exclusivist thinking is the easiest controlling metaphor to hear, if only we will listen for it and talk back, interrupt — politely of course. But nobody talks back. Here’s your chance. Next time a religionist or spiritualist tells you he or she admires representative democracy, embracing it while they live here on Earth (about 78 years, average), ask them how we can believe them. Ask them, politely, how we can trust their commitment to representative democracy since they aspire to dwell after death in a place called Eternity (a lot longer!) not as voters or activists in a democracy but as subjects in a monarchy, with a lord and king telling them what to do. Hard to reconcile, no? 

            Yes, actually. Very hard. Meanwhile, back at KPFK, on Monday afternoon a caller to “Reality Check with Harrison,” a funny news and commentary show, reported that she’d learned Professor Howard Zinn (1922-2010) had died. But, no, she didn’t actually say that. Instead, she offered that he’d “left the planet.” Left the planet? In fact, he’d had a heart attack. It happens, to all of us, and I mourn his death.  

            Professor No-it-allovich’s favorite anecdotal aside: At a memorial service for his friend the poet Allen Ginsberg, the late Kurt Vonnegut began his remarks with this wonderfully droll and humane caution to his audience: “Please, please, please. Nobody else die!” Funny. (And, no Vonnegut is not so much late himself now as he is dead.  See actual photo, above!)

             So: Howard Zinn did not leave the planet. He is not visiting faraway galaxies, did not go to heaven, and will not come back as an animal or a spirit or a king. He lived, he struggled, and he was a really smart, empathetic and brave person. And then his body stopped living. I miss him.  

            Yuri, Alan, Valentina, John, Neil and Buzz “left the planet,” via the Vostok and Mercury and Apollo programs, but they came back. They were cosmonauts and astronauts. Howard Zinn? He was a radical historian. He was not an astronaut, and neither are you, friend. Next week:  Herbal Tea Partiers.        

James B. Utt remembered

Earlier today, a reader offered these observations and memories of Congressman James B. Utt, the man for whom the Saddleback College LIBRARY was named:

I am not aware that Congressman Utt was a bigot.* Most who knew him personally thought he was a soft-spoken, mild-mannered country gentleman. He was not the typical politician who talked out of both sides of his mouth. One always knew where she/he stood with Utt – what you saw is what you got. He was respected by all who came in contact with him, agree with him or not.

True, he, like many other conservatives, felt that membership in the U.N. did not serve the best interests of the U.S.

In February 1970, just a couple of weeks before his death on March 1, Utt attended the three-year anniversary celebration of the founding of the Saddleback [Community College District]. On a long walk around the campus, he and Vogel discussed the future of the district. It was at that time Vogel told Utt that the trustees had decided to name the first permanent structure – the library – in his honor. Upon hearing this he was quite humble and expressed his gratitude. He was, obviously, very pleased.

Upon hearing of his death, the trustees were happy that he had become aware of the honor that they were going to bestow upon him.

Be kind, please. Leave it be. He died 40 years ago, ten days short of his 71st birthday.

*According to the OC Almanac, in 1963, “U.S. Congressman James B. Utt [made] national news by suggesting that ‘a large contingent of barefooted Africans’ might be training in Georgia as part of a United Nations military exercise to take over the U.S.” See also here.