Flight 7 Is Missing

by Ken H. Fortenberry

  Could the cockpit crew have become incapacitated in less than thirty minutes? Could a cabin-heater fire or malfunction have sent carbon monoxide into the cockpit and seeping into the front areas of the passenger cabin?

  Carbon monoxide poisoning is often referred to as the “silent killer.” It can’t be smelled. It can’t be seen. It can’t be tasted. But it can kill. Carbon monoxide detectors as we know them today were very much in their infancy in 1957 and were not required in aircraft—although Stratocruisers were equipped with them.

  I got in touch with Dr. Smith after rereading the report and asked for clarification of LM’s theory.

  “Even at this late stage, when I met with him [LM] in the coffee shop, we were still in the intuitive/analysis mode, still examining the probabilities,” she explained in a written response to my questions. “And very often, even during these later stages, intuitive data can be accessed. It often happens that when a viewer gets some feedback, they may have additional intuitive data emerge that might have relevance to the case. In his case he called it a theory, but it came to him spontaneously as we were discussing the case, a sort of a ‘gut hunch.’ We looked at the schematics of the plane interior and he pointed out what could have happened. Then, when I went back over the Excel file of data, I remembered that some of the dead had been recovered from the ocean with amounts of carbon monoxide in their bodies. So, of all the possibilities, the cabin-heater malfunction was deemed to be more probable.”

  She also offered this disclaimer of sorts:

  “Because the cabin heater was thought to be a strong possibility, it does not rule out any of the other scenarios. Disasters are rarely due to one cause, but there can be many contributing factors. As a rule, remote viewing is never used as the sole information source but factored into what is already known and what can be found from other investigation sources. It should be used as an adjunct to other streams of investigation. So, we are pleased if anything in the viewing helps the case. Remote viewing is not yet an exact science but, in my experience, has great application to operational work.”

  No, remote viewing is not an exact science, but that psychic experiment forced me to dig deeper into the mechanics of the Stratocruiser and look more closely into the possibility of mechanical failure, particularly a potentially fatal cabin heater fire. What I learned added credibility to LM’s theory, but what was especially surprising was that carbon monoxide poisoning caused by the cabin heater was never seriously considered as a possible cause of the crash, meriting merely a brief statement in a ten-page Civil Aeronautics Board report on the airplane’s power plant. Again, it’s important to remember that only small bits and pieces of a mammoth seventy-ton aircraft had been recovered, and no parts of either cabin heater were found.

  A. B. Hallman, a power-plant specialist with the Civil Aeronautics Board, submitted his report to his superiors on December 16, 1957, a full month before the CAB opened its public hearing on the crash. Hallman had been dispatched from Washington to San Francisco five days after the crash and had been a key member of the combined Pan American-CAB investigative team.

  Hallman’s report noted that the Stratocruiser had ten combustion heaters throughout the plane, including two Stewart-Warner conventional gas-burning cabin heaters beneath the floor immediately forward of the center section. He noted that the outside air temperature at the time of the crash was about 5 degrees Centigrade (41 degrees Fahrenheit), and that the two cabin heaters automatically turn on at that temperature.

  “Consequently, they must be considered as a possible cause of the emergency,” he stated. “With the cabin heaters in operation, fuel under pressure is routed into the fuselage rearward of the rear spar, then forward through the center section to the heaters. Thus, there could be leakage of gasoline into the fuselage with the attendant hazards.”

  Gasoline leakage with “attendant hazards.” There it was. Another possible cause for the airliner to plummet to the sea.

  He stated that if a leak had begun early in the flight, an “appreciable amount” of gas could have escaped along the line that ran under the floor, from the rear of the plane to the front, where the heaters were in an enclosed cargo area near the cockpit. The overheated, malfunctioning cabin heaters could have churned out undetectable carbon monoxide—the silent killer. The leaking gas also could have caused a below-deck fire.

  Hallman pointed out that safety devices should have protected against such an occurrence, but that on rare occasions “the most reliable protective devices fail to perform their functions.”

  Just two years earlier United Airline Flight 409, a DC-4 en route from Denver to Salt Lake City, had mysteriously crashed, killing all 66 aboard. At the time, it was the deadliest crash in the history of American commercial aviation.

  In that case, the routine flight ended when the aircraft plowed into snow-covered Medicine Bow Peak, near Laramie, Wyoming. The cause of the crash was never determined, although there was strong speculation that the crew had become incapacitated because of a faulty cabin heater. The official CAB report, however, stated plainly that no evidence had been found to support crew incapacitation.

  Hallman concluded his brief comments on the Stratocruiser’s heaters with this:

  “Based on conjecture, the cabin heater system could possibly have contributed to the cause of the emergency.”

  Possible, but still unlikely. In the case of Flight 7 crew incapacitation would have had to occur within a thirty-minute window, between the time of the last radio report, to Ocean Station November, and the estimated time of the crash. It would have required a huge concentration of carbon monoxide—about .40, or 4,000 parts per million—to render the four-man crew unconscious in that short a time period.

  In 2013 the Federal Aviation Administration published a safety bulletin entitled Carbon Monoxide: A Deadly Menace, stating that “toxicology samples from fatal US aircraft accidents between 1967 and 1993 showed that at least 360 victims had been exposed to sufficient carbon monoxide before or after the crash to impair their abilities. Non-fatal carbon monoxide poisoning in aviation is likely a more common occurrence than currently believed.”

  The cabin-heater-fire theory was an interesting combination of psychic and mechanical possibilities, but despite exhaustive research, I could find no verification of pilot-viewer LM’s claim of “frequent cracks” in cabin-heater metal resulting in carbon monoxide leaking into a Stratocruiser cabin. In fact, I couldn’t find even one incident. Zero. Although I discovered a few cases in which breaks and leaks had occurred in fuel lines leading to the wing heaters in the early 1950s, modifications to the equipment had corrected the problem.

  Upon further research I learned that even if the cabin heater had somehow malfunctioned and all of the backup safety devices failed, the carbon monoxide concentration in the cabin would not have been sufficient to produce enough of the poisonous gas to incapacitate the crew or render the passengers unconscious.

  Unless an onboard fire had caused carbon monoxide poisoning, ignited perhaps by a thrown prop that instantly tore through the cabin, triggering a chain of uncontrollable events, the malfunctioning-cabin-heater theory could be dismissed.

  That brought me back to the remote viewing, and although I still thought it was nonsense, I wondered: What if someone had destroyed the plane with a time bomb and had never gotten on board? What if that person gave someone his airline ticket to Hawaii and that person boarded in his place? What if that someone was lodge owner William Harrison Payne? That would mean he not only got away with murder, but that he likely fled California and started a new life somewhere else, probably with the assistance of his “widow,” who split the insurance proceeds with him.

  In one of the RV sessions, Dr. Smith’s viewers had been given scant information about a character who was given the name Western John, and who was a composite match for Payne. In March 2016 she tasked thirteen trained viewers with the blind task of providing data on Western John’s appearance, character, and possible wh
ereabouts today.

  The viewers’ perceptions were chilling and indicated that Western John might still be alive and living somewhere in South America.

  One viewer, also an accomplished artist, created a sketch of the potential location of Western John. Another, a skilled dowser, came up with a potential location that matched the viewers’ perceptions. Finally, a viewer who was a forensic sketch artist provided drawings of Western John.

  Dr. Smith summarized Western John like this:

  “WJ is described as a male with dark or brown hair and wearing a plaid shirt with dark trousers, sensible shoes and sometimes shorts. He is described as sick and maybe on oxygen or an assisted-breathing device. He is not alone but with others, at least one woman, and children. The local people are described as having dark complexions with straight, dark hair. Obviously, someone is caring for him. WJ is described as an armed and dangerous man. The woman with him is very protective and possibly armed; she warns people that the area is off-limits. The male smokes and may trade with Mexico. The male may have parachuted into the location. He is sick and may have had a heart attack. He is described as anxious about 'being attacked.' It is unclear whether WJ is still alive, but if he is, he is very sick, probably having had a heart attack and with a lung disorder needing oxygen.”

  Three viewers provided additional information about Western John; one labeled him “a sociopath with a chameleon personality.” Another said he was “detached,” with a “rigid, no-nonsense personality.” A third said he was “controlling, nonaccepting and judgmental. He had a mean streak.” Another said he had been in the military but was now dead, the result of an accident or murder.

  So where was Western John if he were still alive? Dave Pawlowski again contracted with Dr. Smith, this time to “triangulate on the end point for Western John. Where did he end up?”

  “Many of the viewers perceived, wrote about and sketched a very similar location,” Dr. Smith concluded in her written report. “It has several levels. At the base level is water, described by some as the ocean, by others as fresh water. The beach area is rocky with rounded boulders. This leads to an area that is habitable with structures. . . . Beyond the habitable area are steep cliffs, leading to an area that is volcanic with at least one active volcano. There are roadways and paths and tunnels in the mountains. The location is hot and green. In the habitable area are trees, plants and green grass. The area is rural and old . . . and there is a waterfall.”

  The viewers provided other detailed descriptions of the area where Western John might have fled to after the crash. One in particular grabbed my attention:

  “In addition to this site being a residential location, it is possible that there is mining in progress. Several viewers mention openings into the hillside that remind them of a mine. However, the mine, if it is that, is not very productive or active. There are indications that some sort of biological, such as tobacco or marijuana, is grown, dried and sold from this location to Mexico.”

  Mining and Payne: a natural connection.

  Using something called Extended Remote Viewing, LM, the so-called expert dowser, zeroed in on Peru, southern Colombia, or Ecuador as the last location of Western John. He determined that Ecuador was a 60 percent probability, then turned his backyard into a giant map and “dowsed for a refined position.”

  He found that the area around Laguna Pisayambo, Ecuador, was a particularly good match, because it had nearly all the physical features the viewers had described, including rounded rocks, steep cliffs, mining, a waterfall, and a nearby active volcano.

  Could William Harrison Payne, aka Western John, have settled in Ecuador after the crash of Romance of the Skies and lived happily ever after with his share of the insurance money?

  Three months after the viewers initially reported their perceptions, Dr. Smith asked “CB,” a person she described as a “skilled intuitive artist who has provided accurate sketches of criminal suspects,” to sketch Western John.

  Unfortunately, there are no known photographs of Payne, but remarkably, the sketch CB provided bore an unmistakable resemblance to Crosthwaite, the Pan Am purser aboard Flight 7.

  What happened during the process of drawing the sketch was even more stunning.

  “As I began to draw his eyes—the first thing I always draw for a suspect’s face—I began to see, feel and sense undiagnosed mental and emotional issues,” CB stated in his written report. “I came close to writing right on the paper ‘mild schizophrenia and borderline personality disorder.’ The person of interest is a white male, slightly exotic looking, of British and Scandinavian ancestry. I feel he is in his mid-30s, but I will give him the range of 32-45.”

  That, too, sounded like Crosthwaite.

  Then something even stranger occurred:

  “As I drew his left cheek and touched the paper to smudge, add shading, and tapped with my pencil, I felt swelling near his left cheekbone that may have been the result of a fight from several days earlier.

  “As I was drawing, my pencil fell out of my hand (this virtually never happens) and it caused a mark on the paper in the upper right that—from a distance—resembles an unidentified object. This may be nothing, but I left it in.”

  CB planned to send Dr. Smith the sketch as soon as he had completed it, but his instincts told him to wait twenty-four hours and “allow myself the opportunity to sleep and possibly dream.”

  “Glad I did this, as I had a very vivid dream last night in which I watched a man, not unlike my drawing, walking around a house that I didn’t recognize, which had a lot of older furniture, setting fire to pieces of paper and setting several rooms in the house on fire.”

  Again, that sounded like Crosthwaite on the night he had burned papers from his files in the fireplace.

  Still, although I enjoyed reading the psychics’ visions, I was unconvinced and closed the door once and for all on remote viewing. I did, however, again ask the international police agency INTERPOL to check and see if Payne’s fingerprints had surfaced since 1957, when he presumably died in the crash. There was a chance, although extremely remote, that he was still alive, although he would have been 104 years old.

  INTERPOL has not responded.

  Spies and a Foiled Assassination

  Exploring every possible angle in the search for my father’s killer meant that in addition to investigating the more obvious suspects, I needed to look into more obscure possibilities, including this: could the plane have been brought down by agents of a foreign government or, worse still, by our own? Could one of the US government military or civilian employees onboard have been the target of foreign adversaries or have been intentionally silenced by the Central Intelligence Agency or another federal agency because of what he knew or what he might tell someone?

  Three people aboard the aircraft deserved more scrutiny: India-bound US State Department employee Philip Sullivan and two men headed to Burma: US Air Force Major Harold Sunderland and US Information Agency attaché Thomas Henry McGrail.

  Labor adviser Sullivan, a former missionary and educator in China, had been on government business in San Francisco for a few days prior to the flight and was en route with his wife, Bess, to New Delhi as part of the US delegation to the International Labor Organization’s Asian Regional Conference. On the surface that seemed reasonably insignificant, so I concentrated on the other men and what, if any, reasons might have existed for them to be targeted for political assassination, as far-fetched as that might seem.

  Fifty-two-year-old Dover, New Hampshire, native McGrail seemed an unlikely target. A former English professor at the University of New Hampshire, he had left academia during World War II and was commissioned in the US Army, serving first in combat in the Pacific, then with Allied occupation forces running the government in Japan. He left the Army as a lieutenant colonel and joined the State Department, where he became a specialist in Middle Eastern and Far Eastern affairs. He served two terms as the cultural attaché at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, before re
turning to the United States, where he was assigned to Washington. He was en route to his new post as cultural attaché in Rangoon, Burma, at the time of the crash. Like Sullivan, McGrail didn’t seem to fit the profile of a target for assassination.

  Harold Edward Sunderland, however, was another matter. His life, not unlike the reason he boarded Romance of the Skies that November day, remains a bit of a mystery. That mystery is compounded by the fact that a devastating July 12, 1973, fire at the National Personnel Records Center in Kansas City destroyed about 18 million military personnel records, including those of Sunderland.

  A Sheridan, Wyoming, native, Sunderland grew up on his family’s ranch in Powder River County, Montana, and joined the Army in 1940. He apprenticed as a mechanic at the Army Air Depot in Sacramento, California, and by 1943 was in the middle of World War II battle action. He served with the North African Air Force Troop Command, an Army Air Corps organization created to work with Britain’s Royal Air Force in support of ground and naval forces battling in North Africa and the Mediterranean.

  Tech Sergeant Sunderland was awarded the Air Medal for his efforts during the invasion of Sicily in 1943, and later was awarded an Oak Leaf Cluster (equivalent to a second Air Medal) for other meritorious service.

  His postwar history is largely unknown, but sometime after the war he earned a pilot’s license, and by 1948 he was stationed at Bolling Field outside Washington, D.C. It was a choice assignment for Sunderland, as it was home to the first headquarters of a new US military branch: the United States Air Force. In March, he married Maria Isotta Analone, a thirty-one-year-old insurance-company secretary, in nearby Arlington, Virginia. He listed his occupation as a pilot, not a military officer, on his marriage-license application.

  His job at Bolling Field is unknown, but sometime between 1948 and 1957 he transitioned from being a pilot into what the Air Force describes as an “information gatherer.” In short, Sunderland became a military spy, and was assigned to a US Air Force Special Activities Squadron at Fort Myer, Virginia, which also housed the Strategic Intelligence School, where military personnel were taught everything from the duties of a military attaché to specialized spy photography and other intelligence-gathering techniques.