“Business was still excellent, but the number of new orders was falling off. The producers insisted this was because of competition from the new low-priced jets. They insisted that ACA could only prevail in the market by moving into the jet age.
“This was anathema to Craycroft, of course. He wouldn’t have a jet on a platter: He hated them.
“The end was inevitable. Craycroft and Ryterband were forced to divest themselves of control of the company. They sold their twenty-six percent of it to the producers, who promptly went public. ACA is a thriving corporation today, well invested in jet aircraft development and sales, but the partners who created the company were frozen out in nineteen sixty-nine and have had nothing to do with it since then.
“A small Long Island concern, Aeroflight, Incorporated, had been struggling along for years selling aircraft of its own design to the private-aviation market-mainly two- and four-seater monoplanes for the weekend-flier trade. It had never given Cessna or Piper any cause for alarm but for several years Aeroflight had been doing a steady little business in lightplane sales. The president and chief designer of Aeroflight was a man named Samuel Spaulding, who in World War Two had been a maintenance engineer under Craycroft’s command.
“Spaulding had been following the ACA case in the financial trade publications. When he learned of the ouster of Craycroft and Ryterband, he made contact with them and arranged a meeting.
“The conference took place November sixteenth, nineteen sixty-nine, in Aeroflight’s offices on the company’s private factory and airfield near Brook-haven, Long Island. Its result was that Craycroft and Ryterband joined Aeroflight.
“The brothers-in-law had realized a certain amount of capital from the forced sale of their ACA stock. Some of this had been eaten up by legal fees and costs, and a good chunk was taken from them as capital-gains taxes; but they had retained approximately one hundred thousand dollars each, and with that money they bought into Aeroflight-an investment which bought them eighteen percent of the company.
“Spaulding was tremendously loyal to Craycroft-it was a kind of hero worship-and it was not long before Craycroft moved into the center of action. Using Aeroflight’s capital, he returned to California and made a tender to the new bosses of ACA to buy some of the old bombers they still had in inventory from Craycroft’s tenure. ACA was only too willing to unload these obsolete craft; Craycroft-with Spaulding’s bargaining agents acting for him-was able to buy the old planes at excellent prices. ACA was happy to write them off as tax losses.
“There were twelve planes involved: six B-17 Flying Fortresses, four B-24 Liberators and two Lockheed Constellations. All of them were at least twenty-five years old. They had all been made airworthy, but since none had been on order by any paying customer, the pressurization and heating and navigational systems had not been updated. In sum they were sound but dismally obsolete.
“In March, nineteen seventy, Craycroft, Ryterband, two Aeroflight pilot-employees, and eight hired free-lance pilots arrived in Burbank to take delivery of the twelve aircraft on the ACA airfield. The sale was consummated and the airplanes took off on the first leg of what would have been a comic odyssey if it hadn’t been for its tragic consequences.
“With only one man aboard each plane-the pilot-the flight of twelve planes worked into an uneven formation over the San Fernando Valley and began flying eastward across the Southwestern deserts and mountains. The flight plan called for a route that took them across Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, and Illinois, and thence east to New York. Refueling and overnight stops were scheduled at Denver, Des Moines, and Toledo. It had been necessary to obtain clearances in advance for the twelve-craft flight, and therefore the expedition had to adhere to its precleared schedule; the airports en route were not equipped to handle such large influxes of transient aircraft normally, and special arrangements had to be made.
“An oxygen malfunction aboard one of the B-24’s forced that plane to deviate from the planned course over the Sierra Nevada range; the plane had to make its own way south and follow the much longer low-altitude route east by way of Tucson, El Paso, and Oklahoma City. This reduced the formation to eleven. It was further reduced-to nine-when one B-17 developed engine trouble and had to divert to Salt Lake City, and almost simultaneously a Constellation lost touch with the group in a heavy cloud formation-the result of primitive instrumentation and inadequate communication air-to-air-and because of a faulty compass ended up with insufficient fuel to reach the first stop (Denver). It had to divert to Grand Junction, Colorado, and because of a fuel shortage at that airport it never caught up with the rest of the flight.
“The nine remaining planes straggled into Denver over the course of ninety minutes during the evening of March twenty-first, nineteen seventy. A feature article from the next morning’s Denver Post includes an impressive photograph of the ancient planes lined up at their hardstands, and a brief nostalgia-slanted interview with Craycroft, who is quoted as saying, ‘You may never see their like again around here. They’re really kind of majestic, aren’t they?’
“Pushed by the tight schedule of clearances, the nine planes took off from Denver at six fifteen A.M. March twenty-second, heading for a midday refueling stop at Des Moines. The distance is about seven hundred miles and Craycroft expected to reach Des Moines by about eleven CST.
“A half hour out, Ryterband reported altimeter trouble but no one expressed much alarm, since they were flying VFR and the weather looked good, and there were no mountains along the route.
“Then a front, forecast as stationary, suddenly began to move north across Kansas and eastern Nebraska. Tornadoes struck four towns and several farm areas along the border between the two states, and Omaha radio advised Craycroft’s flight that it now looked as if the storm would be right in the middle of the flight plan if Craycroft stayed on course.
“It was a severe storm, the remnants of Hurricane Bertha, which had struck the Texas coast two days previously and was moving in an unusual due-north direction. Storm ceiling was altitude zero and the Air Force reported that it went straight up to thirty thousand feet. It was moving north, by eight that morning, at nearly sixty miles an hour and its interior winds were measured at more than that.
“Then a new meteorological report came in, at approximately eight fifteen, which said the storm appeared to be slowing down its rate of travel and veering toward the west.
“Craycroft elected to try and beat the storm into Des Moines. He did, however, order Ryterband to change course and land at Grand Island, because he didn’t want to risk Ryterband’s being stuck in obscure weather with a faulty altimeter. Ryterband peeled off in his B-24, and that left eight.
“At about nine forty-five (now on Central Time) the flight entered a bank of floor-to-ceiling cloud which obstructed visibility but contained very little turbulence; it was the remainder of a slow-moving cold front crossing the plains, and was not connected with the hurricane weather system to the southeast. Craycroft and his pilots seem to have felt no alarm about the cloud front. They had expected it. They also expected to emerge from its leading edge some twenty-five miles later.
“Some of them did.
“Unfamiliarity with the old controls, and lack of visibility within the cloud front, made for uncertain navigation for the pilots. At nine fifty-two one B-17 sideswiped another in the murk.
“The collision seems to have been wingtip-against-tail. The aircraft struck in the tail lost most of its rudder surface, and its elevator controls seem to have been rendered inoperative by the crash. The plane spiraled down out of control through the clouds and plummeted into a soybean field, killing the pilot instantly.