Page:CAB Accident Report, Pennsylvania-Central Airlines Flight 143.pdf/14

 valley made it necessary to keep the aircraft in a climbing attitude. After the airplane had climbed over the secondary high tension line and during the flight up the valley the rate of climb indicator showed an average rate of climb of about 100 feet per minute.

After making several slight turns and while traveling in approximately an eastward direction, Captain Wright found the upper end of the valley blocked by a wooded ridge rising to an elevation of about 1000 feet above sea level. Realizing that he could neither turn back nor execute a successful landing, he decided to make a stall landing into the trees near the top of the ridge at a spot where the timber seemed to be small and not very dense. He increased the left engine manifold pressure for about 15 seconds to 42½ inches, subsequently calculated to represent approximately 695 h.p., so as to gain enough altitude to reach the spot selected. Captain Wright stated that he then pulled the nose of the aircraft up, reducing the air speed to 60 m.p.h., and cut the master electrical switch and the left engine throttle. As the aircraft settled through the trees the right wing tip and the right wing panel were sheared off. The wing tip was later found about 80 feet to the rear and to the right of the nose of the fuselage, and the wing panel was found 49 feet in the same direction. The left wing, which was sheared off just outboard of the left engine, reversed ends and fell back over the top of the fuselage. A tree 9 inches in diameter, broken off by the left wing, also fell across the top of the fuselage. When it struck the ground the fuselage broke in two near the rear seat of the cabin. The forward portion of it came to rest flat on the ground and right side up. The tail cone, the tail group, and the rear portion of the fuselage came to rest just to the rear of the forward portion of the fuselage. Both