Page:CAB Accident Report, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19.pdf/11



While no further report was received from the airplane after it reported over the Herndon fan-marker, a number of witnesses living near the scene of the accident testified that they saw an airplane within the last few minutes prior to the crash which they believed to be the one which was involved in it.

Mrs. Dorothy Everhart testified that she was on the back porch of her home just south of Lovettsville and approximately 3½ miles east of the scene of the accident when she saw an airplane proceeding normally in a northwesterly direction toward Short Hill, the northern portion of which was at that time obscured by dark storm clouds. She was looking in a southwesterly direction when she saw the airplane and she watched it proceed directly toward the storm. She stated that she was momentarily blinded by the brilliance of a lightning flash "just a little bit ahead" of the airplane and lost sight of it. Shortly thereafter she heard a "low rumble" of thunder and after a few seconds an "awful roaring". She testified that airplanes passed in the vicinity of her home quite frequently and that this one was "lower than most of them go". As she watched the airplane she did not hear its motors but she was sure that the "awful roar" which she had heard after the lightning flash and the rumble of thunder was the sound of the airplane. She further testified that at the time of this occurrence it was not raining at her home but that shortly thereafter the storm which had been in the vicinity of Short Hill "came on over". She described it as a very bad storm with lightning, some thunder, and extraordinarily heavy rain, but no wind. She testified that when she first saw the airplane the black clouds