Page:CAB Accident Report, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19.pdf/18

 slanting downward. At the time this occurred she stated that it was raining harder than she had ever seen it rain before.

Accident investigators for the Board again questioned Mrs. Jacobs after the hearing and she stated that it had been overcast all day in the vicinity of her home and some rain had fallen in the morning. The investigators also attempted to assist Mrs. Jacobs in estimating the time which elapsed between the flash of lightning and the crash by having Mrs. Jacobs retrace her movements between those two events. The time recorded was 10 seconds.

Her son, Garland Jacobs, testified that during this torrential rainstorm he was sitting in his car near their home and saw a "hard streak of lightning", heard thunder, and then a loud roar of motors "like the plane was taking a nose dive". He thought that the roar of motors continued for as much as 30 seconds. He looked in the direction from which the sound came just in time to see a streak of fire slanting downward toward the spot at which the airplane crashed. He heard the crash and an explosion. Mrs. Viola Thompson, who lives about 400 yards west of the scene of the accident, testified that she was in the kitchen of her home watching the rain, which she described as being the hardest that she had seen in several years, when she heard a "terrible roaring" which sounded as if it were very near her home. She recognized the sound as that of an airplane and, fearing that it would hit her house, ran upstairs and looked out of the window. She testified that she heard the crash and a loud