Page:CAB Accident Report, Pennsylvania Central Airlines Flight 19.pdf/44

 A similar difficulty arises in connection with Mr. McGaha's recollection that he had watched the airplane until his view of it was cut off by a knoll near his home. The elevation of that knoll fixed another angle, and for the airplane to have been watched until it had gone down behind the knoll would have brought it to a height above the ground (at a distance of 1¾ miles short of the scene of the accident) of only about 1000 feet. Still assuming that Mr. McGaha could only have seen the machine when it was short of the rainstorm (as to the continuous intensity and impenetrability of which, there was general testimony from those who were in it), the airplane would then have had to travel horizontally for a distance of 1¾ miles to reach the scene of final crash while losing only 1000 feet of altitude. That would have indicated a mean angle of path to the horizontal of only about 6 degrees, which does not represent a dive but a comparatively gentle descent. The full acceptance of Mr. McGaha's recollection on this point, combined with the facts that appear to have been definitely established with regard to the extent of the rainstorm, would therefore require the airplane to have started its dive at a point between two and three miles short of the final impact; to have continued the dive at least to within 1000 feet of the ground; to have come back nearly to level flight at that point; to have continued for one or two miles along the path descending at an average angle of not over 5 degrees; and then to have nosed over again, to an angle of at least 20 degrees to the horizontal and probably more, and continued on the path thus established to the point of impact.

Less extreme conclusions concerning the flight path are developed if it be considered as a possibility that the airplane may actually have disappeared from Mr. McGaha's view by diving into the rainstorm beyond the hill rather than by going down behind the crest of the nearby hill, and that he and his son were deceived on that point by the haze and the bad visibility