Cold Fire

At SAM, in addition to United's own employees, experts were also on duty twenty-four hours a day from suppliers of every model of aircraft currently in operation by the airline-including a man from General Electric, where the CF-6 engines had been built, and another from McDonald Douglas, which had designed and manufactured the DC-10. Many books, and a massive amount of computer-accessible data about each plane type was available to staff at SAM, in addition to an exhaustive detailed maintenance history of every craft in the United fleet. They could tell Delbaugh and Lodden about every mechanical problem their particular plane had experienced during its lifetime, exactly what had been done to it during its most recently scheduled maintenance, and even when upholstery damage had been repaired-virtually everything except how much loose change had fallen into its seats from passengers' pockets and been left behind during the past twelve months.

Delbaugh also hoped they could tell him how the hell he was supposed to fly an aircraft as large as an apartment building without the aid of elevators, rudders, ailerons, and other equipment that allowed him to maneuver. Even the best flight training programs were structured under the assumption that a pilot would retain some degree of control in a catastrophic incident, thanks to redundant systems provided by the designers.

Initially, the people at SAM had trouble accepting that he had lost all hydraulics, assuming he meant he'd had a fractional loss. He finally had to snap at them to make them understand, which he deeply regretted not only because he wanted to uphold the tradition of quiet professionalism that pilots before him had established in dire circumstances, but also because he was seriously spooked by the sound of his own angry voice and thereafter found it more difficult to deceive himself that he actually felt as calm as he was pretending to be.

Pete Yankowski, the flight instructor from Denver, returned from his trip to the rear of the plane and reported that through a window he had spotted an eighteen-inch hole in the horizontal part of the tail.

"There's probably more damage I couldn't see. Figure shrapnel ripped up the rear section behind the aft bulkhead, where all the hydraulic systems pass through. At least we didn't depressurize.”

Dismayed at the rippling sensation that quivered through his bowels, achingly aware that two hundred and fifty-three passengers and ten other crew members were depending on him to bring them home alive, Delbaugh conveyed Yankowski's information to SAM. Then he asked for assistance in determining how to fly the severely disabled aircraft. He was ùnot surprised when, after an urgent consultation, the experts in San Francisco could come up with no recommendations. He was asking them to do the impossible, tell him how to remain the master of this behemoth with no substantial controls other than the throttles-the same unfair request that God was making of him.

He stayed in touch with United's dispatcher office, as well, which tracked the progress of all the company's hardware in the air. In addition both channels-the dispatcher and SAM-were patched in to United's headquarters near O'Hare International in Chicago. A lot of interested and anxious people were tied to Delbaugh by radio, but they were all as much at a loss for good suggestions as were the experts in San Francisco.

To Yankowski, Delbaugh said, "Ask Evelyn to find that guy from McDonnell Douglas she told us about. Get him up here quick.”

As Pete left the flight deck again, and as Anilov struggled with his control wheel in a determined if vain attempt to get at least some response from the craft, Delbaugh told the shift manager at SAM that a McDonnell Douglas engineer was aboard. "He warned us something was wrong with the tail engine just before it exploded. He could tell from the sound of it, I guess, so we'll get him in here, see if he can help.”

At SAM, the General Electric expert on CF-6 turbofan engines came back at him: "What do you mean, he could tell by the sound? How could he tell by the sound? What did it sound like?" "I don't know," Delbaugh replied. "We didn't notice any unusual noises or unexpected changes in pitch, and neither did the flight attendants.”

The voice in Delbaugh's headset crackled in response: "That doesn't make sense.”

McDonnell Douglas's DC-10 specialist at SAM sounded equally baffled: "What's this guy's name?" "We'll find out. All we know right now is his first name," Sleighton Delbaugh said. "It's Jim.”

As the captain announced to the passengers that they would be landing in Dubuque as a result of mechanical problems, Jim watched Evelyn approach him along the port aisle, weaving because the plane was no longer as steady as it had been. He wished she would not ask him what he knew she had to ask.

". and it might be a little rough," the captain concluded.