0:00

Hey, it's Dave Cauley. Dropping in just to

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let you know about a new podcast by

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the KSL Podcasts team. It's called

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Unsolved Histories. Season

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1 is about a plane crash over the Gulf of

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Alaska during the Cold War. An airliner

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carrying more than a hundred people took to

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the skies near Seattle, moving military personnel and

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their families to their new assignments in Anchorage.

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They were at about 14,000 feet, when

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one of the pilots radioed air traffic control to

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ask for an altitude change. And that

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was the last thing anyone ever heard from Flight

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293. Here's

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a short clip from Episode 1. I

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happened to kind of just be sitting

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there alone and everybody was else getting

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ready for dinner or else doing other

0:47

things. And so I sat in this

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large room in front of

0:52

the television and it was

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about 5 o'clock, 4.35 o'clock,

0:57

and they had a special bulletin interruption.

1:01

News alert. This is

1:03

Dick Singer speaking for the entire TV7 News Stad.

1:09

Greg Berylman is in his sixties. He was

1:11

just eight years old one afternoon back in

1:13

1963 when

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he found himself sitting in front of the television

1:18

by himself. Cartoons were over

1:20

and the evening news was on

1:23

from Seattle station KIRO or Cairo.

1:26

Well what they did at the time,

1:28

they posted the passengers, their names and

1:30

where they were from right

1:32

there. I was like,

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oh, that's interesting. Interesting, you know,

1:36

plane crash, Alaska. And

1:39

I'm telling you, this is God's truth.

1:42

I read the passenger list and I

1:44

missed the first part of it in

1:46

alphabetical order. So I

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sat there and you know, I couldn't

1:50

believe it, but I saw my brother

1:52

Bruce's name. Bruce

1:54

Berylman, Greg's older brother, was only 17. That

1:58

morning, Bruce had boarded a D. BC 7C

2:01

airliner near Seattle, Northwest Airlines flight

2:03

293 to

2:05

Anchorage, Alaska. And

2:08

now a few hours later, Greg

2:10

had to tell his parents what he had just seen

2:12

on TV. And my

2:14

parents were arguing, they had all sorts

2:16

of issues but at that time I

2:18

went into the kitchen. I said, hey,

2:20

you know, you gotta

2:22

look at the TV, something's going on here. Then

2:25

they coo-cooed it for a little bit. I

2:27

said, yeah, come on, this is for real.

2:30

It was for real. Bruce's plane

2:33

was missing. So that

2:35

was the start. And what I think they

2:37

did is once they saw the same thing

2:40

I did, immediately they called Cairo or

2:42

whomever somebody to reach out to. Cause who are

2:44

you gonna call something like that happens but the

2:46

media. So then I

2:49

remember we all huddled around and waited

2:51

and kept on watching it repeat updates

2:53

and all that till we got a

2:56

call back. I think about

2:58

seven o'clock, six, seven o'clock, a

3:00

couple hours later, anyhow. And

3:02

they said, it's for real. Reports

3:11

were sketchy that night as Greg and

3:13

his parents and his three other siblings

3:15

waited for details about what had happened.

3:20

And obviously my parents were so concerned about, obviously

3:25

there's gotta be survivors planes and stuff

3:27

just crash and people won't die necessarily.

3:29

If it was a big plane like

3:31

that, it could float and all the

3:33

old things. And it

3:36

was dynamic. Details

3:39

never came. The Barrowman

3:41

family and the families of everyone else onboard

3:43

the plane would never learn

3:46

anything substantive about the tragedy that

3:48

took the life of Bruce Barrowman

3:50

and 100 others, sons, fathers, brothers,

3:53

daughters, mothers

3:56

and sisters. For six

3:58

decades, Greg Barrowman has been. searching for answers

4:01

about what happened to his brother and

4:03

about what happened to flight 293. At

4:06

times it's been a struggle to cope and to

4:08

make sense of things in the wake of a

4:11

tragedy that became an enduring mystery. 60 years

4:14

on the Barymans aren't the only ones

4:16

still suffering. The family members

4:18

and friends who were left behind have never learned

4:20

what really happened to the plane or

4:22

about what led to the death of their loved ones. As

4:25

Greg Baryman grew up, missing his big

4:27

brother became a search for answers and

4:29

a quest for closure. What

4:32

began as a personal mission became so much

4:34

more. I'd say we're trying to visit the

4:36

past in order to gain

4:38

perspective on our lives currently

4:41

and then for myself being in

4:43

the fourth quarter of life now to

4:46

know that the people that I

4:48

that we may affect in

4:50

this broadcast or our communication

4:52

would give people hope for the future

4:55

and some resolve. With

4:57

help from Greg and from others who lost

5:00

loved ones on flight 293 and

5:02

by consulting with aviation experts to review

5:04

the old documents and with amateur sleuths

5:06

to comb through the archives, we

5:09

reexamine the investigation and joined in the

5:11

search for answers and

5:13

in the quest for closure. From

5:16

KSL podcasts I'm Felix Benil. This

5:19

is Unsolved Histories. What happened to

5:21

flight 293? Episode 1 Brothers. I

5:42

was intrigued by that first story because I had never heard of

5:44

flight 293 and I thought I knew my Pacific

5:46

Northwest aviation history pretty well.

5:50

I work for radio station KIRO

5:52

in Seattle where I produce history

5:54

stories about things like old army

5:56

forts, forgotten shipwrecks, abandoned driving

5:58

theaters, and lost in federal treasures.

6:01

But I also do a lot

6:03

of stories about transportation disasters. Bridges

6:05

collapsing, trolleys jumping the tracks, and

6:08

again and again airplane crashes. My

6:11

interest in plane crashes is not a ghoulish thing,

6:14

it's the exact opposite. It's about

6:16

life and survival and how traumatic experiences

6:18

shape our feelings about what we value

6:20

most in the short time we have on

6:23

earth. I visited

6:25

crash sites and I tracked down and

6:27

spoken with amazing resilient people who survived

6:29

or witnessed some of the worst air

6:31

crashes in the Pacific Northwest of the

6:33

past 75 years. Like

6:36

the man who survived the crash

6:38

of a jetliner north of Seattle

6:40

in 1959. I don't know if

6:42

you've ever known you're gonna

6:44

die but somehow you

6:46

get a euphoric feeling.

6:50

You know, don't worry about it, you're gonna

6:52

die you know that but you accept

6:54

it and if you're well,

6:56

hurry up, let's get it over with. I've

6:59

also done stories about lost planes where

7:01

family members of those aboard never gave

7:03

up searching for answers. Like

7:05

two young Navy pilots who took off

7:08

from Seattle back in 1949

7:10

on a training flight and disappeared. The

7:12

mother of one of them came to Seattle

7:14

from Tennessee to help with the search. Nothing

7:17

turned up but she came back

7:19

every year for 20 years to

7:21

continue searching. She would talk

7:24

about it and she'd share all the details

7:26

with us, me and my brother as grandchildren and

7:29

it was always on her mind. She

7:31

just never could get emotionally detached

7:33

from it. All this

7:36

to say that something about plane crashes and

7:38

the people affected by them have

7:40

always been compelling. So

7:44

that's why after I first read about

7:46

flight 293 I decided I needed

7:48

to know more. I checked online

7:50

and there were some old articles and a few

7:52

bits of information on Wikipedia. The

7:55

most revealing and most frustrating thing

7:57

I found was something called the

7:59

aircraft accident. report, an

8:01

official document issued by a federal

8:03

government agency called the Civil Aeronautics

8:05

Board, or CAB. The

8:08

CAB is, essentially, a precursor to

8:10

the National Transportation Safety Board. Like

8:13

the NTSB does today, the CAB

8:15

investigated aviation accidents and issued reports

8:18

on the causes of plane crashes.

8:21

The CAB report on what happened to Flight 293 is a scant

8:24

10 pages. It leaves

8:27

a lot of questions unanswered. That's

8:29

one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast. The

8:39

DC-7C took off from McCord Air Force Base

8:41

around 830 in the morning local time.

8:44

Before takeoff and for the first few

8:46

hours of the journey north, everything was

8:48

ordinary. About two

8:50

and a half hours into the flight, the CAB report

8:52

says, the pilot or co-pilot

8:54

of Flight 293 radioed that they were 14,000 feet

8:57

over a point called Domestic

9:01

Annette, or

9:03

the part of their route nearest to Annette

9:05

Island in southeast Alaska. Annette

9:09

Island is just north of the border between Canada

9:11

and Alaska. This is a

9:13

little confusing, but that point called Domestic

9:15

Annette is actually about 130 miles west

9:19

of the island out over the Gulf of

9:21

Alaska. It's like an imaginary

9:23

road sign in the air highways or

9:25

routes that most aircraft travel between destinations.

9:29

Pilots and co-pilots don't give position reports

9:31

like this anymore. Radar now tracks all

9:34

commercial aircraft at all times. In

9:37

1963, between the lower 48 and

9:39

Alaska, this wasn't the case. So,

9:42

someone in the cockpit would use the radio

9:44

to tell a radio operator on the ground

9:46

that the plane was passing a certain spot.

9:49

If a plane didn't make a report when it was expected

9:51

to, the radio operators on the ground

9:53

would know that something had gone wrong. As

9:56

Flight 293 passed Domestic Annette, the pilot

9:58

or co-pilot of Flight 293. Flight 293

10:00

also requested permission to climb to 18,000

10:02

feet. That

10:04

request to change altitude was denied.

10:19

The crew hadn't given any reason for wanting to climb from

10:21

14,000 to 18,000 feet, though changing

10:24

altitude would be a routine step for

10:26

an airliner to take to avoid something

10:28

like turbulence or icing conditions. We'll

10:31

hear more about this in a later episode. The

10:34

CAB report explains that a Canadian

10:36

radio operator at Sandspit, British Columbia,

10:38

that's an island just south of

10:40

the Canadian border with Alaska, acknowledged

10:43

this transmission and advised Flight 293

10:45

that this altitude was occupied by

10:47

Pacific Northern Airlines Flight 5. In

10:51

a routine situation involving communications like this

10:53

between air traffic personnel on the ground

10:55

and a cockpit crew in the air,

10:58

someone from Flight 293 should have acknowledged

11:00

the message from Sandspit right away. Instead,

11:04

there was only silence.

11:09

The CAB report continues, saying that two

11:11

minutes later, the Sandspit operator attempted to

11:13

contact Flight 293 and give it a

11:15

clearance to 16,000 feet. And

11:19

then, more silence. There

11:21

was no answer from the plane. Next,

11:25

the radio operator at Sandspit asked the crew

11:27

of Pacific Northern Airways Flight 5 –

11:30

remember, that was the aircraft already occupying the

11:32

nearby airspace at 18,000 feet –

11:35

to attempt to contact Flight 293. It's

11:38

unclear how much time elapsed between the

11:41

Sandspit radio operator asking the Pacific Northern

11:43

Airways crew for help, but it's likely

11:45

they complied almost immediately. But,

11:48

when that crew tried to reach Flight 293 once again, there

11:50

was no answer. Several

11:55

minutes had

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gone. gone

12:00

by and no one on the ground or

12:02

in the air could reach the cockpit crew

12:04

of Flight 293. There

12:07

was no answer from the Northwest Airlines

12:09

DC-7C that was supposed to be 14,000

12:11

feet over the Gulf

12:13

of Alaska and which was supposed to

12:15

land at Elmendorf Air Force Base in two hours with

12:17

101 passengers and crew. As

12:21

the CAB report succinctly and bluntly puts

12:24

it, all further attempts

12:26

to contact Flight 293 were futile.