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white light moved abruptly to the left and slightly up and then slightly to the right, and proceeded straight ahead as if the ship had been taken from the left bank into a right bank, and them leveled out and the light disappeared behind the trees."
The evidence shows that while in the left turn the airplane first made contact with a tree which is located 2,200 feet southwest of the end of runway No. 4. There were small branches broken from the top of this tree, which was 213 feet above the level of the airport.[1] The airplane then careened through several other trees, tearing off a part of the left stabilizer and the elevators from the tail. Approximately 18 feet of the left wing was torn off and remained in a tree, the top of which was 104 feet above the level of the airport. The flight path as marked on the trees beyond the one in which the wing was found, and on the ground, indicates that the plane was in a vertical or beyond-vertical bank to the left and was traveling in a straight line. Just before the airplane came to rest it struck a high tension line and pole and the fuselage was broken in two near the center of the cabin. It is apparent from the manner in which the fuselage struck the high tension line pole and from the position in which the airplane came to rest on the ground that the plane was cartwheeling during the last portion of its travel before coming to rest. The distance from the point where the airplane struck the first tree to where it came to rest was 463 feet. The flight path was definitely indicated by markings on the ground and trees and
- ↑ The elevation of the Lambert-St. Louis Airport is 540 feet above sea level.
