On October 10, 1933, a Boeing 247 airliner operated byUnited Airlines and registered as crashed near Chesterton, Indiana. The transcontinental flight carried three crew and four passengers and originated in Newark, New Jersey, with its final destination in Oakland, California. It had already landed in Cleveland and was headed to its next stop in Chicago when it exploded en route. All aboard died in the crash, which was caused by an on-board explosive device. Eyewitnesses on the ground reported hearing an explosion shortly after 9 p.m. and seeing the aircraft in flames at an altitude of about. A second explosion followed after the aircraft crashed. The crash scene was adjacent to a gravel road about outside of Chesterton, centered in a wooded area on the Jackson Township farm of James Smiley. Investigators combed through the debris and were confronted with unusual evidence: the toilet and baggage compartment had been smashed into fragments. Shards of metal riddled the inside of the toilet door, while the other side of the door was free of the metal fragments. The tail section had been severed just aft of the toilet and was found mostly intact almost a mile away from the main wreckage. On November 16, 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigation declassified 324 documents related to the investigation.
The incident
United States Bureau of Investigation investigator Melvin Purvis said, "Our investigation convinced me that the tragedy resulted from an explosion somewhere in the region of the baggage compartment in the rear of the aircraft. Everything in front of the compartment was blown forward, everything behind blown backward, and things at the side outward." He also noted that the gasoline tanks "were crushed in, showing there was no explosion in them."
Investigation
Dr. Carl Davis of the Porter County coroner's office and experts from the Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University examined evidence from the crash and concluded that it was caused by a bomb, with nitroglycerin as the probable explosive. One of the passengers was seen carrying a brown package onto the aircraft in Newark, but investigators found the package amidst the wreckage and ruled it out as the source of the explosion. Investigators found a rifle in the wreckage, but they determined that a passenger carried it aboard as luggage, as he was en route to a shoot at Chicago's North ShoreGun Club. No suspect was ever identified in this incident and it remains unsolved, but it was the first proven act of air sabotage in the history of commercial aviation. Pilot Captain Terrant, his co-pilot, stewardess Alice Scribner, and all four passengers were killed. Scribner was the first United stewardess to be killed in an aircraft crash.
