The Mystery of Flight 23

The Boeing 747 was the first modern passenger airline.  It was considered a wonder in its day.  For the first time, a passenger plane was soundproof, air-conditioned, and so quiet that those onboard could speak to each other without having to yell.  However, what the plane is perhaps best known for was its involvement with an enigmatic tragedy.

At 6:57 p.m. on October 10, 1933, United Flight 23 took off from Cleveland, Ohio for a Chicago-bound flight with seven people on board, including the crew.  It seemed a perfectly routine journey.  The plane carried the pilot, Harold Tarrant, his co-pilot A.T. Ruby, stewardess Alice Scribner, and passengers Dorothy Dwyer, Emil Smith, Warren Burris, and Frederick Schoendorff.  They were average, decent people going about their normal lives.  Tarrant, Scribner, and Dwyer were all engaged to be married.  At 8:46 p.m., Tarrant radioed from North Liberty, Indiana, that the plane was on-track to land in Chicago at 9:47.

This was the last word from anyone on Flight 23.  At around 9:15, when the plane was five miles southeast of Chesterton, Indiana, it exploded so violently it sent shock waves through the normally peaceful farmland below.  The tail end, containing two of the passengers, plummeted straight downwards.  The other half of the plane, in the words of one witness, “shot to earth like a blazing comet” near Jackson Center Township.  Seven souls had just suffered a sudden and horrifying death.

"Vidette-Messenger," October 11, 1933, via Newspapers.com

At first, investigators assumed the explosion had been caused by some tragic, unforeseen accident.  Perhaps a motor or a gas tank ruptured.  Or maybe a passenger’s cigarette ignited gas from a broken fuel line.  Was the plane hit by lightning?  A meteorite?  Some predicted that, considering there were no survivors to explain what had happened, the cause of the catastrophe was fated to remain unknown.

However, Melvin S. Purvis, the head of the FBI’s Chicago office, believed that Flight 23 had been brought down by a bomb, and FBI agents were sent to secure the wreckage.  Dr. Clarence W. Muehlberger, a crime detection expert for Chicago’s coroner’s office, studied the debris.  The shrapnel holes he found on many of the remains caused him to conclude that the plane had been brought down by some sort of very powerful explosive.  (The FBI eventually determined that nitroglycerin had been used.) It became accepted that they were not dealing with a simple freak accident, but the first act of airline terrorism in American history.

But what was the motive?  Did someone on the plane commit an act of suicide/mass murder?  Did unions or gangsters sabotage Flight 23 for some as-yet unknown reason?  Did one of the passengers or crew have a very, very deadly enemy?  Did a passenger, unwittingly or not, carry the bomb aboard, or was it secretly placed in the plane when it made a routine refueling stop in Cleveland?

The FBI first turned their attention to Emil Smith, who had boarded the flight when it made a stop in Newark.  Their suspicions were aroused by the fact that the day before, Smith had purchased life insurance promising a payout of $10,000 if his plane should crash.  Witnesses said Smith had brought on to the plane a handgun and a brown paper sack, which they thought was odd.  However, Smith, a WWI veteran who lived with his aunt, appeared to be a quiet, prosperous man completely incapable of any sort of evil.  Eventually, the paper sack was located, and although its contents were never made public, the FBI announced that Smith was clearly an innocent victim.

The investigation dragged on until September 20, 1935, when J. Edgar Hoover announced that “all undeveloped leads in this case have been exhausted,” and therefore, the Bureau was closing the books on the crime.  Since that day, no new information in the case has surfaced.  It is likely we will never know who planted a bomb on Flight 23, let alone why they did so.