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gust lock arrangement. (3) The miracle that took place off the coast of Florida when a Pan American DC-4 was caught in a hurricane and pilot skill brought it through without injury to the forty passengers aboard. (4) Another miracle occurring when a Boeing Flying Boat landed on the storm-swept North Atlantic high seas on October 14 and 69 were saved. By and large, these miracles of escape were due to the courage and steeled nerves of the air line pilots. Had these four miracles not occurred, to replace four more fatal accidents, 198 passengers and crew members would have been killed in 32 days, only one day more than a month. Think this over, gentlemen of this Presidential Commission, and what these four crashes and the deaths of 198 people would have done to air traffic which was again beginning to build up from the depths to which it had dropped as a result of the last series of air line crashes, described in ENCLOSURE NO. 4 attached to this presentation. 

AGAIN THE MIRACLES HAVE CEASED AND THE TERRIBLE LINKS IN THE ENDLESS CHAIN OF AIR LINE DISASTERS HAVE RESUMED. On October 24 at Bryce Canyon, Utah, a United DC-6 took fire in the air and burned all on board, numbering fifty-two. Hardly had the impact of this terrible accident died away when the news of another air line accident thundered across the headlines of the press. On October 26, near Ketchikan, Alaska, a Pan American Douglas Skymaster DC-4 was lost in a fatal accident. It is suspected that structural failure caused this plane to lost altitude and crash into a mountain. These two accidents, the latest links in the awful chain, cost a total of seventy lives in a period of three days. In each accident, all on board were killed. Pilot skill and courage in both of these accidents were great, but not great enough to overcome the insurmountable obstacles and inadequacies in present-day equipment and aids to flight necessary to bring about two more miracles of escape. 

For a number of years prior to the year 1938, the air line pilots worked hard and long and diligently, and finally secured the provisions in the Civil Aeronautics Act providing for an independent Air Safety Board. These provisions were nullified, made useless, and reduced to a mockery, by the Presidential Reorganization Plan No. 4 which, after a long legislative battle that raged on Capitol Hill for 33 days, beginning on April 8, 1940 and ending on May 14, 1940, was approved, abolishing the independent Air Safety Board. Concurrent action was necessary by the House and the Senate. In the House, this Reorganization Plan No. 4 was defeated by the large majority of 79 votes. In the Senate, it was approved by a small margin of stand-pat party line voters. 

For the information of the Commission, the Air Safety Board provisions in the Civil Aeronautics Act that were rendered impotent by Reorganization Plan no. 4 follows:

"Title VII, Sec. 701 (a) There is created and established within the Authority an Air Safety Board. Such Board shall consist of