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tacitly condemn a pilot who has obviously made a mistake. I think the only mistake Stark made that day was in not being sick so he wouldn't have had to fly his trip. He was not one to try sneaking around under-neath the overcast, trying to cheat himslef in CFR. The pilots on Capital Airlines have never had to fly that way. They are paid for actual flying time, not scheduling time. Stark was an expert navigator and his knowledge of the course over which capital operates was truly terrific. He knew exactly where he was that day, just like he always knew where he was, and he would never have let down to 1500 feet above sea level in the Allegheny Mountains just to "avoid a 1-hour delay" in the stack at WA. 3000 feet east of Martinsburg, W. Va. is the minimum altitude and I have never seen anybody cheat on it. You just can't afford to cheat in that kind of country, no matter if your wife is dying at home and you want to get there..... Why doesn't the Board get honest and explain what Stark was doing with all four mixture controls in emergency rich during a descent? Their investigators found them in that position; why can't they attach any significance to their discovery? They apparently don't believe that all four engines can miss and even quit in heavy rain. They don't believe in turbulence in the mountains, up and down drafts so severe as to perhaps drop a pilot into a valley below surrounding terrain. No, the low-level charlatans like to develop mysteriously through blackened wreckage and come up with the trite old finding that it was "pilot error". I not only got sick of reading their biased reports, but I abhor their willingness to malign the character of a dead man like Horace Stark. The industry has seen few men as good as he, and if he just plain went and made the damned fool mistake like that, then I don't know what in the Hell business I got in an airplane. If that accident was Stark's fault then it's time for most of us to quit. I wanted to write you more than a year ago to suggest cleaning up the "In Constant Memoriam" column in THE AIR LINE PILOT. It was much too crowded, and it was inevitable that it should break over into another column. I think further improvement could be made by using two columns with only a single, large caption over both columns with only a single, large caption over both columns. The printer should be able to put all the names of our departed brethen in one double column, still affording each name the dignity it deserves. Why don't you try it? These men, whose chores are done in body, are still helping us fight our battles today. Don't think people in high places haven't noticed how long that list has grown since that memorable moment in March, 1944, when you reverently stood before the CAB , closing your case against the original proposed gross weight increase and eloquently proclaimed, "Gentlemen, you have heard the testimony of the living. May I present to you the testimony of the dead?" And then, you unfolded this long, photostatic enlargement of the column "IN CONSTANT MEMORIAM"..... Never have I heard a room become so quiet. Never have I seen an attorney plead more eloquently to a jury. Never will I for-get it. WE WON TOO. One other thing before I close this treatise. Ever since I became an airline pilot 7 years ago, I have though that we, the pilots, could serve our cause much better, render better service to the public and to our employers by dropping the ever-present petty feuds and assuming
