On March 1, a Transcontinental & Western Air passenger plane took off from San Francisco, flew into a storm, disappeared. Three months later, Prospector H. O. Collier came upon its wreckage, strewn over a Sierra Nevada mountainside. The plane had been smashed to bits, but its tail had caught in a tree, hung high as a dead goose. The weeks of fruitless search for this and other lost planes have piled added horror on the original disaster, added worry and heavy expense for airline operators.
Pan American Airways' Los Angeles Operations Manager Major Daniel E. Ellis had an idea, took it to...