(2 of 2)
Where Trip 6 was was on the northwest leg of the Oakland range, not the northeast. Stead was headed for the sea, not Oakland, but for 35 minutes beyond the time he should have been over Oakland he had been convincing himself that his course was deflected by a side wind. At 4:16 he came to.
Pilots have got on the wrong leg of a radio range before, but few have posed questions to their dispatchers like those that Pilot Stead now proceeded to ask. He wanted to know what was the engine's best manifold pressure to conserve gas.
Oakland to Stead: Decrease [propeller'] revolutions per minute to seventeen hundred, and increase the manifold pressure.
Stead to Oakland: OK, increase it to what?
Oakland to Stead: Increase it till you get seventeen hundred. . . . Put your props to cruise at seventeen hundred and then increase the pressure with your throttle.
Stead to Oakland: What pressure?
Oakland to Stead: The manifold pressure. In other words, use your props.
Stead to Oakland: OK.
But it was not OK. Stead was now over the sea and, with 20 gallons of gas left—enough to keep him aloft only another twenty minutes—he was told his position was off the Point Reyes light. By now the dispatcher was running the plane. He told Stead there was a rough beach and a bench (level ground above a beach) behind the light.
Oakland to Stead: If you land on water, wheels up. If you land on bench, wheels down.
Stead to Oakland: We pulled a flare and the shore is too rough.
Five minutes later came the finale in the log: Trip 6 not heard.
But the tragedy was not ended. Instead of keeping the passengers in the stranded plane, Pilot Stead got them up on the slippery top of the fuselage. One by one they were washed off and drowned—all save Stead and an ex-convict. When he reached the bluff and safety in the dawn, the Douglas' cabin was still dry.
Because of the slovenly conduct of the trip; because of Stead's failure to find his position by a simple standard orientation problem; because the Oakland office failed to recognize the inconsistency of Stead's course with the course to be flown on the northeast leg, and for many other reasons, the Air Board found: 1) that the crash was due primarily to bad judgment by Pilot Stead and two Oakland dispatchers, Thomas P. Van Sceiver and Philip Stever Showalter; 2) that U. A. L.'s procedures for aiding aircraft under such an emergency were inadequate.
Its unprecedented recommendations (subject to CAA approval): That the airline competency ratings of Pilot Stead, Dispatchers Van Sceiver and Showalter be revoked, i.e., that they be fired.