One rainy morning last week two groups of newshawks arrived at Los Angeles' Union Air Terminal in Burbank. One group came to greet famed Explorers Martin and Osa Johnson, due at 10:45 on a Western Air Express plane from Salt Lake City. The other group came to witness the first demonstration of a new radio navigation device developed by Transcontinental & Western Air and just installed in all its planes. The new contrivance, everyone was told, permitted a pilot to find an airport no matter how dirty the weather. TWA's Chief Pilot O. W. Coyle took off with a party to prove it. With the cockpit of his big Douglas hooded, he climbed swiftly up through the murk in the deep San Fernando Valley, circled away over the wrinkled mountains which have given the region the name of "the worst flying country in the U. S." Time & again Pilot Coyle intentionally got lost. Each time he winged unerringly back to the field. Just as he was doing so the last time, Pilot William W. Lewis of the Western Air Express plane carrying the Explorers Johnson became lost unintentionally ten miles away. With only the conventional radio equipment at his command, Pilot Lewis did not find his course again. He smashed into a mountain.
At 52, Martin Johnson had risked many of the world's perils. A runaway at 14, he went to Europe on a cattle boat, returned as a stowaway, then shipped as a seaman on Jack London's Snark. Returning to the U. S., he married 16-year-old Osa Leighty, set off with her on 25 years of exploring, much of it in their own planes. Last week they were back from Borneo jungles for one of their periodic lecture tours. At Salt Lake City he remarked to newshawks: "America, probably because it is the most civilized place in the world, is the most dangerous." Instant later he stepped into the Western Air Express plane for Los Angeles. Month ago another famed couple, the Dame and Seigneur of Sark, just missed a WAE plane in Los Angeles. It has not been seen since (TIME, Dec. 28). Last week the Johnsons, both experienced pilots, gave small thought to this disaster, the first in WAE's ten-year history.
Presently the weather grew thick. Pilot Lewis radioed ahead for instructions, was told to come in on the Saugus radio beam. Pilot Lewis flew on through a heavy snow storm, gradually "letting down" from 7,000 ft. At 11:05 he radioed: "Coming down to localizer [beam] at field." He was then some ten miles from Burbank and only ten from the spot where a United Airliner smashed fortnight ago with death to twelve (TIME, Jan. 11). At that point he got off the beam, began circling to pick it up. Suddenly, out of the haze loomed a mountain. It was too late to clear it. With quick skill, Pilot Lewis cut his engines, pulled up the Boeing's nose, pancaked.