For the want of a bolt: The forced landing of an airliner in rural Iowa, January 19, 1955

Two young sisters being dropped off the Dexter bus along Old Creamery Road south of Dexter heard the plane sputter, just to the southwest of their rural home. My sister and I watched it descend to the south until we could no longer see or hear it.

Kids being dropped off the Earlham bus on the road a mile east of us watched the same troubled plane.

From where he was working in the barn, Dad (a World War II pilot and instructor) could hear a plane in distress. He headed for the house. Soon we were all bundled up and Dad, along with half the neighborhood, drove toward the area where it went down.

By the time we got there, our bus driver John Herrick had completed his route, the returned to the plane to see if he could help. The 36 passengers and 3 crew were shaken up but okay, so he drove them into Dexter. They gathered in the bank to warm up and to be checked out by Dexter’s doctors Chapler and Osborn, before deciding how to get to their destinations.

The twin engine United Airlines Convair, heading to Omaha from Des Moines, began to have trouble over Madison County. With little control, the pilot crash landed the plane in the Hochstetlers’ field, then slid through fences and across a gravel road, coming to rest in the Lenockers’ field of corn stubble.

How amazing that all 39 people aboard that plane survived. Plane was disassembled, pieces lifted into trucks by crane, and hauled to the Dexter train station. Flatcars carried them to the Convair plant in San Diego for repair. The airliner became a cargo plane, flying another 34 years.

The captain, first officer, and stewardess were given bonuses for the successful handling of the crippled plane. The Lenockers, who served meals to the men who salvaged the plane, were given a set of dishes, which family members still enjoy today. The Hochstetlers got a United Airlines check for $25 for the three fences destroyed by the plane. They still have the uncashed check as a souvenir.

Diorama by Tom Fagen of the downed aircraft in a snowy field of corn stubble.

A chunk of the plane’s propeller is on loan to the Dexter Historical Museum by the Hostetler family. Their son-in-law, Tom Fagen, has made a video of the history of the crash and the plane itself as well as a detailed diorama. The diorama may be seen in the Iowa Aviation Museum at the Greenfield Municipal Airport. 

What caused the plane to crash that winter day? Human error. A Civil Aeronautics Board investigation found that a fastener, or elevator bolt, on the elevator linkage had been removed the night before during a scheduled airframe inspection, but not reinstalled. For the want of a bolt.