SWMI AMS/NWA Chapter Meeting Minutes

Thursday, November 21, 2024

West Michigan Aviation Academy, Community Room

5363 44th St., Grand Rapids, MI 49512

Officers Present: Alana Dachtler, Kim Scholten and Andy Schut

Attendance: Valerie van Heest (speaker), Cort Scholten (speaker), Harrison Bishop, Ann Jean DeVries, Bill DeVries, Tom Dutkiewicz, Jeremy Gonsior, Mariann Gonsior, Stan Gonsior, Mike Holcomb, William Marino, Bill Oosterbaan, Tom Oosterbaan, Melanie Scholten, Kreigh Tomaszewski, A.C. VanderKolk, James Yarger

Call to order: 6:30 pm

President Alana Dachtler called the meeting to order at 6:30 pm and welcomed the group. Since there were several new people in attendance, she shared a few items of business including:

• How to find information on upcoming Chapter talks and the schedule on our website amsnwa.com (https://sites.google.com/a/skywatch.org/swmi/)

• The Summer Forecast Contest Results, congratulations to Kreigh, Linda and Steve!

• Information on the Winter Forecast Contest

• The Treasurer’s Report: Checking: $189.51, Savings: $529.82

• A look ahead to December’s talk from Bill Marino and his Winter Outlook 2024/25 presentation

Valerie van Heest began her talk, “Fatal Crossing: The Mysterious Disappearance of NWA Flight 2501 and the Quest for Answers” at 6:40 pm. Valerie gave some historical background on the year 1950 and post-World War II America. She also shared information about the airplane itself that crashed. She shared a lot of historical video footage of what the passengers might have experienced as they boarded the plane and leading up to take-off. The plane took off at 8:31 pm from La Guardia. Pilots would listen to audio tones to help orient themselves during the journey and would radio down to radio operators at each major city as they passed over.

Captain Lind radioed to the Chicago control tower reporting their position as they encountered a thunderstorm near Benton Harbor. That was the last radio contact recorded from NWA Flight 2501.

58 people died in the crash; this was the greatest airplane disaster of the time. The initial response was from Milwaukee because someone reported an oil slick on the water. They sent numerous boats out in hopes of a rescue effort. At the same time, a fisherman off the coast of South Haven found debris from the crash in his nets; human remains and suitcases.

She also shared actual news footage of search efforts from the Coast Guard as they were cleaning up the wreckage on the surface of the lake. One Michigan town’s mayor was forced to close the public beaches near South Haven because of all the debris (including human remains) washing up on-shore.

The CAB (Civil Aeronautics Board) filed their report and stated “The board determines that there is not sufficient evidence upon which to make a determination of probably cause”. President Truman even signed off on the report. But the report did mention severe turbulence was observed/forecasted by the Weather Bureau. Valerie suggested that the report may have left some key information out intentionally so as not to cause the public to avoid air-travel out of safety concerns. Later in 1950, the Korean War broke out and news coverage quickly turned to the war instead of the effort to learn more about the crash.

In 2001, a news article was written and attracted the attention of a famous shipwreck author, Clive Cussler who offered to help Valerie’s team find the wreckage.

In 2005, Valerie’s research team began compiling various historical documents from the days leading up to the crash including weather charts from the Weather Bureau and sectional charts that they pieced together on the expected route from New York to Minneapolis. Upon reconstruction of the sectional charts, their research suggested that Captain Lind may have deviated from the original flight path and followed a different airway.

They also found 3,000 pages of testimony and other court documents from four wrongful death lawsuits brought against Northwest Airlines in New York. In those court documents, some additional weather information was revealed but through testimony, it appears that this weather information may not have been provided to Captain Lind.

Based on additional information, Valerie’s research team narrowed down the search area to a 500 mile circle off shore from the Benton Harbor/South Haven area.

In 2006, Valerie started giving talks and someone related to one of the victims of the crash reached out to her via email. She then began to make the effort to start contacting family and friends of the victims. She documented many of their stories in her book and she says it was very impactful.

During search efforts to find the plane wreckage, they discovered many shipwrecks as well. This led Valerie to start writing books about the discoveries of the shipwrecks they came across.

After 13 years, Clive Cussler gave up the effort to find the plane’s wreckage.

In 2017, new weather data became available and Cort Scholten came up to talk about the weather side of things. Cort shared a little background information about what he does at the Grand Rapids NWS office, including issuing TAF (Terminal Aero Forecasts) very similar to what was issued back in 1950.

Cort went back to some of the weather charts that Valerie shared and added some additional annotations to help better describe what was observed 24 hours prior to the crash. He then shared the following day’s weather map that indicated a squall line was moving eastward and had likely produced dangerous conditions directly in the path of the flight.

Aircraft in 1950 did not have pressurized cabins so they typically did not fly above 10,000 feet. Thunderstorms especially when part of a squall line can often grow to heights of 30,000 feet so aircraft were forced to fly around the thunderstorm rather than over top of them. If the plane attempted to fly through the thunderstorm, it is entirely possible that Northwest Flight 2501 could have been caught in the vertical winds of the storm and a downdraft could have forced the plane into an uncontrolled descent, eventually crashing into Lake Michigan.

Some of Cort’s contacts working out of the Chanhassen National Weather Service office in Minnesota were able to recreate a high-resolution simulation of what the radar may have looked like that night. The storm motion also tends to indicate that the squall line may have been moving from north to south.

Valerie then resumed her presentation and continued to talk about what this additional weather data did to help identify where the plane might have ended up. They expanded their search area using their own sonar to create a video mosaic of the Lake Michigan seabed to analyze where the wreckage could be. After several years of searching, they believe that it may be possible that the wreckage is now completely buried by sand and clay. After 20 years of searching, Valerie and her team have made the difficult decision to stop looking.

Valerie was able to talk to the Chief Pilot from Northwest Airlines at the time of the crash and he stated that he was quite sure the plane got caught in a downdraft and was forced down by the strong winds.

Other airlines diverted their aircraft away from the storm. It is possible that Captain Lind may have ignored available weather data thinking that they would make it through the storm. Northwest Airlines hired an experienced aerospace attorney that was much better prepared for the court cases against them. Northwest Airlines was not found culpable for the crash.

Valerie and Cort then answered questions from the audience.

Meeting adjourned at 8 pm.