It was an aviation disaster that horrified the public and decades later people are still asking demanding about the tragedy.
On November 8, 1957, during a scheduled flight from San Francisco to Honolulu a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser - a four engine aircraft so big and luxurious it was labelled “the ocean liner of the sky” - crashed. The aircraft was known as a problematic model and there had been several other crashes with its predecessor Pam Am 6 previously ditched in the sea after two of its four engines failed.
The plane was carrying 36 passengers and eight crew went it went down in the ocean - no one on board survived.
An unprecedented search of the Pacific occurred before aircraft wreckage and the bodies of 19 people were located approximately 955 nautical miles northeast of Honolulu on November 14.
Punch Magazine reported wristwatches worn by the victims had broken on impact and helped pinpoint the moment the plane plummeted into the water. This was found to be at 5:25pm - 21 minutes after the plane’s last routine position report and about 90 miles off course.
As grieving families waited for answers - the U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board launched its investigation into what had happened to Pan Am Flight 7.
Over a year later, in January 1959 the board delivered a disappointing, inconclusive report, declaring “insufficient tangible evidence at this time to determine the cause of the accident.” The unknown determination of the official investigative record further shrouded the tragedy in mystery and left many questions, unanswered.
Two individuals who were connected in different ways to the flight began years of outside scrutiny in a quest to find out the truth behind what had happened.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, Ken Fortenberry - a veteran newspaper reporter and editor - and Gregg Herken - a history professor and former curator at the National Air and Space Museum - met while independently exploring why the crash had taken place.
Their eventual meeting occurred after both men had individually spent decades looking into the incident and it led to a collaboration of working together of 13 years . The tragedy had a profound impact on both men's lives and dictated the direction their existences travelled from their careers to relentlessly pursuing answers.
Fortenberry was living in a new house next to plum orchards and a dairy farm in Santa Clara, California, when he learned that his father - Pan Am 7’s second officer, was missing. Before relocating to Santa Clara, Ken’s family had moved from New York to San Mateo, where William (Bill) Fortenberry played an instrumental role in establishing Shoreview Methodist Church.
“My dad loved California, absolutely loved it,” recalled Fortenberry. “It was just a real special place to him." At the time he was told his parent was missing, Fortenberry was just six-years-old. He said he had woken up on a Saturday morning to find his house abuzz and full of strangers.
“I don’t recall specifically the moment my mother told us the plane was missing, but I do recall just being a kid and crying my eyes out,” he says. Fortenberry remembers his mother trying to keep the family's spirits up as she said, “Your dad’s a great swimmer, Son. They’re gonna find them somewhere.” His father’s body was never recovered.
Herken also had a personal connection to the flight but in a different way to Fortenberry. In 1957, Herken had recently moved to San Mateo from Denver with his family and was having a hard time fitting in at his new school.
A Pan Am stewardess, Marie McGrath doubled as a substitute teacher - a common second career during aviation downtime - and Herken became one of her students at Abbott Middle School. McGrath made an impression on the young boy while teaching him as she shared stories of her adventures and brought food from the Clipper for a class luau.
Herken said: “She told us about Hawaii and for a fourth-grader who had just moved from Denver, this was very exotic stuff.” He was sitting in class when the school's principal announced over the PA system that Miss McGrath’s plane was missing.
“At the time, I just imagined it flying into a cloud and not coming out again,” he remembered, “I’ve always felt grateful to Marie for what she did, for helping me adjust to my new life as a kid in California.”
The two men were determined to get to the truth of what happened in the lead-up to and on board the aircraft before it's demise. They said sensational newspaper accounts speculated that the Clipper had been hit by a meteor, or even shot down by a flying saucer. Eventually, public interest waned but Fortenberry and Herken pressed on.
Through the pair's research, they came to know the backstories of the Bay Area passengers and two particular passengers of interest stood out on the aircraft's manifest.
The purser on 'Romance of the skies' that day, Eugene Crosthwaite, reportedly had a grudge against the airline due to his working conditions and the way he was treated. Just a few days before the crash, he had changed his will, and left a copy in the glove box of the car he’d parked at the airport. Initially, Pan Am suspected that Crosthwaite had brought down the airplane, but the FBI rebuffed the airline’s requests to investigate him.
Meanwhile, the insurance company fingered a different suspect as being the responsible party for the air disaster, a man named William Harrison Payne.
The ex-Navy frogman had form for destructive behavior after he had used dynamite to blow a hole in the road that crossed his property, which was being used as a short-cut by logging trucks.
He’d also boasted to his neighbors that he knew how to make a bomb using two flashlight batteries and a length of wire. Payne’s body was not among those recovered for the incident site. A Pan American official conceded to the insurance investigator that it was possible Payne had never boarded the aircraft.
With each new clue, Fortenberry said he would find his perspective shifting. “One minute, I’d think it was an accident,” he acknowledges. “Next thing, I’d think Payne blew it up and then next thing, Crosthwaite blew it up.” As his hypothesizes for who was ultimately responsible continued to flip-flop he struggled with staying objectively focused. In his quest for answers about his father and the other souls lost on board - Fortenberry futilely reached out to Crosthwaite’s stepdaughter, Tania many times, who he says, “stiffed me for decades.”
And then one day, he received a Facebook message out of the blue: “I think it’s about time we talk.” Fortenberry flew to Houston to meet Tania the next day, determined to learn as much as he could from her. “She pretty much laid it out that her stepdad was suicidal and out of his mind,” he recounted, and Fortenberry now blames Eugene Crosthwaite for his father’s death. “The information she gave me helped me paint more of a picture and I had a forensic psychologist weigh in on it. And he pretty much concluded what I did as well.”
However, Herken, who is now a retired history professor living in Santa Cruz, drew a different conclusion. “I think it was a catastrophic mechanical failure,” he insisted. “There was a similar incident a few years before with the same type of plane where the propeller spun out. They almost lost control of the plane but were able to make an emergency landing on an island. I think that something very similar could have happened in this case.”
Despite having different theories on what caused the crash, both men maintain a healthy level of respect towards each other and their individual opinions. As the wreckage of Clipper Romance of the Skies continues to degrade on the seafloor, memories of the ill-fated plane also fade over time and the two men are determined to make sure the lives of those lost on that fateful flight are not forgotten.
With no burial site accessible to visit, Fortenberry and Herken believe it’s imperative that those who died are remembered. “This crash did a lot to change safety regulations and expectations for aviation,” stated Fortenberry. “This was home to so many of them, and I just think their lives need to be remembered in some way.”
As a way to ensure that respects were paid to the victims and a tribute to his own father, Fortenberry created the Pan Am Flight 7 Memorial Committee with the goal of establishing a permanent tribute to the 44 people whose lives were lost. Fundraising was successful and the next step was to located a suitable site for the memorial plaque. After a lot of hard work, the memorial committee eventually received a warm reception from the city council in Millbrae who agreed to place the plaque within the city. With the 65th anniversary
Ken created the Pan Am Flight 7 Memorial Committee with the goal of establishing a permanent tribute to the 44 victims. With GoFundMe and Facebook pages set up to educate and raise money, all that remained was finding an appropriate setting for the plaque.
After tireless and often frustrating outreach efforts, the Memorial Committee finally found a warm reception in Millbrae. A granite memorial plaque honoring the victims of Pan Am Flight 7 was unveiled on April 4, 2023, at the Millbrae History Museum. The monument at 420 Poplar Avenue lists the names of all 44 passengers and crew who perished in the 1957 crash.