In deadly crash, 2 planes collided in midair
An airliner and a light plane collided in midair about 11 miles southwest of Milwaukee on Aug. 4, 1968. Three people, all in the smaller plane, were killed.
The planes came together with such force that the smaller plane, a Cessna, was wedged into the side of the North Central Airlines plane. The North Central pilot, Ted Baum, landed his plane at what is now Mitchell International Airport with part of the Cessna — still carrying the bodies of the three who were killed — embedded in the airliner.
“That pilot did a fantastic landing job,” a federal official told the Milwaukee Sentinel, in its front-page story on the crash on Aug. 5, 1968.
Baum’s co-pilot, John A. Mazur, was at the controls at the time of the collision, and was the only person on the Milwaukee-bound airliner who was injured. The Cessna slammed into the compartment just behind where the co-pilot was sitting.
Baum, who took over after the collision, said they didn’t see the plane because of the “tremendous” number of bugs on the plane’s windshield, The Milwaukee Journal reported Aug. 6.
In an Aug. 12 story, the Sentinel also raised the question of the role of “novice” pilots in such crashes. Although the Cessna’s pilot, Rick Stenberg of Elk Grove Village, Ill., was 19, he had 200 hours of flight time before the crash.
The inquiry by the National Transportation Safety Board found a different answer.
On Sept. 3, 1969, The Journal reported, the NTSB blamed the North Central
crew for the crash. The board said the airliner had been warned three times by the control tower that the planes’ paths were close. Noting the bugs-onthe-windshield issue, the board said the pilots still should have requested a new heading — something the NTSB noted pilots were loath to do.
Because the airliner was traveling above and behind the Cessna at more than twice the smaller plane’s speed, the NTSB said, the young pilot never saw the airliner coming.