Ken H Fortenberry - Flight 7 Is Missing: The Search For My Fathers Killer

Table of Contents

Flight 7 is Missing

2020 Ken H. Fortenberry

All Rights Reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without the authors permission is strictly forbidden. All photos and/or copyrighted material appearing in this book remain the work of its owners.

Book designed by Mark Karis

Front & Back design: Mark Karis

Edited by David Bushman

Published in the USA by Fayetteville Mafia Press

Columbus, Ohio

Contact Information

Email: fayettevillemafiapress@gmail.com

Website: fayettevillemafiapress.com

Follow the Author at

@Flight7Missing

Follow the Publisher at

@fmpbooks

ISBN: 9781949024067

eBook ISBN: 978194902407

This work is dedicated to my father, William Holland Fortenberry, a wise and worldly man whom I adored and whose memory I treasure. His romance with the skies took him to the far corners of the earth, but he was never very far from home and the family he dearly loved.

It is also dedicated to those innocent men, women, and children who perished on that unforgettable and dreary November day in 1957, and to their families, who are left with little more than photographs and precious memories.

Acknowledgments

This work would not have been possible without the advice, support, and encouragement of my partner and awesome wife, Anna Jonas Fortenberry, who has been by my side for nearly every step of the lifelong search for my fathers killer and who has patiently put up with me through all of the ups and downs. I also want to thank our five amazing children, Angela Fortenberry Payne, Jonas H. Fortenberry, Benjamin H. Fortenberry, John B. H. Fortenberry, and Leslie Fortenberry Thomas, for having faith in their old man and for their confidence in this project.

Special words of sincere gratitude and appreciation to my colleague author/historian Dr. Gregg Herken, for his immeasurable help and loyal friendship, and to the brilliant David Pawlowski for his unflagging support and belief in both me and this project.

Also, my most heartfelt thanks to Norma G. Clack and the Clack family for sharing their personal and poignant memories of Lee and his family; Bette Anne Wygant and her family for their spiritual encouragement (Amazing Grace, my friends); Dr. Jeff Kieliszewski for his invaluable professional input in helping to solve this mystery; my older brother, Jerry H. Fortenberry, who has grieved in silence for more than sixty years; my running buddy and little brother, Craig H. Fortenberry; the Pan American World Airways family; the Pan Am Historical Foundation; Fred Sohn; the late Frank Garcia Jr.; The Pan Am Museum Foundation; the staff of the Otto Richter Library at the University of Miami; Margaret Stiles Storm and her late father, investigator Russell Stiles; Karen Crocker Derry; Tom Crocker; Dick Ferguson; Lee Gaffrey Jr.; David Lane; Duke Hughes; Tom Hughes; Cynthia Brown Stark; Bill H. Fortenberry; Charles Hatchette; William Nowdesha; Lindsay Newton; Mark Lubiszewski; Stan Rolfsrud; Richard Grossheim; Cathy Davis; Jim Phillips; Elizabeth Blach; Bidney Bozard; Jim and Connie Martin; Brad and Shan McClain; Claudia Allen; Lani Suchicki; Fred Ellis; Kathryn Oplinger; Steve Allen; David Joyner; Harry Hawkins; Bruce Carlton; Georgia Biershenk Wall; Jackson Payne; Harris Payne; Anna Caroline Payne; Jason Payne; Isaiah Foster; Ryker H. Fortenberry; Sarah, Maddie, and Molly Thomas; Ronnie Agnew; David Bushman and Scott Ryan of Fayetteville Mafia Press for giving me the encouragement I needed to complete my search; and my Facebook friends and countless others who have contributed or helped me along the way with information or interviews. If I have forgotten someone, please understand that it is a mistake of the head, not the heart.

Profile artwork courtesy of Mike Machat and used with permission.

Cover photo by Bob Whelan.

Introduction

When I was six years old, I thought my dad hung the moon. More than sixty years later I still do.

My father perished on November 8, 1957, when a Pan American Boeing Stratocruiser flying across the Pacific mysteriously crashed midway between San Francisco and Honolulu. The cause of the crash was never determined, and it is frequently listed as one of the top unsolved mysteries in American commercial aviation history.

Heartbroken and full of unanswered questions, I began a lifelong journey to find my fathers killer when I was fourteen years old, and before I said my prayers and went to sleep that night in 1965, I made a promise to him and to everyone who had lost their lives on Flight 7 that I would find out how and why they died, even if it took me the rest of my life.

As it turns out, it nearly did.

More than six decades after the giant four-engine plane, nicknamed Romance of the Skies, plunged to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, this book finally answers some troubling questions about the crash. It puts together many pieces of a puzzle that was left unsolved by Washington bureaucrats including Federal Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover, who seemed to be more interested in saving face and protecting his agencys image than in helping to solve the mystery.

The search for my fathers killer has taken many twists and turns through the years and has been a journey of emotions throughout my childhood and into my senior years. From the first low in 1965, when my letter to the Civil Aeronautics Board was dismissed by a low-level bureaucrat, to a recent high when documents I had been trying to obtain for more than forty years finally were released, I have never given up the search. Through countless frustrating and often fruitless Freedom of Information requests to agencies including the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, I kept opening doors. As soon as one was slammed in my face and I was told there were no more records in their files, I would find another door to push open, and I would keep looking.

All the time, the central questions remained: How and why did the plane crash? Three words were always in the back of my mind: possible, plausible, and probable. There is a huge difference. Even if it was possible to bring the plane down by one means, I still had to ask the next question: was that angle plausible? In other words, was that theory believable? Was it credible? And once I determined that the cause was plausible, was it probable? I am neither an aviation scientist nor a psychologist, and only you will be able to decide if my final probable cause is worthy of believability.

As you read this book you will wonder if Romance of the Skies was brought down by a mechanical failure, as some federal investigators hinted, and crashed because penny-pinchers at Pan American had cut corners and failed to properly maintain and inspect the plane before it took off on its ill-fated journey.

You will consider if the largest, most luxurious airliner in the world was somehow sabotaged by a crewmember who changed his will the morning of the flight and thought Pan Am was out to get him.

Strange as it may seem, you will consider whether Romance of the Skies lost power and simply fell from the sky because of electromagnetic interference from an unidentified flying object.