On this day, December 8, 1963, Pan Am flight 214 crashed after being struck by lightning.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Tue Dec 8, 2020: On this day, December 8, 1963, Pan Am flight 214 crashed after being struck by lightning.

I know someone who was a student at the University of Delaware at the time. UD is in Newark, Delaware, only a few miles away. People there saw the plane go down.

Pan Am Flight 214



The aircraft involved in the crash, N709PA, before being delivered to Pan Am

Accident
Date: December 8, 1963
Site: Elkton, Maryland, United States
Coordinates: 39°36?47.8?N 75°47?29.7?W

Fatalities: 81
Survivors: 0

Pan Am Flight 214 was a scheduled flight of Pan American World Airways from San Juan, Puerto Rico, to Baltimore, Maryland, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. On December 8, 1963, the Boeing 707 serving the flight crashed near Elkton, Maryland, while flying from Baltimore to Philadelphia, after being hit by lightning. All 81 occupants of the plane were killed. It was the first fatal accident on a Pan Am jet aircraft since the company had taken its first delivery of the type five years earlier.

{snip}

[woodsprite]

1. My dad was a volunteer firefighter and ambulance driver

For Aetna HH&L in Newark. My mom met him in the driveway as he got home from work and told him the news. He backed right out if the driveway to grab his gear and report for duty. What he said was that the scene was devastating, even removing carnage/debris from trees. He had never seen/worked a scene anything like it before.

[3Hotdogs]

2. Planes and lightning are in the air, all the thime.

Why isn't this a more frequent occurrence?

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Modern aircraft are better hardened against lightning strikes, and pilots avoid thunderstorms.

Strikes still happen, but they need not cause catastrophic damage.

Even manned rockets have been struck by lightning and survived.

https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-planes