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(More customer reviews)First off, I have always had an interest in this particular aircraft accident. My parents were stationed at Kirtland AFB at the time of the accident, and my father, who was a USAF Master Sargent, had vivid recall of it. After my father retired from the Military in 1965, we moved back to Albuquerque, Alameda, to be exact just before I entered 1st grade. My dad, who was a Private pilot and very active in General Aviation got me into the air as a teen and he owned a Piper Comanche which was based at the now gone Alameda airport. He told me about Flight 260 a few times while I was growing up and I remember always wanting to know more about the crash and to vist the wreckage site. I left ABQ for Dallas TX in 1984 and ended up relocating to the Atlanta area in 1989 (I work in the Aviation insurance business as an underwriter)and would travel back to ABQ in order to visit my family on a regular basis. That all said, my son, who has just finished middle school and is an active Boy Scout (Troop 142) and I decided to hike to the wreckage site via the Domingo Baca trail which we did last October (the Monday after the '09 Balloon Fiesta had ended). It was a pretty tough hike, however, the fall weather helped. After visiting and spending time at the site, I couldn't help but wanting to know more about the pilots, the other crew member and the passengers. I also wanted to know what happended on the search party side, how it was located, who was involved and what they experienced? This book coming out when it did, what can I say, the timing was perfect. I received it from Amazon yesterday and have about finished it. It is an excellent read, especially for me. It is very informative and respectful. I was able to hike to the wreckage site again last April (my brother in law who lives in ABQ tagged along). It is very peaceful in that Canyon, just sitting amid what wreckage still remains and listening to the wind.Thanks for a great book.
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At 7:05 am on February 19, 1955, TWA Flight 260 took off from the Albuquerque airport for a short flight to Santa Fe. The plane's approved air route was a dog-leg running north-northwest from Albuquerque, then east-northeast into Santa Fe to avoid flying over the Sandia Mountains. At 7:08 am the Ground Service Help at the airport saw Flight 260 about half a mile north of the airport terminal headed directly toward Sandia Ridge, almost entirely obscured by storm clouds. An Air Force Colonel standing in front of his home a mile and half northeast of the airport saw Flight 260 pass overhead and observed that if the plane was eastbound, it was too low; if it was northbound, it was off course. At 7:12 am the plane's terrain-warning bell sounded its alarm. Instinctively looking out the window, both pilots suddenly saw the sheer west face of the Sandias just beyond the right wingtip. It was an appalling shock considering they should have been ten miles further west. Reacting instantly, they rolled the plain steeply to the left and pulled its nose up. When the heading indicator indicated a westerly heading, they started to level the wings. It was their final act. Hidden by the storm, another cliff-side lay directly ahead. When they struck it, they were still in a left bank, nose high. Charles Williams, one of the first men on the scene of this horrific crash, has spent a lifetime unraveling the enigmas of TWA Flight 260's final flight. It is a tale of days, minutes, and seconds spread out over the span of half a century and a dramatic mystery cast upon a beautiful and treacherous mountain. In the end, Williams helps solve some of the controversies surrounding the crash, including the Civil Aeronautics Board's over-swift determination that the pilots were at fault.
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