Customer Reviews

Improbable Cause

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Having a personal and professional stake in this tragedy, I'm grateful that Les wrote this book. It sketched out several technical aspects of the crash to which I had no knowledge and guided me as to what to look for.
Les also spells out some names of persons with knowledge from the military angle which were not readily available from other sources and helpful in researching this crash and the surrounding controversies.
However, several parts were factually incorrect. Quick examples:

There were NO Army Special Forces (Green Beret) qualified soldiers among the crash victims. This is easy to check with training and assignment sheet from personnel files (DA 2-1)

Assuming that plain clothes dressed Delta Force soldiers could "slip" on board a packed to capacity aircraft with soldiers and hitch a ride to US is goofy. I never met an Infantry Commander that pull a stunt like that. Besides, the troops left the Sinai in their desert Battle Dress Uniforms (BDUs)
1. Inferring sinister aspects to 3 star General Crosby and that was too craggy to be a staff officer ignores the fact that he was Army Chief of Field Artillery at Ft. Sill, as well as that ALL officers above 2nd Lt. have staff time in their career paths. The DCSPER position was a promotion to 3 stars from St. Sill Command.
2. Crosby never commanded the 101st Airborne, nor did he ever have a command WITHIN the 101st. He was G-3 (Training, Plans and Opns) of 101st at one point.
3. 4-Star General Wickham however, HAD commanded the entire 101st as a two star in 1976.

These may seem minor, but they were easy to check.

as far as the crash:
N950 JW crashed due to 3 intertwined elements, no one of which would have brought the plane down:
1. Reference weight calculations underestimated (est. weight of pax, equip, bags, weapons, batteries, etc.),
2. Engine No 4, overheating, backfiring...power reduced to 53% (which is illegal) on take-off,
3. Loss of ground effect...the added lift aircraft receive by proximity to the ground, estimated .5 x length of wing (67 ft.) Runway slopes downward and slow climbing DC-8 (as were all Arrow Air craft) lost needed lift when wheels left runway and runway dropped away.

Taken together, these 3 contributed to make the plane lose the lift needed to climb.
The left Alerion (left wing flap) was extended by flight crew (confirmed by post crash hydralic examination) to slow the left wing to compensate for Right wing's drag (caused by engine No. 4 fire).

Landing gear was never retracted, which is normally performed 2-3 seconds after lift off.

Flight crew knew past V-1 (take-off abort threshold), that the plane wouldn't fly, so they tried to level out/nose up the aircraft for a belly-landing in the trees...spreading impact over largest surface area for max survivability.

None of this however, explains why the plane exploded when it his the trees, and there were no survivors from a low velocity/low atitude (100+/- feet?) take off crash.

The crash and explosion though, had nothing to do with the "mysterious boxes." The boxes contained classified commo equipment used by soldiers of the 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, assigned to the Task Force. 311th MI personnel among the victims included 3 radar operators and 3 Arabic linguists (one of which was a crypto-linguist).

Intelligence gathering by US troops in the Sinai is now prohibited in accordance with XVIII Airborne Corps directive in 1990.

"Improbable Cause" by Les Filotas also deserves to be read for its chroniclling of public administration,regulation and investigation in Canada in the 1980's following the Gander air crash. Its careful and exhaustive documenting of how Canadian authorities did, and did not, investigate the air crash makes it an unique and important study in public administration. He is to be congratulated for his excruciating honesty and openess, that could not have been good for his own career.

The Arrow Air disaster of December 12, 1985 in Gander, Newfoundland, is still America's worst military air disaster and the worst aviation accident on Canadian soil in history. It's also still the most contentious. With the twenty-fifth anniversary of the tragedy approaching it may be a good time to read or re-read this thoroughly convincing account of the largely forgotten story behind the tragic events of that day and the shameful cover-up that followed.

Les Filotas was a dissenting member of the CASB who would not agree to crucify the pilots of Arrow Air and blame this fatal accident on failure to de-ice. The book is well-researched and presented in an easily understood style. Too bad Mr. Filotas didn't have the political power behind him that those who buried the fusilage at the crash site did.

Brave author, terrific book.