Introducing: Unsolved Histories

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On June 3rd, 1963, Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 293 vanished.

The plane had been chartered by the American military and was carrying servicemen and their families from Washington State to Alaska.

There was no distress call and no obvious cause for the plane to disappear.

When the plane's wreckage was eventually spotted floating off the coast, it was clear that none of the 101 people on board had survived.

I'm Jeremy Schwartz, your host on American Criminal.

And I'm Lindsey Graham, creator of American Criminal, and host of my own podcast, American Scandal, American History Tellers, and History Daily.

Today, when an aircraft crashes, we expect the search for answers to begin immediately, that the government would want to discover the cause of the crash, especially if there were US service members on board.

But that is not what happened after Flight 293 disappeared.

For six decades, the families of those lost in the disaster felt like they'd been forgotten.

Their loved ones had been brushed under the rug.

Now, that did not sit well with the team behind the podcast, Unsolved Histories.

So they set out to uncover why.

And we're sharing their podcast today because it's a great example of the power of history.

On all of my shows, we center history in our storytelling, including American Criminal, because no matter whether we're doing a series about Teddy Roosevelt, an exploration of the Challenger Disaster, or a deep dive into the exploits of a baby thief like Georgia Tann, no matter what kind of story we're telling, they are all informed by their context, by their history.

And the show we're sharing today is no exception.

The first season of Unsolved Histories is an eight-part investigation into the disaster of Flight 293.

It delves into the lives of the people who died in the crash, and it explores how those left behind had to cope without answers.

It is also a great example of how understanding the past can change our present, because in this case, a current US.

Senator listened to the show and then proposed a new law to right some wrongs he thought the podcast spotlighted.

You're about to hear a clip from episode one of Unsolved Histories.

We think you're going to love it, and that's why we've left a link to the series in this episode's show notes.

That way, after you've heard this first piece of the puzzle, you can go and binge the whole season on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

I hope you enjoy.

Feliks Banel here, host of Unsolved Histories, a podcast about mysterious, unexplained, or little known events from the past.

There's big news for our team.

A US.

Senator listened to our show and is now putting forth a bill to finally recognize active duty service members who are missing but not missing in action.

It was a big issue we highlighted in season one.

The Flight 293 Remembrance Act means those lost in military plane crashes will not only be memorialized, but their families will get support, too.

We love it when our efforts make a difference.

We hope you and others will continue to listen.

Here's a clip of episode one from Unsolved Histories season one, What Happened to Flight 293.

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I happened to kind of just be sitting there alone and everybody was else getting ready for dinner or else doing other things.

And so I sat in this large room in front of the television and it was about five o'clock, 4.35 o'clock, and they had a special bulletin interruption.

News alert.

This is Vick Vinger, speaking for the entire TV7 News staff.

Greg Barrowman is in his 60s.

He was just eight years old one afternoon back in 1963 when he found himself sitting in front of the television by himself.

Cartoons were over, and the evening news was on from Seattle Station KIRO., or Cairo.

Well, what they did at the time is they posted the passengers, their names, and where they were from, right there.

I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Interesting, you know, plane crash, Alaska.

And I'm telling you, this is God's truth.

I read the passenger list, and I missed the first part of it in alphabetical order.

So I sat there and, you know, I couldn't believe it, but I saw I wrote Bruce's name.

Bruce Barrowman, Greg's older brother, was only 17.

That morning, Bruce had boarded a DC-7C airliner near Seattle, Northwest Airlines Flight 293 to Anchorage, Alaska.

And now, a few hours later, Greg had to tell his parents what he had just seen on TV.

And my parents were arguing that they had all sorts of issues, but at that time, I went in to the kitchen.

I said, hey, you know, you got to look at the TV.

Something's going on here.

Then they poo-pooed it for a little bit.

I said, no, no, come on.

This is for real.

It was for real.

Bruce's plane was missing.

So that was the start.

And what I think they did is once they saw the same thing I did, and immediately they called Cairo, or whomever, somebody to reach out to.

Because who are you going to call if something like that happens?

But the media.

So then I remember we all huddled around and waited and kept on watching it, repeat updates and all that, till we got a call back, I think about 7 o'clock, 6, 7 o'clock, a couple hours later anyhow.

And yeah, they said it's for real.

Reports were sketchy that night as Greg and his parents and his three other siblings waited for details about what had happened.

And, you know, we were obviously, I remember our parents were so concerned about, you know, obviously there's got to be survivors, planes and stuff, just crash and people won't die necessarily.

If it was a big plane like that, it could float, you know, the whole thing.

And it was dynamic.

Details never came.

The Barrowman family and the families of everyone else on board the plane would never learn anything substantive about the tragedy that took the life of Bruce Barrowman and 100 others, sons, fathers, brothers, daughters, mothers and sisters.

For six decades, Greg Barrowman has been searching for answers about what happened to his brother and about what happened to Flight 293.

At times, it's been a struggle to cope and to make sense of things in the wake of a tragedy that became an enduring mystery.

60 years on, the Barrowmans aren't the only ones still suffering.

The family members and friends who were left behind have never learned what really happened to the plane or about what led to the death of their loved ones.

As Greg Barrowman grew up, missing his big brother became a search for answers and a quest for closure.

What began as a personal mission became so much more.

I'd say we're trying to visit the past in order to gain perspective on our lives currently and then for myself, being in the fourth quarter of life now to know that the people that we may affect in this broadcast or our communication would give people hope for the future and some resolve.

With help from Greg and from others who lost loved ones on Flight 293 and by consulting with aviation experts to review the old documents and with amateur sleuths to comb through the archives, we re-examine the investigation and joined in the search for answers and in the quest for closure.

From KSL Podcasts, I'm Feliks Banel.

This is Unsolved Histories, What Happened to Flight 293, Episode 1, Brothers.

I was intrigued by that first story because I had never heard of Flight 293, and I thought I knew my Pacific Northwest Aviation history pretty well.

I work for radio station Kiro in Seattle, where I produce history stories about things like old army forts, forgotten shipwrecks, abandoned drive-in theaters, and lost and found treasures.

But I also do a lot of stories about transportation disasters, bridges collapsing, trolleys jumping the tracks, and again and again, airplane crashes.

My interest in plane crashes is not a ghoulish thing.

It's the exact opposite.

It's about life and survival and how traumatic experiences shape our feelings about what we value most in the short time we have on earth.

I've visited crash sites, and I've tracked down and spoken with amazing, resilient people who survived or witnessed some of the worst air crashes in the Pacific Northwest of the past 75 years.

Like the man who survived the crash of a jetliner north of Seattle in 1959.

I don't know if you've ever known you were going to die, but somehow you get a euphoric feeling.

You know, don't worry about it.

He's going to die, you know that, but you accept it, and you feel, well, hurry up, let's get it over with.

I've also done stories about lost planes, where family members of those aboard never gave up searching for answers.

Like two young Navy pilots who took off from Seattle back in 1949 on a training flight and disappeared.

The mother of one of them came to Seattle from Tennessee to help with the search.

Nothing turned up, but she came back every year for 20 years to continue searching.

She would talk about it, and she'd share all the details with us, me and my brother as grandchildren, and it was always on her mind.

She just never could get emotionally detached from it.

All this to say that something about plane crashes and the people affected by them have always been compelling.

So that's why after I first read about Flight 293, I decided I needed to know more.

I checked online and there were some old articles and a few bits of information on Wikipedia.

The most revealing and most frustrating thing I found was something called the Aircraft Accident Report, an official document issued by a federal government agency called the Civil Aeronautics Board or CAB.

The CAB is essentially a precursor to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Like the NTSB does today, the CAB investigated aviation accidents and issued reports on the causes of plane crashes.

The CAB report on what happened to Flight 293 is a scant 10 pages.

It leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

That's one of the reasons why we're doing this podcast.

The DC-7C took off from McCord Air Force Base around 8.30 in the morning, local time.

Before takeoff and for the first few hours of the journey north, everything was ordinary.

About two and a half hours into the flight, the CAB report says, the pilot or co-pilot of Flight 293 radioed that they were 14,000 feet over a point called Domestic Annette, or the part of their route nearest to Annette Island in Southeast Alaska.

Annette Island is just north of the border between Canada and Alaska.

This is a little confusing, but that point called Domestic Annette is actually about 130 miles west of the island out over the Gulf of Alaska.

It's like an imaginary road sign in the air highways or routes that most aircraft travel between destinations.

Pilots and co-pilots don't give position reports like this anymore.

Radar now tracks all commercial aircraft at all times.

In 1963, between the lower 48 and Alaska, this wasn't the case.

So, someone in the cockpit would use the radio to tell a radio operator on the ground that the plane was passing a certain spot.

If a plane didn't make a report when it was expected to, the radio operators on the ground would know that something had gone wrong.

As Flight 293 passed Domestic Annette, the pilot or co-pilot of Flight 293 also requested permission to climb to 18,000 feet.

That request to change altitude was denied.

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The crew hadn't given any reason for wanting to climb from 14,000 to 18,000 feet, though changing altitude would be a routine step for an airliner to take to avoid something like turbulence or icing conditions.

We'll hear more about this in a later episode.

The CAB report explains that a Canadian radio operator at Sandspit, British Columbia, that's an island just south of the Canadian border with Alaska, acknowledged this transmission and advised Flight 293 that this altitude was occupied by Pacific Northern Airlines Flight 5.

In a routine situation involving communications like this between air traffic personnel on the ground and a cockpit crew in the air, someone from Flight 293 should have acknowledged the message from Sandspit right away.

Instead, there was only silence.

The CAB report continues saying that two minutes later, the Sandspit operator attempted to contact Flight 293 and give it a clearance to 16,000 feet.

And then?

More silence.

There was no answer from the plane.

Next, the radio operator at Sandspit asked the crew of Pacific Northern Airways Flight 5 —remember, that was the aircraft already occupying the nearby airspace at 18,000 feet— to attempt to contact Flight 293.

It's unclear how much time elapsed between the Sandspit radio operator asking the Pacific Northern Airways crew for help, but it's likely they complied almost immediately.

But, when that crew tried to reach Flight 293 once again, there was no answer.

Several minutes had gone by, and no one on the ground or in the air could reach the cockpit crew of Flight 293.

There was no answer from the Northwest Airlines DC-7C that was supposed to be 14,000 feet over the Gulf of Alaska, and which was supposed to land at Elmendorf Air Force Base in two hours with 101 passengers and crew.

As the CAB reports succinctly and bluntly puts it, all further attempts to contact Flight 293 were futile.

Thanks for listening to this clip of Episode 1 from Unsolved Histories, What Happened to Flight 293.

For more about our show, including pictures and other episodes, go to unsolvedhistoriespod.com or find us anywhere you listen.