A Pale, Blue Flash

From London's Northolt airport one day last week, a twin-engined British European Airways Viking winged up into the evening skies and headed for Paris. Aboard were 28 passengers and a crew of four, including the pilot, 29-year-old Captain Ian Harvey, and the hostess, pretty, auburn-haired Sue Cramsie, 26.

Forty-five minutes later, Captain Harvey's Viking was 3,500 ft. over the English Channel, the air was smooth, the sky clear. The plane's youngest passenger, a three-month-old girl, slept in her mother's lap. Hostess Cramsie had just walked to the rear of the plane to fix a cold snack for the other passengers. Later, only one passenger had a definite idea of what happened next. Paul Wolf, holiday-bound with his wife and daughter, thought he saw a pale, blue flash through the porthole.

Prudent Student. "Then," said Wolf, "it seemed as if someone had struck the plane with a giant hammer." Both sides of the plane burst open just forward of the tail surface, and the wind began to roar through the two jagged holes (the larger, 9 by 4 ft.). A French student prudently untied his shoelaces in preparation for an ocean crash landing.

Then the plane began to steady.

The first passenger to think of the hostess was William Haigh. He left his seat and pulled her free of the debris in the galley. Sue Cramsie was still conscious, but one arm was broken and badly gashed. The other passengers tried to make her comfortable on a makeshift cot of coats and pillows.

Captain Harvey had turned about and was headed back toward London. He radioed that his craft had been struck by lightning, told the Northolt emergency crew to stand by for a crash landing. Pilot Harvey knew he was taking on a large order. The explosion had jammed his rudder in central position. He had only slight control of his tail elevators. Harvey was going to try to land on what control he could get from his engines and wing ailerons.

Whiskies & Sherries. At 9:30 p.m., while the doctors and ambulances waited below, the crippled Viking circled overhead. Harvey let down for the landing, overshot the runway, and gunned his plane up again for another try. On the second try he made a good landing, got a loud cheer from waiting ground crewmen and the emergency squad. An ex-R.A.F. pilot looked at the holes in the ship's sides and said: "Not many came back that way during the war. A 4.5-inch shell couldn't have done worse."

A few minutes later the passengers gathered in the airport lounge for whiskies and sherries. Twenty of them decided to take a special plane out again an hour later. Said one: "If I don't take the next plane out, I'll never fly again." Five other passengers flew to Paris the following day. Only two called off their trips.

Two days after the explosion, B.E.A. officials made a startling announcement. The Viking, they said, had been struck not by lightning, but by sabotage. Government explosive experts examined the plane, reported that the explosion was caused by a bomb concealed in the toilet compartment, probably in a cabinet used for discarded paper towels.

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