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Show Disaster Strikes Plane Test Trip; 10 Aboard Killed SEATTLE, Wasn.. March 21 ll'.Vj The civil aeronautics authority au-thority directed an investigation today into the mid-air demolition of a $500,000 Boeing sub-stratosphere transport which took 10 lives and seriously retarted aviation's avia-tion's conquest of the thin air miles above the earth. Frank Caldwell, chief of the authority's investigating board, viewed the wreckage today, took several instruments from the plane's twisted control room but said no clue had been found pointing point-ing to a definite cause for the crackup. The prevailing belief was that the plane, being tested in a power dive Saturday afternoon after-noon for a Netherlands air mission, mis-sion, two of whose members were aboard, had literally come apart after a wing had crumpled. I Sun To Earth Most witnesses agreed that once disabled, whether from the sheer-I sheer-I ing of the wing or some other '. I structural disability, the air liner 1 spun to earth like a giant pin-wheel pin-wheel scattering parts over a wide area. Those aboard were trapped and all were crushed when it demolished de-molished itself on the slopes of Mt. Rainier near the little mountain moun-tain town of Adler. R. J. Minshall, vice president and general manager of Boeing said he was convinced neither the plane nor the crew were re1 sponsible. It had not been determined who was piloting the ship. Strapped in the two cockpit seats were the bodies of Julius A. Barr, Boeing test pilot, and former pilot for Madame Chiang Kai-Shek in China, and A. C. Von Baumhauer, of Amsterdam, Holland, aeronautics aero-nautics engineers for the Nether-land Nether-land government. |