mills

My name is Mills Baker; I write about love, culture, art, religion, mental illness, philosophy, memory, politics and the rather random.

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Posts tagged plane crash.
Tail section in Brooklyn, LIFE archive. On December 16, 1960, two passenger planes crashed over NYC; one crashed in Staten Island while the other crashed in Brooklyn, setting fire to many buildings and killing several on the ground. One boy initially survived the crash, although he soon died of his injuries; he was eleven years old, and said to investigators that he’d “…heard a big noise while we were flying. The last thing I remember was the plane falling.” He was thrown burning into a snow drift, where onlookers rushed to him and put out the flames, but he passed at a hospital shortly thereafter. Quite rarely there are extraordinary instances of survival in such disasters: four people survived the worst single-plane crash in history, the hydraulic failure and crash of a 747 in Japan; 520 died. Plane crashes fascinate me for many reasons: the superhuman heroism of crews and controllers, their occurrence at the intersection of our ambitious achievement and inability to overcome contingency, how they reveal how closely death attends even our most transcendent moments, and the fact that, in a crash, humans often have many minutes in which to contemplate the end. What must that be like?

Tail section in Brooklyn, LIFE archive.

On December 16, 1960, two passenger planes crashed over NYC; one crashed in Staten Island while the other crashed in Brooklyn, setting fire to many buildings and killing several on the ground.

One boy initially survived the crash, although he soon died of his injuries; he was eleven years old, and said to investigators that he’d “…heard a big noise while we were flying. The last thing I remember was the plane falling.” He was thrown burning into a snow drift, where onlookers rushed to him and put out the flames, but he passed at a hospital shortly thereafter.

Quite rarely there are extraordinary instances of survival in such disasters: four people survived the worst single-plane crash in history, the hydraulic failure and crash of a 747 in Japan; 520 died.

Plane crashes fascinate me for many reasons: the superhuman heroism of crews and controllers, their occurrence at the intersection of our ambitious achievement and inability to overcome contingency, how they reveal how closely death attends even our most transcendent moments, and the fact that, in a crash, humans often have many minutes in which to contemplate the end. What must that be like?

Tags: flight plane crash plane crash
Bunnynico noted: Richard Mosse, Air Disasters Mosse photographs air disaster simulations: fire crews racing to put out temporary fires, amidst fake airplane bodies on the runways of airports all over Europe and the United States. Read an interview with Mosse here and view more photos at his website. I happen to be unfortunately obsessed with plane crashes for many reasons, some shallow and some more meaningful. I endlessly admire pilots and crew, and think that air disasters tend to evince the best in humans: focus, selflessness, sobriety, rapid intelligence, and heroism. I also think that Errol Morris’ “Leaving the Earth” episode of First Person is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I think about it every time I fly, and the momentary terror that grips me when an engine changes pitch or a bank angle seems too steep always reminds me that I want to be alive.

Bunnynico noted:

Richard Mosse, Air Disasters

Mosse photographs air disaster simulations: fire crews racing to put out temporary fires, amidst fake airplane bodies on the runways of airports all over Europe and the United States.

Read an interview with Mosse here and view more photos at his website.

I happen to be unfortunately obsessed with plane crashes for many reasons, some shallow and some more meaningful. I endlessly admire pilots and crew, and think that air disasters tend to evince the best in humans: focus, selflessness, sobriety, rapid intelligence, and heroism.

I also think that Errol Morris’ “Leaving the Earth” episode of First Person is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen. I think about it every time I fly, and the momentary terror that grips me when an engine changes pitch or a bank angle seems too steep always reminds me that I want to be alive.

Tags: art flight plane crash plane crash

Walker Percy, who’s something of a hero of mine, wrote often of suicide. In the hilarious and brilliant Lost in the Cosmos, he idly explored the liberating power of the genuine yet failed suicide attempt: oppressed by your despair, trapped in your collapsing psyche with its failed sense of scale, overwhelmed and lost, you fire a gun into your mouth, having checked the chamber and switched off the safety. Despite every intention of killing yourself, you fail: the gun jams, and after the ‘click’ which you expect to end your life you hear the hum of your air conditioner, perhaps a passing car.

Percy thought that this would precipitate a sudden release, a sense that you’d rejected life, opted out, but lived to reflect on it; there would be a kind of triumph. Knowing several suicides and not always being an ecstatic camper myself, I don’t know how generally this would be the case (if it would be at all), but there is something to the idea that confronting death exhilarates, restoring to you a sense of radical autonomy and selfhood. Hence daredevil sports, etc.

That’s why I am jealous as fuck of the people in this video (thanks, Kevin!). I have told dozens of people that one dream of mine is to experience a fatality-free plane crash, a doubly-unlikely fantasy, but one which I think would be extraordinary: the fear, the powerlessness, the physical terror, then: the sun, the grass, the air.

Tags: crash plane plane crash walker percy
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and many have reflected character flaws of which I’m ashamed: rashness of temper, lack of self-control, etc.  One of the nice things about working in management at my company is that I never have the opportunity to err in such a way as to kill others. The pilot of the above B-52 was reckless and had repeatedly demonstrated a lack of discipline that bordered on lunacy: his commander, after asking that he be barred from flying and being denied, insisted on flying with him on all flights so that, should any of his men’s lives be endangered, his would be as well. There is extraordinary video of this crash here, and the story is here. Apologies to those sensitive to this sort of thing; I am obsessed both with plane crashes and with hubris and error. I also find the organizational questions raised interesting: when is a maverick dangerous? How can we reduce the fallibility of the chain of command?

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, and many have reflected character flaws of which I’m ashamed: rashness of temper, lack of self-control, etc.  One of the nice things about working in management at my company is that I never have the opportunity to err in such a way as to kill others.

The pilot of the above B-52 was reckless and had repeatedly demonstrated a lack of discipline that bordered on lunacy: his commander, after asking that he be barred from flying and being denied, insisted on flying with him on all flights so that, should any of his men’s lives be endangered, his would be as well.

There is extraordinary video of this crash here, and the story is here. Apologies to those sensitive to this sort of thing; I am obsessed both with plane crashes and with hubris and error. I also find the organizational questions raised interesting: when is a maverick dangerous? How can we reduce the fallibility of the chain of command?

Tags: plane crash plane crash

Old Men Flying

I had a dream last night that I was sitting in the cockpit of a 747 being piloted by John McCain; Steven Hill, famous for playing the DA Adam Schiff on Law and Order, was sitting behind us, perhaps as flight engineer.

McCain had decided that he would try to win me over, and perhaps have me campaign for him in New Orleans -which, in the dream, was hostile to him- by demonstrating some of his courage and skill as an aviator. In the dream, he understood that I was not supportive of his candidacy, but never asked why.

He was taxing the 747 down St. Charles avenue, which even in the dream I struggled to understand, passing the Brown Mansion before turning right onto a non-existent, roughly paved, archetypal Uptown street called “Hispanic.” No kidding.

Hispanic Ave. was lined with oaks and had a lush, impenetrable canopy, but I gathered that was the point. McCain pushed forward the throttles and, impossibly, within two blocks the plane was airborne, climbing at an awful angle, knocking its wings hard against the limbs and telephone poles.

Steven Hill seemed bored, but McCain was smiling and laughing, not at all concerned about the integrity of the aircraft or the danger of what he was doing; he was, essentially, deranged. I was terrified, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings by suggesting that, at 71, he’d lost some sense of what’s reasonable.

We landed later (this part is fuzzy), taxied down through some seedy areas of the French Quarter, then took off again in equally horrifying fashion. Then I woke up.

I posit that (1) this dream is idiotic and (2) it had no meaning at all.

Tags: plane crash plane crash

Crash Landing Paralyzes Heathrow

My favorite! A plane crash with no fatalities: enormous 777 crashes at Heathrow. Here’s the BBC article, which has some videos as well.

Tags: plane crash plane crash