1957 Pacoima mid-air collision

The DC-7B, which was earmarked for delivery to Continental Airlines, took off from the Santa Monica Airport at 10:15 a.m. on its first functional test flight, with a crew of four Douglas personnel aboard, including former actor Archie Twitchell. Meanwhile, in Palmdale to the north, a pair of two-seater F-89J fighter jets took off at 10:50 a.m. on test flights, one that involved a check of their on-board radar equipment. Both jets and the DC-7B were performing their individual tests at an altitude of in clear skies over the San Fernando Valley when, at about 11:18 a.m., a high-speed, near-head-on midair collision occurred. Investigators were later able to determine that the two aircraft most likely converged at a point over an area northeast of the Hansen Dam spillway. Following the collision, Curtiss Adams, the radarman aboard the eastbound twin-engine F-89J Scorpion, was able to bail out of the stricken fighter jet and, despite incurring severe burns, parachuted to a landing on a garage roof in Burbank, breaking his leg when he fell to the ground. The fighter jet's pilot, Roland E. Owen, died when the aircraft plummeted in flames into La Tuna Canyon in the Verdugo Mountains. The collision was blamed on pilot error and the failure of both aircraft crews to exercise proper "see and avoid" procedures regarding other aircraft while operating under visual flight rules (VFR). The crash also prompted the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) to set restrictions on all aircraft test flights, both military and civilian, requiring that they be made over open water or specifically approved sparsely populated areas. ==Media representation==

The event is depicted in the film La Bamba, the 1987 biopic of rock 'n' roll figure Ritchie Valens, who was a 15-year-old student at Pacoima Junior High School at the time of the disaster but was not at school that day because he was attending the funeral of his grandfather. Recurring nightmares of the disaster led to Valens' fear of flying, which he overcame after he launched his music career. Valens was killed in a plane crash two years later, along with fellow rock 'n' rollers Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper as well as pilot Roger Peterson, when their chartered Beechcraft Bonanza crashed near Mason City, Iowa, late at night of February 3, 1959. However, in the nightmare sequences of the film, the first collision was portrayed by two general aviation aircraft (one of which was the Beechcraft Bonanza, the model in which Valens actually died), as opposed to the aircraft in the actual disaster. The 1957 crash was discussed on the May 19, 1957, episode of The CBS Radio Workshop (entitled "Heaven Is In the Sky"). The program described when and how both planes took off from their respective airfields, and included discussion of how the Pacoima Junior High School was having the 7th-grade students outside for exercise. It also included interviews with people who were witnesses and/or affected by the crash. ==See also==