Adopted:    May 5, 1944

File No. 5217-43

REPORT OF THE CIVIL AERONAUTICS BOARD on the Investigation of an Accident Involving Aircraft During a Charter Flight

An accident which occurred approximately 10 miles southeast of Iliamna Airport, Iliamna, Alaska, sometime during the evening of July 11, 1943, resulted in serious injuries of Pilot James Oran Kennedy and his passenger, George Seversen. Kennedy held a commercial pilot certificate with a single-engine land, 0-80 h.p. rating. He had flown about 425 solo hours, 306 of which were in the type airplane involved. Seversen was not certificated as an airman. The aircraft, an Aeronca S-65C (seaplane), NC 26380, owned by the pilot and A. I. Lee, was demolished.

Kennedy, accompanied by Seversen, took off from the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company’s Nakeen, Alaska cannery on a charter flight, and delivered a package of food near the mouth of Iliamna Lake, Igiging, Alaska. They recalled taking off on the return trip and climbing to an altitude of 1000 feet, but neither Kennedy nor Seversen remembered what happened thereafter. There were no known witnesses to the accident.

Examination of the wreckage and broken tree branches in the immediate vicinity indicated that while the aircraft was traveling at a comparatively high rate of speed, banked to the right at an angle of approximately 35 degree, its right wing contacted a small tree about four feet above the ground, and the left wing struck the top of another small tree. The right wing absorbed the greater force of impact and the place swerved violently to the right and crashed to the ground.

Due to the lack of witnesses and the lapse of memory suffered by the pilot and passenger, it is impossible to reconstruct the sequence of events immediately prior to impact with the tress or to determine the probable cause of this accident.

BY THE BOARD

/s/ Fred A. Toombs

Secretary