In the midst of government shutdowns, an “ailing” healthcare website, and wars both within and beyond our borders this past year, it comes as no surprise that local stories are sometimes consumed by larger headlines and weightier matters affecting the nation, if not the world. The year 1965 was no different.
As the Beatles sang, “We Can Work It Out,” the Civil Rights Movement steamed forward; Vietnam escalated; President Johnson’s quest for the Great Society gained traction; and the conspicuous “Space Race”—which pitted the United States against the Soviet Union—intensified.
But beneath the headlines, and out of view from most of the nation, the worst non-natural disaster in Kansas history struck on January 16, 1965. Long forgotten by many, some, like Gladys McGlon, still remember that fateful morning in Wichita.
IT WAS AS IF THE SOUND CAME FROM ANOTHER WORLD, a motorized deafening roar, incomparable to anything ever heard in the quaint community. It was like no other sound—a low, heavy, continued rumble, which Gladys would describe years later as a “freight train passing over their roof.” Her small brick house began to shake beneath the sound. The venetian blinds in the kitchen slammed back and forth. Silverware shuttered in drawers, while dishes tumbled from cabinets. The stout wood floors in the living room creaked; picture frames fell, doors rattled on their hinges, and windows shivered.
And then, it became even louder.
The sound began just after 9:30 a.m., coupled by a blood curdling scream from the kitchen. It was Gladys’s mother, Annabelle Foster, whose sudden, piercing outcry, accompanied by the jarring sound, had brought an end to the once peaceful and calm morning. Rushing to her mother’s aid, Gladys saw the distortion in her face, the veins pulsating in her neck, and her blaring white teeth—each one aligned perfectly like keys on a piano—but the scream was somehow slowly muted. Something was drowning it out. As dimmed sunlight pricked through the kitchen windows and revealed the tense creases above her mother’s eyebrows, Gladys froze, captivated by the alien sound that strangled her mother’s incessant cries.
Her younger sisters and brothers dashed alongside her into the kitchen, clasping their ears, as their worried eyes fastened on their mother. But the comfort they sought in her face was not there. She wore a preoccupied look, as if her mind and spirit—searching for an escape—had traveled somewhere beyond the frightful event. The peaceful Saturday morning, where cereal and cartoons had started their day, was gone. Now, terror and panic gripped the setting, the source of which was still a mystery.
Their minds instantly tried to rationalize the trauma: they knew it couldn’t have been an earthquake, at least not in Kansas; a tornado, perhaps, but then again, it was a frigid January morning. Nothing seemed to fit.
As they stood there, horrorstruck and puzzled, the intense sound ripped the ceiling. A trail of dust followed the crack like speeding cars on a gravel road, cutting the house in half as the rumbling moved swiftly across the rooftop.
The powerful noise reached a crescendo just before colliding with the earth. The impact—both heard and felt throughout Wichita—bounced homes along the narrow street from their foundations. And for a brief period, only seconds, there was silence; her mother’s screams cut short. Indistinct pecks of debris falling on the roof and the flickering of fire were the only sounds heard for the moment.
Running to the front porch, still confused, wearing pajamas and shoeless, they found the air outside thick and hard to breath. It caused them to squint as the wind shifted and blew a pungent odor of jet-fuel in their direction. Peering into the dark curtain of smoke in front of them, they watched silently while oily, bluish-green drops rained down on their faces. Whaling sirens grew closer and, one by one, their neighbors staggered out of the black clouds—burned, bleeding, naked, and disoriented.
Fire trucks, police cars, and military jeeps arrived in droves within minutes. Uniformed men, pouring out of vehicles, hurried into the tiny home to evacuate Gladys and her family. Their mother, still in a state of shock, managed to ask one of the rescuers what was going on. He replied, “Ma’am, we’ve got it under control; just a plane crash.” But his ineffectual statement did little to hide the fact that they, too, were overwhelmed by the magnitude of the sight before them.
Puddles of jet fuel, an ominous sign, had now formed on the front lawn.
Swallowed up by grander headlines in the 1960s, then tucked away into dusty archives, most have never heard of the Piatt Street plane crash in Wichita, Kansas, and its terrible sound. Forty-nine years later, it remains the worst aviation disaster in Kansas history.
D. W. Carter is a military historian and best-selling Kansas author. His new book, “Mayday Over Wichita: The Worst Military Aviation Disaster in Kansas History,” examines the KC-135 tanker crash of 1965 in Wichita. www.dwcarterbooks.com