10

The explosion aboard Trans America Flight Two, The Golden Aryosy, was instantaneous, monstrous, and overwhelming. In the airplane's confined space it struck with the din of a hundred thunderclaps, a sheet of flame, and a blow like a giant sledge hammer.
D. 0. Guerrero died instantly, his body, near the core of the explosion, disintegrating utterly. One moment he existed; the next, there were only a few small, bloody pieces of him left.
The aircraft fuselage blew open.
Gwen Meighen, who, next to Guerrero, was nearest the explosion, received its force in her face and chest.
An instant after the dynamite charge ripped the aircraft skin, the cabin decompressed. With a second roar and tornado force, air inside the aircraft-until this moment maintained at normal pressure-swept through the ruptured fuselage to dissipate in the high altitude near-vacuum outside. Through the passenger cabins a dark engulfing cloud of dust surged toward the rear. With it, like litter in a maelstrom, went every loose object, light and heavy-papers, food trays, liquor bottles, coffeepots, hand luggage,

clothing, passengers' belongings-atl whirling through the air as if impelled toward a cyclopean vacuum cleaner.
Curtains tore away. Internal doors-flight deck, storage, and toilets -wrenched free from locks and hinges and were swept rearward with the rest, Several passengers were struck. Others, not strapped in their seats, clung to any handhold as the wind and suction drew them inexorably toward the rear.
Throughout the aircraft, emergency compartments above each seat snapped open. Yellow oxygen masks came tumbling down, each mask connected by a short plastic tube to a central oxygen supply.
Abruptly the suction lessened. The aircraft's interior was filled with mist and a savage, biting cold. Noise from engines and wind was overwhelming.
Vernon Demerest, still in the aisle of the tourist cabin where he had held himself by instinctively seizing a seatback, roared, "Get on oxygen!" He grabbed a mask himself.