TWA Flight 8
Transcontinental & Western Air Douglas DC-2 · Controlled flight into terrain in severe weather
From San Francisco, California to Winslow, Arizona
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 9 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 9
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Airline
Douglas DC-2
- Aircraft type
- Douglas DC-2
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- NC13789
- Operator
- Transcontinental & Western Air
- Onboard fatalities
- 9
- Route
- From San Francisco, CaliforniaTo Winslow, Arizona
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
The crash of TWA Flight 8 involved a Transcontinental & Western Air Douglas DC-2. On March 1, 1938, during a scheduled passenger flight from San Francisco to Winslow, Arizona, TWA's interstate hub, the flight encountered severe weather. The pilot radioed his intention to land in nearby Fresno. The aircraft subsequently crashed on a mountain in Yosemite National Park, and was found three months later.
Flight
The aircraft was TWA plane #327 AC-III, NC13789, a twin-engine Douglas Aircraft Corporation DC-2-112 piloted by Captain John Graves, a former Army Air Corps pilot who won some measure of fame in 1932 when he located and dropped food to a group of snowbound people in northern Arizona. Crew members on board were the co-pilot, First Officer C. W. Wallace, and stewardess Martha Mae Wilson.
Flight 8 was flying from San Francisco to Winslow, which was a hub connecting TWA's transcontinental Los Angeles-New York route. It departed San Francisco in conditions of good visibility, with a cloud ceiling between 6000 and 7000 ft, and had sufficient fuel to last until midnight. The accident report list the causes of the disaster as "a change in wind direction and a sharp increase in velocity, unknown to the pilot, together with the pilot's confusion as to his position with reference to the Fresno Radio Range station, which combined to bring about flight over mountainous terrain, ending in a crash at near his reported cruising altitude."
Disappearance
Two hours after takeoff, the flight encountered a building weather front that developed into the most severe storm on the West Coast in 64 years. As the flight neared the Tehachapi Mountains near Bakersfield, California, Captain Graves noticed ice forming on the wings. He advised air traffic controllers, who ordered him to divert to Los Angeles due to the deteriorating weather conditions. Graves replied that he planned to divert to nearby Fresno due to local weather. At 9:28 PM, he requested a weather update; this was his last transmission received by air traffic control.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
On June 13, 1938, after the discovery of the crash site of Flight 8, Daniel C. Roper, the Secretary of Commerce, named a special board to investigate the crash. As the members of the inquisitorial board made their way cross-country from Washington, D.C., the coroner ruled that the cause of death of the victims of the flight was "accidental."
Text from the Wikipedia article “TWA Flight 8” (revision 1339307296, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
Sources
Wikipedia article: TWA Flight 8
- Article
- TWA Flight 8
- Revision
- 1339307296 · 2026-02-19 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q4564352
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "TWA Flight 8" (page 24226397, revision 1339307296)
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- flight number in the article title
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Wikipedia article's infobox and coordinates, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.