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DAC - MDC - Boeing Retirees
of California
HEADQUARTERS: P.O. BOX 5482,
Newsletter No. 176
FULLERTON, CA 92838
Ron Beeler - Editor
TEL: (714) 522-6122
www.macdacwestretirees.org
April, 2015
on the planet. So the launch business is still an evolving
FROM THE PRESIDENTS DESK
We had a well-attended October Luncheon with almost
200 retirees and guests. As usual the Rose Center
caterers provided a great meal and a nice venue. We
also had the very entertaining music by Jamie on her
keyboard. A big thanks goes to Barbara Callaghan who
makes the Luncheon happen from the Retiree
Association standpoint – and this is just one of her jobs.
story.
It was a nice change of pace from our more typical
airplane oriented subjects.
The presentation by Gale Schluter, past VPGM of the
MDC Space operation in Huntington Beach, was very
informative on the satellite launch business. Gale
focused on the marketing aspect of the launch business
and how Delta IV was developed to both reduce costs
and meet future launch needs, which were seen to be
increasing greatly about the time the program was
begun. The interesting thing is that the business model
of the communications companies that were launching
a lot of satellites back around 1997 failed, so the
predictions of many new launches proved incorrect.
The market then reverted back to its long-term
traditional numbers thereafter.
The next event coming up will be our summer field trip.
This year the visit will be to the Ronald Regan
Presidential Library in Simi Valley. Mark your
calendars for Wednesday, June 17th. I am sure this will
be a popular trip so get your reservations in early if you
are interested in going. Get all the details in Jerry
Callaghan’s (VP Special Projects) article in this issue of
the ROUNDUP.
However, Gale said Goggle is currently working with
Space X and may eventually launch up to 4,000
satellites to enable Internet connectivity from anywhere
It was great to have welcomed 20 new members into
our Association since the last Luncheon in October.
Our website is continuing to be upgraded by Betty Kult.
I encourage you to visit it – just need to Google DAC
MDC Boeing Retirees. We are working on a link that
will allow members to suggest speakers, and or topics,
for the Luncheon presentations.
As we get ready to roll into the summer season, I am
sure many of you have travel and other projects in your
plans. Have fun with whatever you are engaged in –
that is what retirement is all about.
Make sure to keep that 2nd Tuesday in October (the
6th) open so you can attend the Luncheon. Always
good to catch-up with our past work collogues and
friends.
Jim Phillips, President, DAC MDC Boeing Retirees of
California
SPECIAL EVENT FOR June 2015
In the February issue of the ROUNDUP , we
announced that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library
was selected by the BOD for this year’s field trip. The
planning is now complete and the details follow:
EVENT AGENDA



Date: Wednesday, June 17th
Bus Departure Time: 8:30AM from the rear
parking lot of the Lakewood Sycamore Center,
located at 5050 Clark Avenue, Lakewood.
 When we reach the Library, we’ll break into
smaller groups for docent guided tours.
 Following the tours, we will break for lunch
(either your own packed lunch or onsite purchased lunch). There are two purchase
dining opportunities: The Reagan Country Café
(featuring made-to-order items) and the Reagan
Pub (self-service pre-packaged items).
 After lunch you will have time to explore the
facility on your own.
Return departure time around 3 PM with arrival
back at the Sycamore Center around 5 PM.
EVENT COST
The cost per person is $21, which will cover admission,
docent tour, transportation/bus driver tips, doughnuts in
the morning and bottled water.
EVENT RESERVATIONS
The bus capacity is 55 persons. I anticipate that this
will be a popular event, so early reservations might be
in order. To initiate your reservations, please contact
me and provide your name, number of guests desired
and your e-mail and/or phone number contact. Your
final confirmed reservation will be when I receive your
check (made out to me) in the mail. You can contact
me as follows:
(562) 691-4527 e-mail: [email protected]
Address: 2151 W. Snead St., La Habra, CA 90631.
If possible, I would like to have everything confirmed
and finalized by mid-May.
Thank you, and I look forward to visiting with you on
what should be a very enjoyable day.
Jerry Callaghan
DC-10 Love Letter Part 3…
Although it was a joy to work in a company that built
airliners and with the people who loved them, as with
many love stories, not everything went smoothly all the
time.
So, on a sleepy Friday just before Memorial Day
weekend in 1979, I took a late lunch only to return to
find a strange pall had descended over the lobby in
DAC’s Long Beach headquarters building. The silence
was so palpable I could slice it with a knife, so I asked
the security guard what had happened.
“We lost a DC-10,” was his somber response, and thus
began the season of our discontent, to paraphrase
Shakespeare.
Reaching my office on the 5th floor, I found our phones
ringing off the hook with news media already
clambering for information. We had very little
ourselves---only that a DC-10 had crashed on takeoff in
Chicago when it stalled after the left engine and pylon
had become detached as seen in the photo below.
As the facts streamed in we were shocked to learn that
all onboard as well as the aircraft and two people on the
ground were lost---273 in all.
All of us had the look of a parent who had lost a child.
In fact, that metaphor was appropriate. The engineers
gave the aircraft life, the manufacturing team gave birth
to them, and, as with real parents sending their
offspring into the world, all of us had lifelong interest
in them; no matter where they went or who owned them
they were always ours because they carried our name.
The bizarre nature of this accident and the magnitude of
it occurring in a major metro area started a media
flurry. We began a log of the calls vowing to return
them when we had more information. At the request of
the National Transportation Safety Board Douglas
dispatched a go-team to Chicago that included a media
relations pro from our office. All thoughts of a quiet
holiday weekend were dashed.
Saturday morning we reconvened and a representative
of Aviation Week magazine was onsite. When the
NTSB investigator held up a small broken bolt the
diameter of a finger that was found on the runway and
declared that the cause of the accident, the media flurry
became a frenzy.
We intuitively knew that could not have been the cause,
but once the photo of Elwood Driver of the NTSB
holding up the broken bolt was published, the damage
was done. Intense pressure to ground the fleet came
from many sources, but the FAA held firm and refused
to do it.
When our go-team engineers returned home a few days
later we learned that the real cause had been events
following failure of the left aft pylon attach fitting, one
of two very stout structures that joins the pylon to the
wing’s underside.
The FAA ordered fleetwide 100-hour inspections of the
attach fittings and pylon. On the second 100-hour
inspections, cracks were found on six aircraft in the
same structure that had failed on the accident aircraft.
All were Series 10s. It was then that the FAA grounded
the U.S. DC-10s by revoking the certification type
certificate, believing that somehow the cracks were
spontaneously generating and calling into question the
DC-10’s design.
Other regulatory agencies followed suit and threw the
summer travel season into turmoil, as the DC-10 was
the backbone of many trunk airlines and charter
carriers. Older and smaller aircraft were pressed into
service to try to meet the travel demand. Media attacks
on the company and the DC-10 continued unabated
throughout June and July.
Meanwhile, the accident investigation also continued
and it became clear over time that the accident aircraft
and the others found with cracked attach fittings all had
been damaged during maintenance, when the engine
and pylon had been removed as a single unit. Further, it
was learned later that the six cracks of the inspected
DC-10s had
been there during the first 100-hour inspections, but
were simply missed at the time.
Nevertheless, the U.S. DC-10 fleet remained grounded
for 38 days even as they were cleared for service sooner
in other countries. During that time DAC ran numerous
simulations of the accident scenario in the flight
simulator with many pilot groups and spent hundreds of
hours analyzing engineering data to verify the pylon’s
design.
The company also performed flight tests on
instrumented DC-10s to measure loads on the pylon
structure during normal service, turbulence and hard
landings. Lights burned late in offices throughout the
company. Almost no area remained uninvolved during
this time.
Our office established regular communications with our
customer P.R. counterparts. We logged the first 2,000
media calls and got extra help from other divisions to
return them as the facts developed. No one can estimate
how many media contacts actually occurred over these
weeks.
When DC-10s resumed service in late July things
began to return to normal, only to be thrown into a
turmoil again on October 31, 1979, when a Western
Airlines DC-10 operating as Western Flight 2605,
crashed at Mexico City. The accident occurred in fog
while landing on a runway closed for maintenance. The
aircraft hit a large backhoe and then some structures.
Seventy two of the 88 people on board, plus 1 person
on the ground, were killed.
The shock of having this accident occur so soon after
the Chicago crash cannot be overstated. But the
aftermath was a little less difficult for us because there
was no question of any aircraft failure being the cause.
Finally, on an early morning less than a month later, I
was in a half sleep on Nov. 29 just as the TV began
playing in my bedroom as a wake-up alarm. In my
stupor I heard this, “How would you like to be the
public relations person for McDonnell Douglas today?”
the voice asked. Since I was that person it immediately
got my attention. “For the third time this year a DC-10
has crashed; this time an Air New Zealand aircraft
carrying sightseers has flown into a mountain in
Antarctica,” said Tom Brokaw, then the host of the
Today Show.
F3D-2 Sky Night
Del Valle Park, Lakewood
“I didn’t really hear that,” was my immediate reaction
and I tried crawling under the covers with a pillow over
my head--for about a millisecond. Then I jumped into
my clothes knowing what would lie ahead during this
very busy day.
The devastation of the loss of these three aircraft and of
more than 600 passengers and crew members created a
lasting impression on all who were with our company at
the time. And the aftermath affected both our
reputation and our products for years to come. But in
the end, the DC-10 was vindicated, eventually leading
to development and production of the MD-11
derivative.
Findings of the Chicago accident indicated no fault in
the pylon’s design, but the FAA mandated that the
stronger attach fitting of the larger Series 30 be used on
all future DC-10s. A tool was developed to protect the
pylon structure during maintenance and improvements
to the slat disagree, stall warning system and flight
guidance system to add further stall speed margins all
became requirements. Most importantly, the
maintenance practice of removing the engine and pylon
as one unit was banned.
The Mexico City accident was blamed on human error
and the Mt. Erebus, Antarctica, accident was traced to
an error in programming of the aircraft’s computers.
While dealing with the incidents was immensely
difficult and emotional, it also led to a much greater
understanding of the DC-10 and its systems. The
lessons learned and improvements also led to enhanced
relations with regulatory agencies and news media and
safer and better performing aircraft variants, a great
benefit to the flying public, albeit a very costly one.
By the time a DC-10 crash landed in Sioux City, Iowa
in 1989, our responses were faster and more detailed on
both the technical and media side. But that’s the subject
of another story…
Elayne Bendel
The F3D-2 replica has been removed and sent to
Fighting Classics Aircraft Restoration in Marana, AZ. It
will return this year, fully restored and placed back on
its pedestal in time for the Memorial Day ceremony.
From Barbara’s Membership desk……………….
Thank you to the 495 members who have paid their
2015 membership dues. Final Dues letters will be sent
on May 15 to those who have not yet paid. If you are
unsure whether you have paid, please call me at 714 –
522-6122 to clarify. To avoid receiving a letter, please
send your $10.00 check made payable to DAC-MDCBoeing Retirees at P.O. Box 5482, Fullerton, CA 92838
today. If I do not hear from you by July 31st, your
name will be automatically deleted from our
membership roster.
I’m pleased to announce that since the beginning of this
year, we have added eighteen new members. The
Board welcomes our new members and hopes they will
find that joining our organization will be a very
rewarding experience.
Barbara Callaghan
Welcome New Members
Milan ‘Andy’ Andreides, C1 - Marketing
Jack Hayden, C1 - Manufacturing
Robert Jump, - C1 - Engineering & MDCTS - China
Jack Roberts, C1 – Struct. Coord for Twin Jet Pgm Ofc
Patricia McKay, N/A
Richard Palazzo, C1 – Hydro Mechanical
Frank Petullo, C1 – Mgr, Cust. Svc./Svc. Changes
Margaret Petullo, C1 – Editor, Publications
Bill Saksa, C1, Quality Assurance functional test labs
Jill Schaufele, N/A
Bobbie Sorenson, C1 – Freighter & Conversion Eng’g
Mike Welch, C-17 Ops Engr., C-130 AMP Program
Maurine White, N/A