days before the crash. After the crash of American Airlines flight 320, two more Electras crashed in the following months after suffering catastrophic structural failures, killing all of the occupants. Braniff Flight 542 crashed in September1959, and Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 710 crashed in March1960. After extensive research, Lockheed identified and corrected a flaw in the engine mounts which had been the cause of the structural failures of the other two crashes. However, the negative publicity surrounding all of the accidents within a short period of time led to the loss of public confidence in the safety of the aircraft, and only 174 were ever produced. Passengers and crew The flight carried 68 passengers and 5 crew members, all residents of the United States. Of the 68 passengers, 5 survived. The bodies of two of the victims were never recovered. One of the two flight attendants and the captain of the flight died in the crash. One of the crash victims was Beulah Zachary, the executive producer of the television series Kukla, Fran and Ollie, which was broadcast from 1947 to 1957. Also aboard the plane was Robert Emerson, a research professor at the University of Illinois who was internationally known for his research into plant photosynthesis, and Herbert Greenwald, a Chicago real estate developer. The pilot of the flight, Captain Albert Hunt DeWitt, was 59 years old. He started his career at American Airlines in 1929 by flying for the Thompson Aeronautical Corporation of Cleveland, which was later acquired by American. A resident of Decatur, Michigan, he was qualified to fly all of the aircraft that had been operated by American Airlines and was considered one of the most experienced commercial pilots in the world, with seven million miles flown. He had a total of 28,135 hours of flight experience, including 48 hours in the Lockheed Electra and 2,500 hours of instrument time, and had at one time acted as one of American's chief pilots in the New York area. He learned to fly airplanes when he was 24 years old. In 1930, he had been involved in an accident while he was flying a mail plane over Mishawaka, Indiana, on his way to Chicago. Caught in a severe snowstorm, his aircraft stalled and entered a spin, but he was able to jump out of his plane before it crashed and he landed in a 75-foot-high tree. Before joining