Aviation History - USA (2019-09)

Apollo By

the Numbers

Apollo Program (not including

Soyuz mission)

Number of missions into space: 11

Number of Apollo astronauts: 32

Number of astronauts who

traveled to the moon: 24

Number of missions to land

on the moon: 6

(Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 & 17)

Number of astronauts who

walked on the moon: 12

Cost of entire Apollo program:

$25.4 billion ($144 billion

in today’s dollars)

Overall budget for the state

of California, 2019: $144 billion

Amount of moon rocks/soil

returned to Earth: 842 pounds

Total time astronauts spent on the

moon: 299 hours, 30 minutes

(12½ days)

Longest time spent on the moon:

75 hours, by Harrison Schmitt and

Eugene Cernan of Apollo 17

BRIEFING

8 AAHH september 2019

C

anadian Pacific Air Lines Flight

108 (above) was 41 minutes into

its trip from Quebec City to the

small city of Baie-Comeau, 220

miles northeast, on September 9,

1949, when an explosion in the for-

ward baggage hold sent the airplane, a

Douglas DC-3, crashing to earth on the

north shore of the St. Lawrence River.

All 23 passengers and crew aboard

were killed.

Canadian Pacific, which hadn’t had

a fatal accident since 1942, conducted

a painstaking investigation. Chemical

tests of the wreckage revealed traces

of dynamite and a dry-cell battery, both

essential ingredients in a time bomb.

Attention soon turned to a middle-aged

woman who took a taxi to the airport on

the morning of the fatal flight and gave a

fictitious return address while arranging to

ship a large package aboard the airplane.

The taxi driver soon identified the woman, Marguerite Pitre, and

details of a terrible plot quickly emerged. The mastermind was

Pitre’s close friend, 31-year-old J. Albert Guay, whose wife, Rita,

was among those killed on the DC-3. Guay’s motive in killing his

wife was both to claim a life insurance payout and so he could more

fully woo his teenage mistress. The other 22 people aboard Flight

108—victims of one of the first instances of airliner sabotage—

were expendable red herrings intended to throw off investigators.

Guay had solicited the help of Pitre and her brother, a watch-

maker who built the bomb, to commit the crime. The motives of

Guay’s accomplices have never been fully explained and, while it’s

possible the bomb maker’s claims of innocence have some merit

(he maintained he was told the bomb was for clearing tree stumps),

all three were found guilty of murder and hanged.

BRIEFING

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MILESTONES

Murder in

the Skies