United Airlines Flight 553

Accident
Date: December 8, 1972
Summary: Stall during approach due to pilot error
Site: Southeast of Chicago Midway International Airport, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Coordinates: 41.7653°N 87.7160°W

Flight origin: Washington National Airport
Stopover: Chicago Midway Int'l Airport
Destination: Eppley Airfield (Omaha)

Occupants: 61
Passengers: 55
Crew: 6
Fatalities: 43
Injuries: 16
Survivors: 18

Ground casualties
Ground fatalities: 2
Ground injuries: 2

United Airlines Flight 553 was a scheduled flight from Washington National Airport to Omaha, Nebraska, via Chicago Midway International Airport. On December 8, 1972, the Boeing 737-222 serving the flight, City of Lincoln, registration N9031U, crashed during an aborted landing and go around while approaching Midway Airport.

The plane crashed into a residential neighborhood, destroying five houses; there was an intense ground fire. 43 of the 61 aboard the aircraft and two on the ground were killed. Among the passengers killed were Illinois congressman George W. Collins and Dorothy Hunt, the wife of Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt. This crash was the first fatal accident involving a Boeing 737, which had entered airline service nearly five years earlier in February 1968.

{snip}

Victims

The three-man flight crew died, along with 40 of the 55 passengers. The crash destroyed five houses and damaged three others, killing two people on the ground. Survivors credited the heroic actions of stewardesses who called out to survivors to exit through a hole in the rear of the plane.

{snip}

Conspiracy theories

Dorothy Hunt's death led to the accident becoming caught up in rumors and conspiracy theories related to the unfolding Watergate scandal. Hunt was carrying $10,000 in $100 bills when the plane crashed, and some alleged that this money was meant for people connected to Watergate. James McCord alleged that Hunt supplied the Watergate defendants with money for legal expenses. The FBI's appearance at the crash scene was also regarded by some as unusually fast. Skeptics of the official narrative speculated that the plane was targeted due to Hunt's presence on board, and that sabotage of the flight was covered up by government agencies. As a result, the accident became known as "the Watergate crash."

Proponents of Watergate-related theories included Sherman Skolnick, a Chicago-based private investigator, who alleged that the aircraft had been sabotaged by the CIA. On June 13, 1973, Skolnick testified at an NTSB hearing in Rosemont, Illinois and claimed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Columbia Broadcasting System, United Airlines, traffic controllers at Midway, and the NTSB itself conspired in a plot to sabotage the flight because 12 of its passengers had links to Watergate. United Airlines officials had asked the NTSB to hear Skolnick's version because he had frequently charged that UAL was among those attempting to suppress his explanation of events. He said that Hunt carried $2 million in traveler's checks and money orders stolen from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, $50,000 in currency, and documents that may have led to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. He stated a hitman — that Nixon had placed aboard the aircraft to make sure that Hunt was killed — also died in the crash. The Chicago Tribune said that Skolnick "[knitted] scores of facts and assumptions together loosely" and "[no] documentation was produced to substantiate the charges".

The claim of CIA responsibility was echoed by Nixon's special counsel Chuck Colson in an interview with Time magazine in 1974. However, the same article speculated that Colson was accusing the CIA of the broad Watergate conspiracy in a desperate attempt to stave off Nixon's impeachment in the scandal, and that Colson may have "lost touch with reality" as he faced a prison sentence.

{snip}