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Improbable Cause: Deceit and dissent in the investigation of America's worst military air disaster
At least 248 American troops didn't make it home for Christmas when the Arrow Air charter flight bringing them home from peacekeeping duties in the Sinai blew up after refueling at Gander, Newfoundland on December 12, 1985 – the worst peacetime military disaster in U.S. history. The Canadian investigators ignored the Islamic Jihad’s claim of terrorist action and suppressed evidence of an in-flight explosion. A slim majority of the investigative board blamed the crash on the crew's inattention to a thin layer of ice on the DC-8's wings. The board disintegrated in controversy after a review by a former supreme court justice roundly rejected the ice theory. Les Filotas, one of the minority who disputed the ice theory, gives a fully-documented insider’s account of the infamous investigation – and of the collapse of a long historical struggle to rid the investigation of aviation accidents of bureaucratic and political entanglements.
554 pages, Paperback
First published January 17, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 29, 2021
I decided to read this book because someone very dear to me died on the Gander flight. This year marks his 60th birthday and I decided to finally delve into the many theories surrounding what happened on that God forsaken morning in Dec 12, 1985.
Mr. Filotas crafted a book highly the opposite of what I expected. It is a matter of fact, dry read which made it easy for me to read quickly.
His countless comparisons to other crashes and malfunctions at first threw me a bit, after all, I was looking for Gander details.
However, within a few pages, I saw the crucial importance of his doing so.
He writes well and gives the reader solid, no frills information which allowed me to really grasp the inner workings of large planes such as the one our soldiers were coming home in.
I highly recommend this book. It is definitely not what I was expecting to read and I'm glad Mr. Filotas took the time to not only compile Gander crash info but also educate the reader.
Mr. Filotas crafted a book highly the opposite of what I expected. It is a matter of fact, dry read which made it easy for me to read quickly.
His countless comparisons to other crashes and malfunctions at first threw me a bit, after all, I was looking for Gander details.
However, within a few pages, I saw the crucial importance of his doing so.
He writes well and gives the reader solid, no frills information which allowed me to really grasp the inner workings of large planes such as the one our soldiers were coming home in.
I highly recommend this book. It is definitely not what I was expecting to read and I'm glad Mr. Filotas took the time to not only compile Gander crash info but also educate the reader.
February 20, 2023
Les Filotas is a ridiculous tool who wanted to get his name known by coming up with a completely inaccurate theory of what happened at Gander. The plane crashed because of not de-icing and being overweight. Him saying a small bit of ice couldn't bring down a plane is a joke, as we know it doesn't take much ice for a plane to have a serious problem. And that ice combined w being overweight is the LOGICAL conclusion to what happened to this plane. But Les doesn't run on logic. He wanted it to be a bomb and came up w that conclusion before investigating, so therefore it was a bomb. Unfortunately the safety message here was lost amid the controversy Les caused by his desire to be involved in an investigation that was already being handled by actual professionals, and another plane crashed in the same exact way as this one (because of ice and weight, not some non-existent bomb). People need to blow this guy off at every chance.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 20, 2013
The Silent Witness Memorial off the Trans-Canada Highway in Gander, NL, is a haunting site. Between the end of runway 22 and Gander Lake, just a short distance from the highway, is a clearing of land and a monument of a soldier holding hands with a little girl and boy. The site is powerful, even without knowing what happened there. I remember visiting the site when I was young, maybe only 4 or 5 years old. I couldn't remember much else about that drive beyond driving by the airport at one point, but I remember going to the Silent Witness site. I remember no statue, just a clearing with a few small trees. The scars were still visible from the incident.
On 12 December 1985, a chartered Arrow Air flight, bringing home members of the 101st Airborn Division from a peacekeeping mission, crashed, killing all 256 Americans on board. The flight was leaving Gander Airport after a refueling stop. The DC-8 left the runway, barely cleared the highway, and landed in a devastating, fragmented and flaming wreck, killing all on board. The cause of the wreck has never been determined.
This is where Les Filotas' book, Improbable Cause: Deceit and Dissent in the Investigation of America's Worst Military Air Disaster is of interest. The official explanation for the crash is ice on the wings, but workers at Gander Airport deny any ice on the aircraft and witnesses will still talk about how the aircraft was on fire as it passed over the highway - before it crashed. The energy of the crash, and the fact that the aircraft virtually disintegrated, points to something much more severe than ice on the wings, but no one would investigate other theories.
Filotas was on the board of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB), a short-lived division of Transport Canada charged with investigating aircraft crashes. In his book, Filotas recounts the investigation of the crash, with detailed background research and verbatim discussions that occurred once he was on the board. The book is well researched, with detailed citations throughout. He keeps the crash within the perspective of aviation disasters worldwide, framing the background of the CASB through Canadian aviation incidents and the Board's creation to the work they did before, during and after the Arrow Air disaster. He also maintains a worldwide perspective, looking at how international incidents shaped, or didn't shape, the conclusions reached by the board.
I wouldn't consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist, but this book really makes me wonder. Filotas uses parallels between the investigations into the Hindenburg disaster and Arrow Air to introduce and conclude his book, and frequently brings up in board meetings the idea that politics are what's leading investigators to push the idea of ice on the wings and to completely discount other theories, such as sabotage. While Improbable Cause does not confirm that sabotage was the cause of the crash, Filotas discusses how a minority of the board, who produced a minority report, did not believe that ice on the wings caused the crash and put forward alternate ideas, such as the evidence for an explosion in the cargo hold. He looks at the difficulties the minority had in getting any questions answered, obtaining documents, or being allowed to talk to experts who were not chosen by the chairman on the board. Filotas also details such attitudes that I, and by his tone, he, found disgusting, such as the idea that the family members of the deceased were not persons of interest in the view of the board and so were not privy to drafts of the report or information after the reports were released.
While I knew that the official cause of the crash was ice on the wings, even though residents of Gander saw the aircraft pass over the highway already on fire, I did not know the level of conspiracy associated with the crash. Reading the account, it is amazing what the board denied and refused to question, such as the unknown crates that were loaded on the aircraft in Cairo or the two passengers listed on the original manifest but who were missing from the site, or the evidence for fire on board the plane prior to impact. The fact that the board would state that passengers who showed high levels of cyanide in their blood must have lived for a few minutes on site, and might have survived had Gander firefighters not taken 7 minutes to get there, must have been difficult for families and rescue services. But admitting that there might have been a fire on board the aircraft before it crashed would not have agreed with the ice on the wings theory. In particular, I found the last chapter fascinating. I knew there would be no answers, but reading about the inquiry done in the United States I hoped there would be, until the inquiry seemed to stop asking difficult questions and had a conclusion prepared before all the witnesses could be interviewed.
The Silent Witness site is powerful and haunting. I have been to a number of plane crashes at this point, some where there have been fatalities, but none of them feel the same way that this one does. If you pass through Gander, pull in to the site and take a moment to remember the 256 victims. Maybe someday it will be known why they died.
(view a copy of this review with images of the memorial site at http://planecrashgirl.blogspot.ca/201...)
On 12 December 1985, a chartered Arrow Air flight, bringing home members of the 101st Airborn Division from a peacekeeping mission, crashed, killing all 256 Americans on board. The flight was leaving Gander Airport after a refueling stop. The DC-8 left the runway, barely cleared the highway, and landed in a devastating, fragmented and flaming wreck, killing all on board. The cause of the wreck has never been determined.
This is where Les Filotas' book, Improbable Cause: Deceit and Dissent in the Investigation of America's Worst Military Air Disaster is of interest. The official explanation for the crash is ice on the wings, but workers at Gander Airport deny any ice on the aircraft and witnesses will still talk about how the aircraft was on fire as it passed over the highway - before it crashed. The energy of the crash, and the fact that the aircraft virtually disintegrated, points to something much more severe than ice on the wings, but no one would investigate other theories.
Filotas was on the board of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB), a short-lived division of Transport Canada charged with investigating aircraft crashes. In his book, Filotas recounts the investigation of the crash, with detailed background research and verbatim discussions that occurred once he was on the board. The book is well researched, with detailed citations throughout. He keeps the crash within the perspective of aviation disasters worldwide, framing the background of the CASB through Canadian aviation incidents and the Board's creation to the work they did before, during and after the Arrow Air disaster. He also maintains a worldwide perspective, looking at how international incidents shaped, or didn't shape, the conclusions reached by the board.
I wouldn't consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist, but this book really makes me wonder. Filotas uses parallels between the investigations into the Hindenburg disaster and Arrow Air to introduce and conclude his book, and frequently brings up in board meetings the idea that politics are what's leading investigators to push the idea of ice on the wings and to completely discount other theories, such as sabotage. While Improbable Cause does not confirm that sabotage was the cause of the crash, Filotas discusses how a minority of the board, who produced a minority report, did not believe that ice on the wings caused the crash and put forward alternate ideas, such as the evidence for an explosion in the cargo hold. He looks at the difficulties the minority had in getting any questions answered, obtaining documents, or being allowed to talk to experts who were not chosen by the chairman on the board. Filotas also details such attitudes that I, and by his tone, he, found disgusting, such as the idea that the family members of the deceased were not persons of interest in the view of the board and so were not privy to drafts of the report or information after the reports were released.
While I knew that the official cause of the crash was ice on the wings, even though residents of Gander saw the aircraft pass over the highway already on fire, I did not know the level of conspiracy associated with the crash. Reading the account, it is amazing what the board denied and refused to question, such as the unknown crates that were loaded on the aircraft in Cairo or the two passengers listed on the original manifest but who were missing from the site, or the evidence for fire on board the plane prior to impact. The fact that the board would state that passengers who showed high levels of cyanide in their blood must have lived for a few minutes on site, and might have survived had Gander firefighters not taken 7 minutes to get there, must have been difficult for families and rescue services. But admitting that there might have been a fire on board the aircraft before it crashed would not have agreed with the ice on the wings theory. In particular, I found the last chapter fascinating. I knew there would be no answers, but reading about the inquiry done in the United States I hoped there would be, until the inquiry seemed to stop asking difficult questions and had a conclusion prepared before all the witnesses could be interviewed.
The Silent Witness site is powerful and haunting. I have been to a number of plane crashes at this point, some where there have been fatalities, but none of them feel the same way that this one does. If you pass through Gander, pull in to the site and take a moment to remember the 256 victims. Maybe someday it will be known why they died.
(view a copy of this review with images of the memorial site at http://planecrashgirl.blogspot.ca/201...)
February 29, 2016
A book worth reading if you are interested in more details about the investigation of the 12 Dec 1985 crash at Gander, Newfoundland of a DC-8 charter flight carrying U.S. military personnel of the 101st Airborne Division home from a peacekeeping mission in the Sinai. The author's title really says it all: "Improbable Cause: Deceit and Dissent in the Investigation of America's Worst Military Air Disaster." Author Les Filotas details the deceit and dissent in the BookSurge Edition of "Improbable Cause" that I read. The author's last paragraph in the preface to the 2007 edition of the book is a worthy summary of the story: While the ice-on-the-wing theory has been thoroughly debunked, a satisfactory explanation has yet to emerge for the obdurate refusal to investigate other possible causes and, in particular, for the attempted suppression and subsequent misrepresentation of the victims' toxicology. I hope the continuing availability of Improbable Cause may inspire others to continue the search for "the truth about Gander."
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews