by pr0m37h3um and stormbreath
crewtime 10/19/04 (Wed) 10:29:03 #02927102
On the 4th of January in 1968, 197 passengers and 17 crew boarded Delta Airlines Flight 4145, from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon. The weather in Atlanta was cool with a light breeze, and the plane departed Atlanta Municipal Airport (now Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport) at 3:42 AM EST, expecting to land in Portland several hours later. They never arrived at their destination.
Our interest in the flight is concerned with two men in particular. Their names and identities are unknown to this day. They had, indeed, purchased tickets for Flight 4145, although using stolen identities from two Atlanta natives. The men these identities belonged to were later found, but had infallible alibis for the day of the flight and did not resemble either man who boarded that day.
While they used pseudonyms to board the flight, the pair also used codenames to refer to each other while on the plane. In the interest of protecting the identities of the two men who were being impersonated, I will be referring to the imposters with the codenames they used on the plane: one by the name of "Wombat" and the other "Rattlesnake". They used these codenames to identify themselves to law enforcement on the ground during the flight, insisting upon those names.
A limited timeline of the events of January 4th can be pierced together from four main sources: One, airport security cameras at the Atlanta Municipal Airport, two, eyewitness testimony from Delta employees and travelers to other destinations who were at the airport before the flight took off, three, communications with law enforcement during hostage negotiations and four, direct testimony of a few passengers who were let off the plane when it was forced to land in Chicago O'Hare International Airport. While this last group has the most direct experience, there are problems with their testimony I'll get to later.
Rattlesnake was the first to arrive to Atlanta Municipal Airport, getting there just after midnight and checking in. Airport staff remember noting that he had checked in extremely early for his flight, but that he also went and took a nap also immediately after arriving. The clerk who checked him in assumed that he was just preparing for the red-eye. Wombat arrived later, checking in around 2:30 AM EST. Nobody can recall Wombat or Rattlesnake interacting in the airport.
Boarding went without issue. Wombat had a seat at row 15C, while Rattlesnake was further up on the plane at 11E. As far as any of the survivors can recall, neither spoke to each other before the hijacking began.
crewtime 10/19/04 (Wed) 10:31:13 #03931719
Twenty minutes into the flight, Wombat removed a gun from his carry-on and pointed it at a flight attendant, telling her to take her to the front of the plane. The two walked forward, with Wombat pressing his gun into her back. As they walked to the front, Rattlesnake exited his seat, brandishing his own weapon and watching Wombat's back. Wombat then forced the flight attendant to open the door to the cockpit, at which point Wombat and Rattlesnake broke inside and took control of the vehicle.
Their first act was to get on the communications and start talking to whatever flight controls would listen, having secured control of the plane and their hostages. They had only one demand: $300,000 USD. Cash. To be delivered at Chicago O'Hare International Airport. Their demands were quickly rerouted to the FBI, who assumed control of the situation and began to start getting everything together, directing the pair to take the plane to O'Hare.
During the negotiations, the FBI was able to reach a deal with Wombat and Rattlesnake: refueling at Chicago O'Hare international airport and the first $10,000 dollars in exchange for the release of any children on the flight and their parents. There were twenty-one children on the flight below the age of 18, along with fourteen parents. When Rattlesnake announced this to the passengers and crew, a pair of grandparents — Mr. and Mrs. Ames — whose daughter and grandchildren were on the plane managed to talk their way into being released alongside the rest of their family.
These thirty-seven are the only individuals who boarded Flight 4145 to not go missing. However, they are not able to describe the flight in much detail. The children were all invariably young — with only three above the age of fourteen — and the parents were all preoccupied. Further, most were sitting in the back of the plane, while the hijackers spent almost all their time in the cockpit. The two grandparents, however, were sitting in first class, and from these two we get the best account of what happened on the plane.
This includes, of course, the infamous "metal cylinder", a topic of great debate in the community. Shortly after the two men took control of the plane, Wombat briefly returned to his seat and retrieved a second item from his carry-on bag — a cylindrical object made of silver or platinum, visibly heavier than the revolver Wombat carried in the other hand, which Ames identified as a Smith & Wesson Model 10, having become a gun enthusiast after his time in the Army during the first World War. He could not identify Rattlesnake's weapon. Some of the children on the flight claimed the weapon was a "ray gun", but the grandfather denied this, saying it was an ordinary rifle of an unknown model.
Ames, when pressed on the matter, was able to say the following about the cylinder. Several of the children on board described it as well — here, their accounts agree.
The cylinder was, I would say, about eighteen inches or so in length and somewhere between two and three inches across. No dials or buttons or anything on the side of it to use it, of course. Just that pure, silver colored metal on the entire thing, smooth and shiny. There were, however, four little lights at the top of the cylinder. Red, green, yellow, blue. They would light up every so often.
That hijacker — the big one — kept it on him the whole time, clutched in his hand with his revolver. Thought all that was quite strange.
The rest of the flight — as described by the few survivors — was tense. One of Wombat or Rattlesnake stayed in the cockpit for the rest of the flight, while the other silently walked up and down the alley in shifts. According to all the survivors, one man tried to rush Wombat as he was walking and was shot in the head — details that were only given to law enforcement after the plane had left O'Hare again.
crewtime 10/19/04 (Wed) 11:07:19 #02927102
The plane touched down at O'Hare at 6:38 AM CST after having been in the air for just under four hours. Federal agents surrounded the airstrip and brought forth the first portion of the money, opening it in front of the plane and demanding that the two hijackers release the hostages. The children and their parents exited the plane at this point, followed by the two grandparents. Mr. and Mrs. Ames were arrested upon emerging — the hijackers neglected to inform the FBI that they were giving up two more hostages — and the others were taken into the airport.
Finally, Wombat emerged from the plane, holding his pistol — but not the cylinder. According to Ames, Wombat had given it over to Rattlesnake just after landing. He told the police to back up before he slowly exited the plane, dug through the money, and then scurried back aboard. The money was not tampered with directly — no inkpacks — but the serial numbers had been recorded and if either Wombat or Rattlesnake spent any of it, they'd be traced in an instant.
The airplane crew then proceeded to refill the tank of the plane, and they took off once again into the air.
The FBI hostage negotiators then began to attempt to negotiate for the release of the remaining hostages in exchange (theoretically) for the rest of the cash. However, negotiations reached a standstill when the issue of the crew came up — the FBI insisted that the crew be released, not just the passengers, but neither Wombat nor Rattlesnake knew how to fly a plane, and a getaway vehicle was not forthcoming. Negotiations were made significantly more difficult by the fact that Wombat had killed a passenger, and the FBI was now significantly less willing to compromise with the pair.
One of the most memorable details from the transcript of hostage negotiations comes from the following, the last transmission received from Flight 4145:
Wombat: Mister, we don't know how to fly a plane. This isn't going to work.
Rattlesnake: [Muffled.] We accounted for that, right?
Wombat: [Muffled.] Didn't bring this gizmo along for nothing, no. Always thought it was going to happen.
Rattlesnake: [Muffled.] So what's the problem?
Wombat: [Muffled.] Just thought we'd be able to get a little more from these guys.
Rattlesnake: [Muffled.] Hey, you left the—
After ending communications, Flight 4145 turned West, flying back out — generally — to the original destination in Portland. The flight was traced on air traffic controls as it flew out, the entire time staying within the radius and call signals of various airports, receiving towers and air force bases. It is commonly believed this was an intentional tactic of the pilots, working against the hijackers, as the resulting flight path was erratic and confusing.
However, at 9:41 EST — six hours after the flight had taken off — the plane passed into the radius of the radar at Mountain Home Air Force base (although not the airspace). The base, having known that Flight 4145 was inbound and aware of the situation, monitored the flight on the radar, when all of a sudden, it simply disappeared in the middle of the field.
The base waited for the flight to reappear, but nothing happened. The flight was never picked up on radar for the rest of the day and never touched down anywhere. It was as it simply vanished from out of thin air. In the thirty-six years since, nothing has been found: no wreckage, remains, anything. Legally, the official story is that the plane crashed in an undiscovered location — likely a lake according to the FBI — but the fact that nobody has ever managed to find it is suspicious.
crewtime 10/19/04 (Wed) 11:40:20 #02927102
The final detail of the case is, of course, that controversial metal cylinder.
The flight disappeared from radar above Mountain Home, Idaho (the city of the same name as the base, not the base itself). In the search for it, investigators scoured the entire area underneath and within thirty miles of disappearance. Nothing was found. Nobody in the area remembered hearing or seeing a crash. An airplane should leave visible wreckage. The blackbox transmitter had seemingly just stopped working altogether.
But in 1990, something was found — a smooth silver metal cylinder. Twenty inches long, and 2.5 inches in diameter. Four lights on the top. It had been been buried in dirt, found when an excavation crew was digging a well for the a new residential building on the outskirts of town. It had been under a solid fifty feet of dirt — buried in geological strata dating back several millennia — and had nearly been missed, but one of the crew found it sticking just narrowly out of the side and pulled it out. The find was made public, and law enforcement quickly connected it to Flight 4145.
At the age of 92, Ames was at the end of his life but still alive and frequently discussed the hijacking and how lucky he thought he was to have made it off the plane. The recovered cylinder was brought to him, and he readily identified it as the very same he had seen on the flight, although dirtier and worse for wear. Other than that, though — the same thing.
Law enforcement couldn't figure out a usage for the cylinder. Eventually, they resorted to opening it up and seeing what was inside, to get a sense for the mechanisms. But when they did, all they found was a solid block of petrified wood, covered in a silver foil. The cylinder wasn't a piece of machinery or a complicated tool, just a prop.
So, what is it? The prevailing theory is that it was just a replica, created by someone enthralled with the case as a faked bit of evidence, but that doesn't add up. It was discovered deep underground, in soil that goes back hundreds of years. The reports I can find say no indication of tampering or altered soil was found, so how did it get that deep? It couldn't have come from the plane, since there was no other evidence, but Ames was convinced it was the same thing he saw on the plane. One of a kind, he called it.
If the cylinder is indeed from the plane, it is the only remnant of the vehicle to have ever been found. If it isn't, why did somebody go to such lengths for a prank?