Memorial to Northwest Airlines Flight 710 which crashed on March 17, 1960, approximately six miles east of Cannelton, Indiana. The plane was a four-engine turboprop, Lockheed Electra. The crash of flight 710 occured due to a phenomenon called "whirl mode" with the outboard engines on the L-188 Electras, that under the right circumstances led to the catastrophic failure of the wing. A damaged or faulty mounting strut in one of the outboard engines would allow oscillation of the entire engine mount which resulted in stresses that could end in the separation of the wing from the fuselage. (After the NWA accident in Tell City, it was discovered that the engine mounts could be damaged enough in something as simple as a hard landing to allow "whirl mode" to take place.) The fuselage remained intact and struck a soybean field at over 600 miles per hour. It was completely buried in the ground and had to be dug out with a crane. Sixty-three people lost their lives in the disaster. The crash was so severe that many of the bodies could not be identified. All of the remains were divided up and placed into sixteen coffins that were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Tell City, Indiana, about ten miles north of the crash site.
Memorial to Northwest Airlines Flight 710 which crashed on March 17, 1960, approximately six miles east of Cannelton, Indiana. The plane was a four-engine turboprop, Lockheed Electra. The crash of flight 710 occured due to a phenomenon called "whirl mode" with the outboard engines on the L-188 Electras, that under the right circumstances led to the catastrophic failure of the wing. A damaged or faulty mounting strut in one of the outboard engines would allow oscillation of the entire engine mount which resulted in stresses that could end in the separation of the wing from the fuselage. (After the NWA accident in Tell City, it was discovered that the engine mounts could be damaged enough in something as simple as a hard landing to allow "whirl mode" to take place.) The fuselage remained intact and struck a soybean field at over 600 miles per hour. It was completely buried in the ground and had to be dug out with a crane. Sixty-three people lost their lives in the disaster. The crash was so severe that many of the bodies could not be identified. All of the remains were divided up and placed into sixteen coffins that were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Tell City, Indiana, about ten miles north of the crash site.
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