Fact Checking Nelson's "Doors Of Death" light aircraft near death experience

[Res Ipsa]

Given 1976 was the heyday of SWK on "keeping a journal" there is no excuse for embellishment.

We know he kept records because he produced a personnel biography in 1979 of his exploits up to that time - “Heart To Heart”. We don’t know yet if the plane incident is included in that biography or not.

The first note we have of him telling the story is 1985. A period when a church contemporary of his, Paul H Dunn, was commonly using embellished anecdotes that aggrandised himself whilst making a faith promoting point.

At this point we have no corroboration of his story. No other witness has come forward, and no record of the incident has been found where one would expect to find a record. There’s no evidence that he talked about it at the time to anyone.

Wrong. 1979. http://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2016/03 ... n.html?m=1

[Moksha]

In the preface, he states that the airplane incident is the reason he wrote the book in the first place. http://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2016/03 ... n.html?m=1

The preface does not exist.

[Gadianton]

In the Preface Elder Nelson referred to the frightening experience that jolted him into writing the book: “The final nudge came as I was a passenger in a small airplane plummeting earthward with one of its two engines exploded. I realized then that although both the spiritual and material needs for my family had been provided, I had not left for them a reasonable recapitulation of my life that they could review. The safe emergency landing of that disabled aircraft provided me with the chance I needed.”

nice find guys.

and brought to us by no less than Dennis Horne himself.

[DrW]

I think the fact that this would have been a two leg flight makes the embellishments to the story more obvious.

If the engine fire event happened on leg 1, there would have certainly been a delay in Cedar City, no? Secure a new plane and all that, before heading on to St. George.
And leg 2 would have been too short to achieve altitude.

Dr. Moore's successful effort in running down the contemporary light plane commuter flight schedules that span the given date of the incident provide some of the most convincing evidence that the Rusty story is imagined only. In thinking about what one would expect to find if the incident had actually happened, I keep coming back to the utter lack of supporting news media, or even local independent corroborating evidence from living memory. There are a lot of folks in Cedar City and St. George who would have been around in 1976. Relatives who live about 45 minutes west of cedar city have never heard of anything like this.

Think about it. If a plane in commercial service, with a prominent LDS passenger on board, went down in a field because of an engine fire in flight, one would expect to find reporting of the incident multiple news outlets throughout the region. Images of commercial airplanes in fields near I-15 made great TV news stories and print coverage in the 1970s.

Also, an airplane that was in good enough mechanical condition to land safely, as described in the story, could have been made airworthy again with an engine replacement, wing and fuselage clean up and repaint, and an annual inspection. The SkyWest airplane would certainly have been recovered and taken back to St. George, or more likely SLC, for repair. Even if it turned out to be an insurance total loss, it would still need to be recovered and this would take time.

Field recovery of a low wing aircraft with twin engines, having the engines, landing gear and fuel tanks in the wings, would have required several days to stage and complete. For road transport, I assume that the props would be removed from the engines (and perhaps the engines from the wing nacelles), the wings removed from the fuselage and the entire disassembled plane loaded onto on a flatbed truck. The time spent and activity undertaken close to I-15 to accomplish this would have providing ample opportunity for news media to get photographs and interviews and to write unusual and interesting stories.

Local folks and news media from SLC. Cedar City and St. George, cities serviced by Sky West back then, would certainly have found a SkyWest plane with a damaged engine in a field near I-15 newsworthy, especially if a prominent LDS leader on official Church business had been a passenger.

A SkyWest Metro II accident near Elko Nevada with no fatalities in 1990 made the AP wire and national news. https://apnews.com/article/7853ee4b7ab1 ... d46424beb8

[Shulem]

In the preface, he states that the airplane incident is the reason he wrote the book in the first place. http://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2016/03 ... n.html?m=1

The preface does not exist.

In the Preface Elder Nelson referred to the frightening experience that jolted him into writing the book: “The final nudge came as I was a passenger in a small airplane plummeting earthward with one of its two engines exploded. I realized then that although both the spiritual and material needs for my family had been provided, I had not left for them a reasonable recapitulation of my life that they could review. The safe emergency landing of that disabled aircraft provided me with the chance I needed.” On January 28, 2009, mention of the scarcity and collectibility of this book was made by a Deseret News columnist, raving about its legendary mystique among book lovers.

[IHAQ]

Wrong. 1979. http://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2016/03 ... n.html?m=1

This link appears to be broken

[IHAQ]

We know he kept records because he produced a personnel biography in 1979 of his exploits up to that time - “Heart To Heart”. We don’t know yet if the plane incident is included in that biography or not.

The first note we have of him telling the story is 1985. A period when a church contemporary of his, Paul H Dunn, was commonly using embellished anecdotes that aggrandised himself whilst making a faith promoting point.

At this point we have no corroboration of his story. No other witness has come forward, and no record of the incident has been found where one would expect to find a record. There’s no evidence that he talked about it at the time to anyone.

Wrong. 1979. http://www.truthwillprevail.xyz/2016/03 ... n.html?m=1

On the assumption the preface is as Shulem has recorded it, I'll amend the status statement to:

The plane incident is included in the biography "Heart to Heart" in the preface.

So the first note we have of him telling the story is 1979. A period when a church contemporary of his, Paul H Dunn, was commonly using embellished anecdotes that aggrandised himself whilst making a faith promoting point.

At this point we have no corroboration of his story. No other witness has come forward, and no record of the incident has been found where one would expect to find a record. There’s no evidence that he talked about it at the time to anyone.

[Res Ipsa]

I think the fact that this would have been a two leg flight makes the embellishments to the story more obvious.

If the engine fire event happened on leg 1, there would have certainly been a delay in Cedar City, no? Secure a new plane and all that, before heading on to St. George.
And leg 2 would have been too short to achieve altitude.

Dr. Moore's successful effort in running down the contemporary light plane commuter flight schedules that span the given date of the incident provide some of the most convincing evidence that the Rusty story is imagined only. In thinking about what one would expect to find if the incident had actually happened, I keep coming back to the utter lack of supporting news media, or even local independent corroborating evidence from living memory. There are a lot of folks in Cedar City and St. George who would have been around in 1976. Relatives who live about 45 minutes west of cedar city have never heard of anything like this.

Think about it. If a plane in commercial service, with a prominent LDS passenger on board, went down in a field because of an engine fire in flight, one would expect to find reporting of the incident multiple news outlets throughout the region. Images of commercial airplanes in fields near I-15 made great TV news stories and print coverage in the 1970s.

Also, an airplane that was in good enough mechanical condition to land safely, as described in the story, could have been made airworthy again with an engine replacement, wing and fuselage clean up and repaint, and an annual inspection. The SkyWest airplane would certainly have been recovered and taken back to St. George, or more likely SLC, for repair. Even if it turned out to be an insurance total loss, it would still need to be recovered and this would take time.

Field recovery of a low wing aircraft with twin engines, having the engines, landing gear and fuel tanks in the wings, would have required several days to stage and complete. For road transport, I assume that the props would be removed from the engines (and perhaps the engines from the wing nacelles), the wings removed from the fuselage and the entire disassembled plane loaded onto on a flatbed truck. The time spent and activity undertaken close to I-15 to accomplish this would have providing ample opportunity for news media to get photographs and interviews and to write unusual and interesting stories.

Local folks and news media from SLC. Cedar City and St. George, cities serviced by Sky West back then, would certainly have found a SkyWest plane with a damaged engine in a field near I-15 newsworthy, especially if a prominent LDS leader on official Church business had been a passenger.

A SkyWest Metro II accident near Elko Nevada with no fatalities in 1990 made the AP wire and national news. https://apnews.com/article/7853ee4b7ab1 ... d46424beb8

Dr. W,

You're wearing blinkers. You've piled assumption on top of assumption, with the worst one being the accuracy of memory over time. We now have a quotation from the preface of his 1979 autobiography, From Heart to Heart. This was a self-published book he wrote for his family. In the preface, he states that part of his motivation for writing the book was the airplane incident.

The final nudge came as I was a passenger in a small airplane plummeting earthward with one of its two engines exploded. I realized then that although both the spiritual and material needs for my family had been provided, I had not left for them a reasonable recapitulation of my life that they could review. The safe emergency landing of that disabled aircraft provided me with the chance I needed.

He wrote that the incident helped motivate him to write an autobiography, not for general publication, but for his family. And you claim the best explanation for that is that he made it all up?

You're a scientist. If you did an experiment that showed particles traveling at speeds faster than light, would you jump to the conclusion that you'd disproved the theory of Special Relativity? Or would you go back through your experiment step by step to make sure you hadn't made a mistake along the way? Why skip that step here?

I am skeptical of the assumption that the incident happened on November 12, 1976. I'm working off memory here, but isn't the most Nelson himself has said about the date is that he was flying to attend "an event" at Dixie? Has he ever connected it with the specific date November 12, 1976? Has he ever said that he was on the way to give the invocation for the inauguration when the incident happened? Did he only fly to Dixie the one time? Clearly, someone tied the incident to the date. Who first did that?

Given the quote from the preface of his autobiography, I would expect the incident to be recounted in more depth in the text. There are copies of the book available in several libraries in Utah. I would suggest that, if the purpose of this exercise is to figure out whether the story has a factual origin, the place to start would be with what Nelson said at the closest time to the incident that we can find. Even then, we still have to be careful, because the preface is an indication that this is a "flashbulb memory" of the type examined in the study about the Challenger explosion. But the closer in the time we can get to the event, the better off we are.

Or if the purpose is to congratulate ourselves that we proved what we knew all along -- that Nelson is lying SOB who makes crap up -- carry on.

[IHAQ]

I am skeptical of the assumption that the incident happened on November 12, 1976. I'm working off memory here, but isn't the most Nelson himself has said about the date is that he was flying to attend "an event" at Dixie? Has he ever connected it with the specific date November 12, 1976? Has he ever said that he was on the way to give the invocation for the inauguration when the incident happened? Did he only fly to Dixie the one time? Clearly, someone tied the incident to the date. Who first did that?

Sheri Dew wrote the date in her book about Nelson. It would stretch credulity to think that Nelson didn’t proof read it before publication.

[Dr Moore]

The final nudge came as I was a passenger in a small airplane plummeting earthward with one of its two engines exploded. I realized then that although both the spiritual and material needs for my family had been provided, I had not left for them a reasonable recapitulation of my life that they could review. The safe emergency landing of that disabled aircraft provided me with the chance I needed.

He wrote that the incident helped motivate him to write an autobiography, not for general publication, but for his family. And you claim the best explanation for that is that he made it all up?

I don't think anyone questions whether Nelson experienced a personal scare during a flight. I'm sure he was on a plane that dove unexpectedly, giving him a momentary life-flash and subsequent reason for reflection. Hell, I've had plenty of those myself over the years. But I don't need to embellish the details of feeling scared on planes to get the essential point across. Nelson's subsequent re-tellings make miracles of the whole ordeal -- accelerating air flow putting out the engine fire, restarting of the other engine, and being able to arrive on time to his ecclesiastical commitment. All of that is unnecessary and appears worthy of a Dunnish interrogation.