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

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Well, I’ve read this thread, viewed and weighed the evidence. It’s clear to me Nelson wasn’t being truthful.

I’m officially calling this myth busted.

[Dr Moore]

Well, it was easier than I thought. It took two quick searches because I could restrict to Incident - Commercial and then Incident-General Aviation. I got no hits. So, what's more likely: (1) There were no aviation incidents in Utah during calendar year 1976 or (2) The FAA incident data available on Aviation DB does not include 1976?

Ah, so it seems even the aggregated database leaves us with still nothing pre-1978. Would earlier incidents be accessible under the FAA’s FOIA system? https://www.faa.gov/foia/

[Res Ipsa]

Well, it was easier than I thought. It took two quick searches because I could restrict to Incident - Commercial and then Incident-General Aviation. I got no hits. So, what's more likely: (1) There were no aviation incidents in Utah during calendar year 1976 or (2) The FAA incident data available on Aviation DB does not include 1976?

Ah, so it seems even the aggregated database leaves us with still nothing pre-1978. Would earlier incidents be accessible under the FAA’s FOIA system? https://www.faa.gov/foia/

Yeah. Frustrating as hell. My common sense tells me the same as everyone else: it should be easier than this.

FOIA might be a good idea. In fact, let me see if the FAA can help me find the reporting rules in 1976. Unless I know the rules, I feel like I’m shooting in the dark.

[Gadianton]

While the NTSB might not have been notified(?) it seems unbelievable that a plane with one failed engine, making an emergency landing near highway 15, in a field, in or just south of the Fillmore-Beaver area, wouldn't have generated an incident report.

Nelson never says how he got the rest of the way to St. George. That's puzzling.

Thanks to Tom's report collection, I can tell you that you are wrong.

Miraculously, the free fall extinguished the fire, and, in the nick of time, the pilot was able to start the left engine, regain control of the plane, and guide it to an emergency landing in a farmer’s field not far from Delta, Utah. Everyone walked away from the incident unharmed. Another plane was dispatched, and Russell made it to St. George in time to give the invocation

Simple. Send another plane to land in the field, pick them up, and get him to St. George.

[Dr Moore]

Miraculously, the free fall extinguished the fire, and, in the nick of time, the pilot was able to start the left engine, regain control of the plane, and guide it to an emergency landing in a farmer’s field not far from Delta, Utah. Everyone walked away from the incident unharmed. Another plane was dispatched, and Russell made it to St. George in time to give the invocation

Simple. Send another plane to land in the field, pick them up, and get him to St. George.

Ahhhh, thanks. Delta. Well, I wonder if Sherri was with him.

[Res Ipsa]

To me, the problem is the repeated piling on of assumptions. Unless you have some talent for mind reading or have some special insights into Nelson’s style of writing, your basis for ruling out private plane or charter isn’t reasonable.

I'm sure you don't mean to argue that it's pointless to (1) look for the evidence of an incident report about a a twin engine plane that made an emergency landing with one exploded engine, and then (2) report back when nothing turns up matching the time frame and circumstances as conveyed by Nelson. The absence of an incident report *might* simply means we haven't found it yet, I guess, like our missing Lehites.

Re-read the 1985 accounting above - Nelson included a fascinating detail that I'm not sure he included in any other versions.

the pilot "was able to glide us, following a highway, until we could make an emergency landing." (later added, "in a field")

Looking on a map, as a plane flies, SLC to SGU flies nearly just over highway 15 in southern Utah. Nelson's description puts this emergency landing somewhere off of highway 15, south of Fillmore (the roughly half way point). And from other versions, we know he means to convey Nov. 12, 1976, because of his relief over making it to his event at Dixie on time.

Also, I missed one other detail earlier. The exploded engine, he says, was on the wing opposite to Nelson, closest to the "hysterical" woman. So Nelson would have observed the "exploded" engine through the opposite side window. Think that is relevant.

So, this is where I think it’s hard to figure out how to treat all these details that pop up over time. On the one hand, we’d expect the amount of detail he recalls to decrease, not increase, over time. Plus, the more time passes, the less accurate we expect the memory to be. So, I tend to be more skeptical of new details that are revealed later in the process.

The second thing i think about is the potential for an interviewer to affect the recollection. Asking leading questions in interviews caused all sorts of problems during the Satanic Panic — and not just with children. A friendly witness wants to be helpful. If you try and prompt the witness by asking leading questions, you can lead them to “recall” something that actually never happened.

So, what about the biographer in 2003? Assuming that he did his homework before he started interviewing Nelson, he already knew that the report of the fireside said that he was en route from Salt Lake to St. George to attend an event at Dixie. And with a little more homework, he could have found out that Nelson gave the invocation at the inauguration. But would he be aware of every trip Nelson made to Dixie? Dunno. I know of a second event he attended at Dixie because I stumbled upon a newspaper article while looking for something else. It was after he published the autobiography, so not relevant, except as a reminder that it may not be reasonable to assume that Nelson flew to St. George only once to attend an event at Dixie.

So, now the biographer interviews Nelson. It’s not clear to me whether the book is quoting an interview with Nelson or just from the 1985 fireside publication. So, maybe there was no interview on this topic. But, Nelson has never identified the date of the incident. So he asks Nelson, who doesn’t remember. He asks Nelson what the event was. Nelson doesn’t recall. The interviewer then reminds Nelson that he gave the invocation at the inauguration and asks if that could be the event. Nelson recognizes the event, offhand can’t connect the incident with any other trip to Dixie, and says something like “yes, that could be.” Thinks. “Yes, it must be.” Thinks. “Yes, that was the event.

Not saying that happened, but I think I have to at least consider it. Especially since Nelson isn’t quoted saying the date. All he says is SLC to St. George for an event at Dixie. It’s the author who tells us what the date is. Nelson is not quoted as connecting the incident with the inauguration until this year.

On the other hand, we don’t have a transcript of an interview with Nelson, which would be the most likely way to get Nelson’s best recollection of the complete set of facts. What we’re trying to understand as a story. The story teller takes the facts and tries to construct a story that is interesting and, in this case, illustrates a point the story teller wants to make. We shouldn’t expect a story to contain every fact that the teller remembers. In fact, it would be reasonable to find that the teller added and dropped facts over time to improve the impact of the story on listeners. So, perhaps what we should do is assume that every fact Nelson says in any version is in the complete set of facts that occurred and that he adds and drops facts overtime in an attempt to craft a better story. Then we think about how to understand any actual contradictions on a case by case basis.

Or, maybe we should take the opposite view and flag only those elements that Nelson always includes (or almost always) and trust only those elements.

Or maybe try each method and see what we get. I’m biased toward trusting the earliest recollection the most, and being less confident as time goes by. Bit I could be persuaded otherwise.

I think it is also important to pay attention to who the story teller is. Usually, it’s the author. But if the story is a quote, then the teller is the person quoted. As one example, Sheri Dew is the storyteller in her book. She doesn’t quite Nelson. And she adds details that Nelson has never included in any of his tellings. Who supplied those details? We don’t know. I give zero weight to any detail that appears for the first time in her book. (What she did in the chapter that has to be pulled in Taperrider’s links is inexcusable.)

I don’t know when each of the details you mention first appears or whether Nelson is the story teller. I’ll take a look.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Delta Municipal Airport, which is half between SLC and SG, opened in 1943 and would've been along the flight path. It makes one wonder why the pilot didn't simply land there. It also would make the whole dispatching another flight and getting Elder Russell M. Nelson to the event on time within the realm of possibility had the pilot landed there, instead.

Edit: If the pilot extinguished the one engine fire, and had another functioning engine there would've been no need to land in a field risking a nose over or some other disastrous landing when a runway was nearby.

- Doc

[Res Ipsa]

When I read the claim file, I learned that the insured was a refugee from another country. I did some poking around and learned that refugees from that country tended not to trust banks and that it was common for them to keep large amounts of cash hidden in their homes.

So, ask yourself. Did the claim rep have a reasonable basis for concluding that the theft of cash didn’t occur? (Reasonable basis is the requirement for claim denial under my state’s law.)

I totally agree with that, but, to me, TR and IHAQ are sorta doing something a little bit different than either you or the adjuster.

TR and IHAQ are presenting evidence that DOES show how Nelson might fabricate his account, based on researching his habits in other scenarios, just as you showed that it's plausible for underbanked refugees to save cash. Dr. W wrongly assumes Nelson would record some kinds of details that would allow him to substantiate his case on a later date. Dr. W is correct that he SHOULD have gathered facts, but so should the refugee had gotten a bank account. As the refugee had an incentive to behave irrationally, Nelson also has an incentive, as it's a huge part of Mormon culture to blow personal experiences out of proportion, and to accept what a leader says on faith. He had no incentives whatsoever to do anything at all to substantiate what happened. The very opposite. Even if there was a plane with an engine fire, and it dived and landed in a field, there is still an incentive to embellish it further, polishing it into the perfect parable. There is no incentive at all to have a definitive account written down to go back to, that might squelch an additional spiritual insight that requires an invented fact.

The other part of what Dr. W and Dr. M are saying as I understand it, I totally agree with. Absence of evidence in this case feels very wrong. That pilot, and a whole lot of other people, have an account of what happened, if it happened, and that none of this was ever made public or discoverable is hard to fathom. And I agree with them that it's a case that can skirt psychological commentary. There should be some minimal corroboration out there. we can remain agnostic as to how the story originated at a psyche level.

I agree that IHAQ and TR are making a different argument. But I think that’s much harder to do than what we are doing here. In the first of TR’s articles, Nelson tells an accurate version of the story in an Ensign article. Then, when Sherri Dew writes her book, she adds a bunch of erroneous detail. In fact, she takes an unrelated story from the same Ensign article and incorporates it into the story. Almost word for word. Either she’s dumb as a post or dishonest as hell. She never quotes Nelson, so we don’t know who or what her source (if there is one) is. So, we have only one version where Nelson is telling the story, and it is accurate.

The second doesn’t involve Nelson changing his story over time. It involves different accounts by different witnesses of a complicated home invasion robbery in a foreign country. It’s the kind of event where you’d have to walk each witness step by step through the event, probably using floor plans to track where each witness was. The only witness who spoke the language well left the home to get help, so she did not witness everything that occurred inside the home. She also ended up with a broken arm, although I’m not clear how.

It’s exactly the kind of frightening and confusing event that can generate wildly different accounts from witnesses.

I don’t see a pattern. And even if I did, I’d want an opinion from a psychologist. IHAQ’s conclusion that Nelson is a certain kind of person smacks to me of Fundamental Category Error.

And I agree that the absence of confirming evidence to this point feels wrong. But that’s just the way things go, sometimes. I’m hoping the version in the autobiography has more detail that we can try to verify.

[DrW]

Please read my last post. The assumptions you made are 100% wrong.

Remember, the correct order is ready, aim fire.

Res Ipsa,

As you instructed, I read your last post wherein you said, "I spent a fair amount of time checking out that website to try and understand exactly what I was looking at. So, I'm going to give you my understanding and ask you to double check me."

Here is your check.

First of all, apologies for not wading through your previous posts and responding point by point. There is no need. Here is the case made simple using relevant definitions from the CFR (italics and bolding mostly mine for clarity).

The NTSB has a Pre-1982 Accident Query website. It can be accessed directly from the website that Dr. Moore provided.

When searched for all Accident entries for Utah for the year 1976, the website returned more than 50 items. As I stated before, none had any relevance whatsoever to Nelson's claim.

Remember, as others have stated upthread, an in-flight engine fire is to be reported to the NTSB. This is a legal requirement. Pilot reporting requirements are set forth under 49CFR Part 830, better known as NTSB 830, as follows:

The operator shall file a report within 10 days of an accident. An accident is defined as “an occurrence…" in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.”

The definition of an accident is found under 49 CFR § 830.2 - Definitions, as follows.:

Aircraft accident means an occurrence associated with the operation of an aircraft which takes place between the time any person boards the aircraft with the intention of flight and all such persons have disembarked, and in which any person suffers death or serious injury, or in which the aircraft receives substantial damage.

Also under 49 CFR § 830.2 - Definition, we have the following under the definition for substantial damage:

Substantial damage means damage or failure which adversely affects the structural strength, performance, or flight characteristics of the aircraft, and which would normally require major repair or replacement of the affected component.

Portions below in italics have been added for completeness at RI's suggestion.

Engine failure or damage limited to an engine if only one engine fails or is damaged, bent fairings or cowling, dented skin, small punctured holes in the skin or fabric, ground damage to rotor or propeller blades, and damage to landing gear, wheels, tires, flaps, engine accessories, brakes, or wingtips are not considered “substantial damage” for the purpose of this part.

An "exploded" and burning engine, as claimed by Nelson, would certainly require major repair or replacement (because fire damage would extend beyond the engine) and so the damage would therefore meet the criteria for substantial damage. It would therefore have been listed on the NTSB aircraft accident website for 1976, had it occurred in that year.

If you remain concerned about the year, I would be glad to check 1974 trough 1980, take screenshots of the results and PM them to you or post them on this thread.

Remember, the correct order is read, understand, aim, fire.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but landing in a farmer's field would cause significant damage to a commuter airplane, no? There are structural issues that'd have to be corrected in addition to landing gear. So, add that on top of the engine fire and other items Dr. W listed when a plane is transported from an accident scene to a hangar for repairs.

Source: I took a whopping 6 1/2 hours of flight lessons near Victorville, CA in the late 90's - a Cessna 152. So. I'm basically an expert on avition-related matters.