Read more
Beginning in 1968 a wave of airline hijackings swept across the skies over America. There were nearly 150 hijackings of U.S. commercial flight over the next five years. The most audacious of these air pirates were the parachute hijackers, starting with "D.B. Cooper" and ending with the hijacking of American Airlines Flight 119, the most daring of them all. John Wigger's gripping account of this period is based on fresh interviews and first-hand accounts from FBI agents, flight attendants, pilots, and passengers who were swept up in the heist and the hunt for the hijacker.
List of contents
- Prologue
- Part 1: The Heist
- Chapter 1: The Hijacking
- Chapter 2: Sharon Wetherley
- Chapter 3: David Spellman
- Chapter 4: The Friendly Skies
- Chapter 5: Heinrick von George
- Chapter 6: The Money
- Chapter 7: Mohawk Airlines Flight 452
- Chapter 8: The Pilots
- Chapter 9: The Parachutes
- Chapter 10: D.B. Cooper
- Chapter 11: Tom Parker
- Chapter 12: Richard McCoy
- Chapter 13: The Switch
- Chapter 14: David Hanley
- Chapter 15: Cadillac Impact
- Chapter 16: The Boeing 727
- Chapter 17: Snipers
- Chapter 18: Chase Planes
- Chapter 19: A Short History of Parachuting
- Chapter 20: Wheels Up
- Chapter 21: The Jump
- Part 2: The Chase
- Chapter 22: The Call
- Chapter 23: Dead or Alive
- Chapter 24: Peru, Indiana
- Chapter 25: Nowhere Man
- Chapter 26: The Sketch
- Chapter 27: Survivors
- Chapter 28: The Money, the Guns, and the Pants
- Chapter 29: Show Me the Money
- Chapter 30: Tell Me Your Name
- Chapter 31: The Parachute
- Chapter 32: The Tip
- Chapter 33: A Life of Crime
- Chapter 34: The Plan
- Chapter 35: A Ride Home
- Chapter 36: The Informant
- Chapter 37: Fingerprints
- Chapter 38: The Arrest
- Chapter 39: Evidence
- Chapter 40: Fallout
- Chapter 41: Hijacker's Heaven
- Part 3: Connecting Flights
- Chapter 42: How It Began
- Chapter 43: Take Me to Cuba
- Chapter 44: Anywhere but Here
- Chapter 45: Hijack House
- Chapter 46: Security
- Chapter 47: Ransoms
- Chapter 48: A Means of Escape
- Chapter 49: The Trial
- Chapter 50: Prison Break
- Chapter 51: Finding D.B. Cooper
- Chapter 52: Arrivals
- Acknowledgments
- Index
About the author
John Wigger is Professor of History at the University of Missouri. He is the author of PTL: The Rise and Fall of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's Evangelical Empire , and American Saint: Francis Asbury and the Methodists. He grew up flying with his father and was an avid aerobatic pilot.
Summary
He pulled off what some deem the crime of the century: skyjacking a commercial jetliner, collecting a ransom of $200,000, parachuting off the aft stairs of the Boeing 727 into the night, and simply disappearing. Since November 1971, "D.B. Cooper"—no one knows his real name or identity—has become a figure of enduring fascination and obsession. The FBI pursued him for over forty years, before closing the case and leaving it unsolved.
Unsolved, perhaps, but much admired. D.B. Cooper's exploit over the skies of the American Northwest has inspired books, films, and endless speculation. What's less known is that it inspired imitators. None were more daring than the hijacker of American Airlines Flight 119. After commandeering the flight from St. Louis with a machine gun and collecting $502,500 in ransom, he parachuted out over Indiana. Unlike Cooper, he was tracked down.
In The Hijacking of American Flight 119, John Wigger explores the wave of hijackings that swept over commercial flight between 1961 and 1972. One hijacker ran across the ramp in Reno, Nevada with a pillowcase over his head, gun in hand, to seize a United Airlines flight. Another collected a large ransom in Washington, D.C. before jumping over Honduras. Yet another rode a bicycle across the tarmac with a rifle strapped to the handlebars. Motivations involved an admixture of ideology, greed, derring-do, and a desperate need to be somebody. What they had in common was that their exploits transfixed the nation's attention, bringing about a transformation in airline security that remains with us still.
With its focus on the parachute hijackers, Wigger's book gathers together the stories of this period of daring criminality and recounts them in gripping fashion, showing their effect on the public, the media, and law enforcement. Using never-before- published interviews and first-hand accounts, he brings to life one of the most chaotic and fascinating periods in American aviation history.
Additional text
Wigger's hugely entertaining book travels a previously unexplored byway of aviation history and is probably best read on dry land, just to be absolutely sure.
