On June 22, 1951, Pan Am Flight 151, flown by the Lockheed L-049 Constellation propliner ''Clipper Great Republic'' (registration ) crashed into a West African hill at an elevation of near the village of

Sanoyie Sanoyea is a town in Bong County, Liberia. Alternate spellings for the town are Sanoyie, Sanoghie and Sanoye. The official language of the town is Kpelle. The meaning of Sanoyea in Kpelle is ''a fruit bearing tree (Sano) on the hill (yea)''. Th ...

The village is spelled "Sanoye" in the official CAB accident report, but four spelling variations are known to be used: Sonoyea, Sanoghie, Sanoye and, as used by both Google Maps and

Bing Maps Bing Maps (previously Live Search Maps, Windows Live Maps, Windows Live Local, and MSN Virtual Earth) is a web mapping service provided as a part of Microsoft's Bing suite of search engines and powered by the Bing Maps Platform framework. Since 20 ...

, Sanoyie. in

Bong County Bong is a county in the north-central portion of the West African nation of Liberia. One of 15 counties that comprise the first-level of administrative division in the nation, it has twelve districts. Gbarnga serves as the capital. The area of th ...

Liberia Liberia (), officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to its north, Ivory Coast to its east, and the Atlantic Ocean ...

. All 31 passengers and nine crew on board were killed.

Sequence of events

The Johannesburg to New York City flight was on the

Accra Accra (; tw, Nkran; dag, Ankara; gaa, Ga or ''Gaga'') is the capital and largest city of Ghana, located on the southern coast at the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2021 census, the Accra Metropolitan District, , ...

, Gold Coast (now Ghana), to

Monrovia, Liberia Monrovia () is the capital city of the West African country of Liberia. Founded in 1822, it is located on Cape Mesurado on the Atlantic coast and as of the 2008 census had 1,010,970 residents, home to 29% of Liberia’s total population. As th ...

leg of its journey. At 0301h during a pre-dawn approach to Monrovia's Robertsfield Airport, the flight crew reported to the tower that the

radio beacon In navigation, a radio beacon or radiobeacon is a kind of beacon, a device that marks a fixed location and allows direction-finding equipment to find relative bearing. But instead of employing visible light, radio beacons transmit electromagnet ...

at Dakar, Senegal was interfering with the Robertsfield radio beacon. After a 0315h weather report was sent to the pilots, all contact with the aircraft was lost. The flight was reported missing at 0410h on June 22, and an aerial search was conducted, but it was unsuccessful in locating the aircraft. At 1430h on June 23, a foot messenger arrived from the village of Sanoyie to report that an aircraft crashed into the side of a hill one day earlier several miles from the village and that everyone aboard was killed.

Investigation

It was determined that the location where the flight crashed was beyond the effective range of the Robertsfield beacon. This, combined with the report from the crew that the Dakar beacon was interfering with the Robertsfield beacon, resulted in the frequency of the Robertsfield beacon being changed to provide greater separation of frequencies between the two beacons. Investigation of the wreckage revealed no indications of mechanical malfunction, the aircraft had enough fuel for another eight hours of flight, the weight and disposition of the payload was within allowable limits, and the weather was above

minima In mathematical analysis, the maxima and minima (the respective plurals of maximum and minimum) of a function, known collectively as extrema (the plural of extremum), are the largest and smallest value of the function, either within a given ran ...

. The Civil Aeronautics Board investigation concluded that the probable cause of the accident was the action of the captain in descending below his en route minimum altitude without positive identification of the flight's position.

Notes

References

External links

*
Report
from the Civil Aeronautics Board
Archive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pan Am Flight 0151 1951 in Liberia Aviation accidents and incidents in 1951 Aviation accidents and incidents in Liberia Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error Aviation accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain Accidents and incidents involving the Lockheed Constellation

151 Year 151 (CLI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Condianus and Valerius (or, less frequently, year 904 ''Ab urbe cond ...

Bong County June 1951 events in Africa