BRAZIL: Blown into the Sea

Pan American’s southbound Stratocruiser, just off from Rio en route to Montevideo, had reached 12,000 feet. In the morning sunlight, the clouds sparkled brilliantly. One of the 28 passengers, U.S.-born Mrs. Marie Westbrook Capellaro, wife of a Roman banker, pressed her camera against a window, eagerly taking pictures. Suddenly the cabin door popped open and the plane yawed. When Mrs. Capellaro’s husband turned to look at his wife, she was gone—sucked from the pressurized cabin through the open hatch and, after a fall of approximately one minute and 25 seconds, dropped without a trace into the ocean.