"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message ...

There actually was a fairly famous case is the 50's involving a movie star. Nobeody
could figure out why the very experienced pilot took a wrong course out of Vegas into
terrain. Somebody finally figured out that he probably turned the plane over to his
rookie co-pilot and went back to smooze with the movie star.

It was in 1942. Carol Lombard (wife of Clark Gable) and her mother
were killed in the crash outside of Las Vegas. The plane was
inexplicably 6.7 miles off the beam on a CAVU night. One of the
theories was that the pilot was back in the cabin visiting and that
the co-pilot screwed up. Other theories were that the radio beam was
not accurate, as the Army had been messing around with them recently
for security reasons (like a bunch of Japanese bombers were going to
suddenly appear and home in on Las Vegas).

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)