Improbable Cause

At least 248 American troops didn't make it home for Christmas when the Arrow Air charter flight bringing them home from peacekeeping duties in the Sinai blew up after refueling at Gander, Newfoundland on December 12, 1985 €“ the worst peacetime military disaster in U.S. history. The Canadian investigators ignored the Islamic Jihad€™s claim of terrorist action and suppressed evidence of an in-flight explosion. A slim majority of the investigative board blamed the crash on the crew's inattention to a thin layer of ice on the DC-8's wings. The board disintegrated in controversy after a review by a former supreme court justice roundly rejected the ice theory. Les Filotas, one of the minority who disputed the ice theory, gives a fully-documented insider€™s account of the infamous investigation €“ and of the collapse of a long historical struggle to rid the investigation of aviation accidents of bureaucratic and political entanglements.