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as calm as possible, I walked back through the first class cabin and I leaned down to Denny and I told him, ‘They want you up there.’ ”
    Fitch reached the cockpit, still thinking that the flight attendant didn’t understand the situation. But as the door opened, he recalled, “the scene to me as a pilot was unbelievable. Both the pilots were in short-sleeved shirts, the tendons being raised in their forearms, their knuckles were white.” As he closed the door behind him, Fitch’s eyes flicked over all the instruments and switches on Dvorak’s panel. He clearly saw that the motor pumps and rudder standby power were both armed. No rudder standby light. No bus ties (similar to circuit breakers) were open, the navigational instruments were working normally, and the plane had electrical power. Someone had already deployed a generator driven by air that was meant to pump hydraulic fluid in the event that the regular engine-driven pumps weren’t working. But the hydraulic gauges read zero and the low-pressure lights were on.
    The plane was porpoising in a slow cycle, up and down, hundreds of feet every minute, even while both Haynes and Records fought the yoke to no effect. On the radio, Dvorak was pleading for help from the United Airlines maintenance base in San Francisco, while Records, breathing hard from his effort, used his knee to help force the yoke forward during one of the aircraft’s uncontrollable climbs.
    Fitch later said, “The first thing that strikes your mind is, Dear God, I’m going to die this afternoon. The only question that remains is how long is it going to take Iowa to hit me? That’s a very compelling moment in your life. Life was good. And here I am forty-six years old and I’m going to die. My wife was my high school sweetheart, loved her dearly, and I had three beautiful children.” The last thing his wife had said to him was, “I love you, hurry home. I love you.” Fitch turned away from Dvorak’s gauges and saw that Records didn’t even have his shoulder harness fastened. Fitch leaned over him and fastened it.
    Haynes had hoped that Fitch would know some secret trick to bring the plane back under control, perhaps a hidden button that only flight instructors get to know about that would make everything all right. Dvorak was telling United Airlines Systems Aircraft Maintenance in San Francisco, known as SAM, that they needed assistance and needed it quickly. When Fitch entered the cockpit and saw the hydraulic gauges reading zero, his reaction was similar to that of the United engineers at SAM, who were telling Dvorak that what he had reported was impossible. Having hydraulic fluid in the lines is a necessary condition of flight in a DC-10. After a complete loss of hydraulic power, the plane would have no steering. It would roll over and accelerate toward the earth, reaching speeds high enough to tear off the wings and tail before the fuselage plowed into the ground. Or it might enter into an uncontrollable flutter , falling like a leaf all the way to the earth, to pancake in and burst into flames. Under no circumstances would it continue to fly in any controllable fashion. To an expert pilot’s eye, what Fitch saw was like watching someone walk on water. Haynes later said that Fitch “took one look at the instrument panel and that was it, that was the end of his knowledge.”
    Haynes told Fitch, “See what you can see back there, will ya?”
    Records said, “Go back and look out [at] the wing and see what we’ve got.”
    “Okay,” Fitch said, and he left the cockpit. As he hurried down the aisle, he brushed past Gerry and Joann Dobson in their Hawaiian clothes. He passed Brad Griffin in 2-E, who had been thrilled to make this trip to play in a golf tournament with his brother. Fitch passed Paul Burnham , whose body, at first unidentified, would be labeled with nothing more than the number 43. Fitch left first class and entered the coach cabin, standing by the exit door behind