As he came in he noticed that everyone was busier than before. He looked at the screen.
‘What’s the other traffic near the Beech Bonanza?’
‘What other traffic?’
Then Wallace saw the fast-moving dot on the edge of the screen. ‘Oh my God!’ he cried out.
With a single rapid movement Keith pushed him to one side and seized control. He shouted to Irving Redfern: ‘Make an immediate right turn NOW!
Lieutenant Neel’s plane was rushing towards the Beech Bonanza.
If Irving Redfern had acted immediately, he might have saved himself and his family. He was a good pilot, but not a professional, and he was a polite man, who always thought before he acted. Now he wasted the few seconds he had, by replying to Keith’s message.
In the control room they watched in silence, praying hard, as the bright green dots flew towards one another.
‘Washington Center, this is Beech –’ they heard, and then the voice suddenly stopped.
The dots on the screen met, and up in the clear blue sky the Beech Bonanza was falling, out of control and spinning wildly, to the earth.
Then the terrible thing happened, the thing that Keith would never forget. The radio of the Beech Bonanza still worked. The screams of the trapped Redfern family were heard clearly in the control room, and the voice of nine-year-old Valerie was especially clear. All over the control room faces turned white, and George Wallace broke down and wept as he heard her screams of terror. ‘Mummy! Daddy! Do something! I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!’
The aircraft crashed and burned with the Redfenrs inside it. Lieutenant Neel landed safely by parachute, five miles away.