Part 53, page 245

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

[partially illegible header]...wore a pilot's seat pack para-[guess: chute] with a 28-foot canopy. He also took with him a chest pack parachute used for training. It was unusable. The panels were sewn together: If it had been usable he could not have attached it to his parachute harness, which had no D rings for use with a chest pack. No one who knew anything about parachutes would have made this many mistakes.

"He also either took with him or threw out the bag in which he claimed to be carrying a bomb."

Himmelsbach declined to describe the device in detail, for security reasons. But it was earlier described as a crude, unsophisticated device apparently consisting of highway flares and a battery.

He left no fingerprints in the plane, but did leave a couple of items which the FBI is not revealing because they could help identify the hijacker or confirm any of the expected phony fame seekers who may claim to be Cooper when they think the statute of limitations has expired.

"Cooper could not have known where he was when he jumped," Himmelsbach said. "He did not know the exact route of flight or the altitude. The plane was on instruments in the higher of two layers of clouds all the way from Seattle to the vicinity of La Center.

"There was a radio marker beacon in the general area, but it was out of service. The hijacker could not have seen the ground and could not have determined his position by any kind of radio receiver, if he had one, which we don't know for sure. There was no way he could have known within miles of where he was.

"It was a stormy night, with freezing rain at his altitude and winds gusting from 25 to 45 knots at Portland International Airport, maybe stronger along the Lewis River where he bailed out. He was dressed in a business suit, and Oxford type street shoes. He had no hat or goggles.

"Parachute experts tell us his shoes would have been snapped off his feet when he stepped out into a 196-mile-an-hour slipstream; his eyes would have been blacked by the force of the wind and he probably would have tumbled out of control. He would have landed in his stocking feet, blinded by the slipstream, and the raging storm.

"With that 28-foot canopy he would have descended 26 miles an hour vertically. Add a 30 to 55 mile-an-hour wind and he would have hit at a speed of 50 to 70 miles an hour. The experts say it is inconceivable that he could have escaped serious injury or instant death even assuming his parachute opened.

How does the FBI know Cooper bailed out near La Center and landed somewhere along the Lewis River? The two Air Defense Command F106 jet interceptors which followed the 727 through the overcast that dark, stormy night, saw nothing. There was no radio transmitter on the parachutes delivered to the hijacker, which would have permitted pursuers to follow his trajectory as he bailed out.

But the FBI, with the aid of Northwest Airlines reconstructed the whole hijacking six weeks after the crime.

"The first week in January, 1972, we flew a Northwest 727 exactly like flight 305 over the same route with the same load, the same power settings, the same flap settings, same use of landing gear, from Seattle south. We had William Rataczak, first officer on the hijacked plane, at the controls," Himmelsbach said.

"Over the Lewis River, 35 miles north of Portland, the rear stairway was lowered and a 235-pound sled dropped off while a chase plane photographed its trajectory as it parachuted to the ground.

"As the load left the stairway it retracted to within eight inches of closing, then dropped back down. The result was a marked fluctuation in the cabin air pressure which caused the crews' ears to pop and registered a rapid change in the rate of pressurization on instruments in the cockpit.

Rataczak said: "That's just the way it was at 8:10 p.m. Nov. 24. Only the crew didn't know what it meant then. They didn't know he had bailed out until they landed at Reno and found the plane empty."

The same rapid fluctuations in air pressure were noted in three bailouts from 727 airliners in the next few months, before the FAA ordered all rear doors rigged so they could not be opened in flight.

"There has not been a successful hijacking in the U.S since," Himmels-bach [guess: noted] sized. "And none of the hijackers [guess: who] succeeded in bailing out got [guess: away] with the money. All were [guess: caught] and [guess: the] money recovered.

The re-enactment of the hijacking was conducted in fair weather. But engineers fed into their computers estimated delays in opening the parachute, known speed of descent, wind velocity and direction and came up with an area 6 ½ miles long and 4 miles wide. The FBI assumes Cooper landed somewhere within this "target area," which barely includes Lake Merwin in its northeast corner.

Cooper couldn't have chosen a worse [guess: place]!

clouds covered ton, one with bases at [illegible] other from 5,300 feet up to 1[guess: 0],000 feet and more over Portland. Winds were gusting from 25 to 45 knots at Portland International Airport.

Lelooska, Indian artist who lives at Ariel, Wash., was driving home along the Lewis River about 8 p.m. and reported the wind and rain was buffeting the car so hard that he pulled off the road to wait for a break in the storm.

Himmelsbach, an experienced pilot, took off from Portland International Airport in a National Guard helicopter as the hijacked plane passed overhead.

"We were going to try and follow the 727," Himmelsbach said. "But the air was so rough and the clouds so low that we were called back before we got past downtown Portland."

The next day, Himmelsbach, who holds a commercial pilot rating, flew almost the entire route of the hijacked plane in his own airplane, accompanied by an experienced Civil Air Patrol observer.

"We flew directly over the area where we later estimated he had landed, but there is hardly a chance of seeing even a parachute canopy in the dense woods and brush that cover much of the area."

About 200 officers and men of the 3d Armored Cavalry from Ft. Lewis, equipped with [guess: five] helicopters, searched the [guess: target] [guess: area] for two weeks in mid-March, [guess: through] [guess: high] brush and black [guess: timber] [illegible] searching farm [guess: buildings]

They [illegible] a murdered girl. They [illegible] [guess: acute] canopies, oranges attached to [illegible] weather [illegible] a single [illegible] r. Cooper [illegible] [guess: trees], snow