A Forgotten Hero of Southern Airways Flight 242: Fire Chief John Clayton

By Clifford Davids

When the Paulding County Fire Chief’s Association met at John R. Clayton’s house for the first time on January 23, 1977, they knew something had to be done quickly. The county had no formal fire protection program in place, and some of the volunteers who worked at the fire stations needed more extensive training. Funding was hard to come by, so many of the stations were supported in part through local community barbecues, church raffles, and donations. Personal phone calls often had to serve as the notice to gear up. Not surprisingly, the volunteer jakes would sometimes have to reach into their own pockets to pay for badly needed fire equipment.

Danny Echols, the first Chief of the Association, told me that the central communication system at the time was located at the Sheriff’s Department, with two-way radios in most of the firefighting vehicles. In the event of a catastrophic occurrence which required additional manpower from the surrounding communities, the call would go out through the Georgia State Fire Mutual Aid Frequency. They made it work because they had to. But on April 4, 1977, less than four months after their first meeting, that patchwork system would be tested in a way that none of the chiefs could have imagined in a thousand years. That was when the sky came crashing down and Southern Airways Flight 242 fell from the heavens.

John R. Clayton was Chief of the New Hope Volunteer Fire Department in 1977, and he conveniently lived just up the road from the department’s small red brick station on Highway 92. He witnessed 242′s forced landing–from the time it demolished Newman’s Grocery until it came to a fiery halt across from his doorstep. The death toll would have been much higher that afternoon if he and his men hadn’t responded so quickly–his volunteers were the first ones to have their lines down fighting the blaze. He also helped to organize the rescue and recovery effort at the bottom of his driveway, loading the survivors carefully into the waiting ambulances and buses that rapidly converged on the crash site.

After the accident, Chief Clayton was in demand and traveled to fire conventions around the country describing how his small volunteer fire department had played such a big role in saving so many lives. He was a “Type A” guy who moved at 90 mph and threw himself into everything he did. He later moved to Alabama where he died in 2000 at 67 years old. The obituary in the local paper there called him “The Hero of the ’77 Paulding Air Crash.”

The eyewitness account he gave to the National Transportation Safety Board stands out from the others–possibly because he literally watched the flaming human tragedy called Flight 242 come barreling down the highway and land smack at his feet–or perhaps because it was a statement from a seasoned first responder trained to observe and report fast moving events. It allowed him to accurately describe the forced landing as it unfolded.

Either way, we know that he and the other responders performed above and beyond the call of duty on that chaotic day. Bo Pounds, whose company Metro Ambulance played a major role transporting survivors to area hospitals, said it best: “We did some kind of job.”

The statement that Chief Clayton gave to the NTSB on the day after the crash is as follows:

National Transportation Safety Board

Department of Transportation, Washington, D.C.

STATEMENT OF WITNESS

While in my driveway with my wife, son, and daughter, I heard a HUMM and I thought it was a tornado. I told my wife to go to the basement and I ran down the driveway towards the road.

Looking to my left I saw the aircraft over the highway and about in front of the fire station. The wings appeared to be level and the nose slightly down.

The plane came down and the left side collided with two gasoline pumps, a station wagon, pickup truck and two automobiles in front of Newman’s store, which is just this side of the fire station. After the collision with the objects in front of Newman’s store the tail started colliding with the 50 or 60 foot tall pine trees in front of the residences on the other side of the highway and the tail separated and the fuselage started to break up. I observed personnel and debris flying through the trees.

The wreckage came to a rest with the fuselage components in front of my house and the tail section further along the wreckage path. Moments later there was a flash fire in front of Newman’s store and almost simultaneously a flash fire at the tail section. One female survivor came up to me and I saw several other survivors coming out of the wreckage.

Our 1,500 gallon tanker moved down the highway to a point in front of Newman’s store and a 2 ½ inch hose was run back to the fire plug in front of the fire station. This unit was used to extinguish the fire that destroyed the store. Simultaneously, our 500 gallon truck was brought down the highway towards the tail section while playing out a 2 ½ inch hose to the fire plug in front of the fire station, and this unit was used to extinguish the fire at the opposite end of the wreckage path.

About three minutes after the crash John Wigley stopped a 76 passenger school bus in front of my residence and six to eight survivors got aboard. Jimmy Whitley, who operates the AMOCO station across from the fire station drove the bus and transported the survivors to the Paulding Memorial Hospital in Dallas, about four miles west of the crash site. We loaded four more seriously injured survivors and they were taken to the hospital. While this was being accomplished I observed residents on the opposite side of the highway directing and assisting survivors toward the rear of their houses and away from the fire.

Gusty 20 to 30 mile winds were blowing from the southwest at the time of the accident which gave the plane a tail wind. I don’t know what the ceiling was, but the other fireman said it looked like it may have been 3,000 to 5,000 feet.

After the impact at Newman’s store I saw one set of landing gear wheels coming down the road that stopped on my side of the highway short of my position. I don’t remember seeing the landing gear before the collision with the objects at Newman’s store. The noise I heard just before the collision was just a steady HUMM with no variance at all. I don’t know whether this noise was associated with the engines or not.

--John R. Clayton (April 5, 1977)