Reviewed by Scott Hamilton

Donald J. Porter

McFarland & Co. © 2025. $39.95.

March 1, 2025, (c) Leeham News: 17 Days and 17 Miles Apart is a disappointing book. It’s the second by author Donald Porter. His first, in 2020, is called Flight Failure: Investigating the Nuts and Bolts and Air Disasters and Aviation Safety.

I bought that book then and reviewed it in LNA; it is still available on Amazon. I found Flight Failure more interesting than 17 Days, which seems pretty much like a pick-up of that book. Both recount the 1961 accident of TWA flight 529 in Clarendon Hills (IL). Flight Failure didn’t make my move from Seattle to Chicago last year, so I can’t go back and see if Northwest Airlines flight 706, which happened 17 days after TWA 529 and 17 miles away (after takeoff from Chicago O’Hare Airport), was recounted in Flight. It doesn’t matter. 17 Days suffers from a lot of flaws.

Errors

The book is replete with errors. These are really minor, but the repetitive nature of the errors diminishes the credibility of the book.

• Porter calls the crash site of TWA 529 in Clarendon Hills as “southern Illinois.” Clarendon Hills is a Chicago suburb and is not considered “southern.” Among Illinoisans (of which I am one), it’s not until you get outside the “collar” counties of Chicago and Cook County (which is where Chicago is located) that you are considered to be in “downstate” Illinois. Even this is a misnomer since places like Rockford and De Kalb are in northern Illinois and not “downstate.” Illinois is 390 miles long. Decatur, 167 miles south of Clarendon Hills, is roughly halfway down the state, after which you are truly in Southern Illinois. Decatur is roughly on the same latitude as Washington, DC. Clarendon Hills is roughly on the same latitude as New York City. (For geography geeks, the southern tip of Illinois is farther south than Richmond (VA), the capital of the Confederacy.)
• Porter repeatedly asserts that Howard Hughes was TWA’s “sole” owner. Hughes never owned more than 78% of the airline. He acted like the sole owner, but he wasn’t and never had been. Porter also identified Hughes as the “founder” of TWA. This, too, is false.
• Porter writes that the first Electra crash, with American Airlines, was in December 1959, It was in February 1959.

Disappointing omissions

The book is also disappointing for its omissions. Porter goes out of his way to criticize TWA for efforts to avoid responsibility for 529’s crash and others. He also raps the airline for taking refuge behind an international aviation treaty known as the Warsaw Pact, which limits liabilities on international accidents. To be sure, TWA exercised every legal maneuver to avoid liability. But every airline did and does. He criticized Lockheed for trying to avoid or evade responsibility. However, Airbus, Boeing, and McDonnell Douglas have, too.

Porter criticized Lockheed for converting bare-bones C-69s (the military designation of the Constellation) into airlines immediately after World War II as if this was rooted in defective designs of the Army Air Corps aircraft. Douglas Aircraft Co. did precisely the same thing with the end-of-line C-54s that were reconfigured into passenger DC-4s at the war’s end.

Porter spent many pages making the case that the Constellation and its temperamental Curtis Wright compound engines were inherently unsafe. He recaps many Connie accidents to make his case. Omitted is the poor safety record of the entire US airline industry in the post-War era and the defects of the Martin 202, Douglas DC-6 (except in passing) and troublesome engines (also by Curtis Wright, using the same as the competing Connies) of the DC-7.

Missing the Big Picture

It’s unknown what Porter’s overall objective is by focusing as he did on TWA, Lockheed, and the Constellation and making no mention of the bigger picture.

In writing about the CAB’s accident finding of 529, Porter questions its use of the word “probable” in determining the Probable Cause of the accident. He infers something nefarious. Yet this is precisely the language the CAB and its successor, the National Transportation Safety Board, uses in every accident report. Porter uses the phrase in connection with other accidents without questioning the use of “probable.”

Porter’s reliance on a decades-old book by aviation historian Robert J. Serling, The Electra Story, is all too evident in recounting accidents involving the prop-jet. Porter duly lists the book in his notes, but having read Serling’s comprehensive history of the Electra, Porter’s narrative is all too familiar. Much of his detail about Lockheed and the development of the Constellation can be read in Robert Rummel’s book about his years with TWA, Howard Hughes and TWA. Either of these books is more interesting and informative than Porter’s. Both are long out of print, but copies may often be found on Amazon or eBay.

17 Days is a short 176-page paperback before the Notes and Index. It’s for sale for a hefty $39.95, the price of many hardback books. The more comprehensive Flight is offered for $16.74. Flight is the better deal.