11 Minutes After Take-Off
At 6.52 p.m. on November 1, 1955, the DC-6B aircraft took off from Denver’s Stapleton Airport bound for Portland, Oregon. Initially, everything went smoothly aboard the flight. Four minutes into the trip, the captain radioed in a message to the airport’s control tower, informing the ground crew that things were going as planned.
wreckage United Airlines Flight 629. Source: Twitter
According to the accident report from the Civil Aeronautics Board, seven minutes after that message, at 7.03 p.m., Stapleton International Airport’s air traffic controllers witnessed two bright flashes of light in the sky. About a minute later, those watching realized that the two lights were beginning to tumble through the air and fall down to the ground.