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The problem, which most of the radar room crew was working at feverishly, was to clear a path for the Air Force KC-135, which had already started down on an instrument landing approach from ten thousand feet. The difficulty was—below the big Air Force jet were five airline flights, stacked at intervals of a thousand feet, and orbiting a limited airspace. All were awaiting their turn to land. A few miles on either side were other columns of aircraft, similarly stacked and, lower still, were three more airliners, already on landing approaches. In between them all were busy departure corridors. Somehow, the military flight had to be threaded down through the stacked civilian airplanes without a collision occurring. The situation was complicated by radio failure in the KC135, so that voice contact with the Air Force pilot had been lost.

Keith Bakersfeld thumbed his microphone. “Braniff eight twenty-nine, make an immediate right turn, heading zero-nine-zero.” At moments like this voices should stay calm. Keith’s voice was high-pitched and betrayed his nervousness. The Braniff captain obeyed instructions. When a controller gave the order “immediate,” pilots obeyed instantly and argued later.

In another minute or so the Braniff flight would have to be turned again, and so would Eastern, which was at the same level. As part of the game, pieces had to be raised or lowered while they still moved forward, yet none must come closer than three miles laterally or a thousand feet vertically from another, and none must go over the edge of the board. And while all of it happened, the thousands of passengers, anxious for their journeys to end, had to sit in their airborne seats—and wait.

Behind him Keith could hear Wayne Tevis trying to raise the Air Force KC-135 on radio again. Still no response. The position on the blip showed the pilot was doing the right thing—following exactly the instructions he had been given before the radio failure happened.

The Air Force flight, Keith knew, had originated in Hawaii and come non-stop after mid-air refueling over the West Coast, its destination near Washington. But west of the Continental Divide there had been an engine failure, and afterward electrical trouble, causing the airplane commander to elect an unscheduled landing at Smoky Hill, Kansas. At Smoky Hill, however, the KC-135 was diverted to Lincoln International. It was soon afterward that radio failure had been added to the pilot’s other troubles.