1967 Lake Erie skydiving disaster

One Oberlin College professor reported seeing about a dozen parachutes hit the water in a line.[13] An off-duty Coast Guard lieutenant at the beach near Lorain also saw the incident and quickly notified Coast Guard Station Lorain. He then worked with civilian boaters to coordinate a rescue. Efforts began within minutes.[3][17] About 30 boats searched for the jumpers along the axis from Huron to Vermilion, but efforts were hampered by the cold and strong winds.[18] Two men on a pleasure boat rescued the two survivors, as well as a man they were unable to resuscitate.[10]^: 42 Coast Guard assessments for finding more survivors were pessimistic,[10] which was borne out in following days, the final body being recovered on September 4.[19]

Some government officials initially suggested that the jumpers had been blown 20 miles (32 km) from their target by a strong crosswind.[18] In the immediate aftermath, one survivor reported that "[t]he plane was in the wrong place",[10]^: 42 and the pilots of both the B-25 and the Cessna said that they had been given the wrong information by air traffic control.[15][20] On September 2, the National Transportation Safety Board began an investigation. Norman Heaton, executive director of the United States Parachute Association, testified that the jumpers could not have drifted more than 16,000 ft (5,000 m), meaning that the bomber was at least a mile (1.6 km) offshore at the time of the jump. The air traffic controller maintained that the bomber was six miles (9.7 km) inland.[12] Both survivors and the two jumpers from the second pass testified, as did the pilot of the bomber.[14]

The NTSB conducted three studies: The first concluded that the jumpers could not have drifted more than two miles (3.2 km), putting the bomber three to four miles (4.8–6.4 km) offshore and eleven miles (18 km) from Ortner. The second reconstructed the flight path and reached a similar conclusion as to the plane's location. The third considered the locations of both planes relative to the locations they were given by air traffic control, concluding that the controller mistook the Cessna for the B-25.[1]^: 2–3 The report faulted the B-25 pilot for executing a jump when he could not see the ground and the air traffic controller for giving the wrong position for the plane; it also said that the skydivers themselves, given their experience, "were not without fault" for jumping under dangerous conditions.[1]^: 4[11] The board further found that, while the pilot was certified, he was not rated to fly a B-25 and the plane was not certified to carry passengers. Technical limitations prevented the pilot from both navigating and talking to control at once, which he failed to disclose to the air traffic controller.[1]^: 30–31[11]

NTSB Chair Joseph J. O'Connell Jr.

Shortly after the disaster, Senator Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, chair of the Commerce Subcommittee on Aviation, proposed legislation for regulation of skydiving by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).[21] The NTSB's chair, Joseph J. O'Connell Jr., presented the board's findings on September 25 at a hearing of the subcommittee regarding the proposed legislation. David D. Thomas, deputy administrator of the FAA, testified that jumping through clouds was already outright prohibited. Both officials spoke in opposition to increased regulation, saying that the current system was adequate.[11] The bill, S. 2137 of the 90th Congress,[22] did not become law.[23]

Both survivors and the estates of all 16 deceased jumpers sued the United States for the air traffic controller's error. In the consolidated Federal Tort Claims Act case, Dreyer v. United States (1972), the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio found the United States liable on the basis of the controller's negligence.[3][24] The decision was affirmed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals under the name Freeman v. United States (1975).[24][4]

Dreyer came as the federal courts explored the contexts in which the FAA has a duty of care.[25] James J. McCarthy, in the Journal of Air Law and Commerce, characterizes it as "an interesting and somewhat unusual case".[24] In the same journal, Laura J. Perkins cites Freeman as an example of how it is often easier to collect damages against a third party than an air sport service provider, as the former are not covered by waivers.[26] Freeman is cited in the Restatement of Torts, Third, Liability for Physical and Emotional Harm for its finding that, since the skydiving regulations at the time were not designed to protect skydivers but rather those they might hit, there was no contributory negligence on the part of the jumpers.[2]

Skydivers conducted memorial jumps in 1968 and 1969, both times first throwing a wreath out of a plane and then intentionally jumping into Lake Erie.[27][28] A Springfield News-Sun article about the 1969 jump notes that the skydivers wore light clothing and flotation devices.[28] In 2020, one man who had gotten off the bomber before it took off told The Advertiser-Tribune of Tiffin, Ohio, that he was considering celebrating his 90th birthday, four years thence, by doing the same.[9]

N3443G, the B-25 that dropped the skydivers, was destroyed in 1970 in a crash at Orange Municipal Airport in Massachusetts.[13][29][30]