Sepia Saturday - The man behind the window

The theme for this week is a picture (see below) showing four men involved in what I would call mysterious dealings. We see two policemen and two civilians or maybe even plain clothes men. And then there is a person looking through a window. He seems to be in uniform. So is this a police station? If this is so, does that make the bicycles official vehicles of  the long arm of the law? Is the man on the left handing over a gun or is he receiving one? Is it a gun or maybe a summons? The two gentlemen on the right radiate this "I-am-to-be-here-for-ceremonial-reasons" attitude. To cut a long presumption short, I don't know what we are looking at. But I have to make a choice so I will elaborate on the man behind the window.

Those of you visiting my blog now and then may know that I publish old airline pictures, in particular pictures concerning KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, my former employer. Those posts are titled "Saved from the dustbin". Knowing this, my former neighbor and former KLM captain Michael D. send me a few pictures. They came from a shoe box he inherited from his mother. The first one shows a man and a woman descending from an aircraft stairway. The man is Charles Christian "Chuck" Harman, a Canadian captain with KLM. The lady is Mrs. D., the mother of my neighbor. 

KLM Capt. Chuck Harman and Mrs. D.

The aircraft is the KLM Lockheed 1049C Super Constellation 'Nucleon' with registration PH-TFX. The picture can be dated between August 5, 1953 and February 25, 1954. 

The photograph below shows a man waving from a cockpit window. He may not be as clearly visible as the man in the police station but still, it is a man behind a window! (Pffft, mission completed.) According to my source this is the same Chuck Harman but now seated in the Douglas DC-6B 'Willem Bontekoe', the PH-DFO. This shot was taken between March 6 and August 23, 1954.

Capt. Chuck Harman waving from the cockpit.

There is some unexpected drama in this picture. It so happened that this aircraft, the 'Willem Bontekoe', crashed in the North Sea, some 10 miles off the Dutch coast. The accident took place on August 23, 1954. The official accident investigation was unable to uncover the cause of the crash. It is still the most mysterious casualty that ever took place in the history of Dutch aviation.

Location where the 'Willem Bontekoe' crashed on August 23, 1954.
Map ex aviacrash.nl.

The accident caused the death of all 12 passengers and 9 crew. The captain of this fatal flight from New York to Amsterdam was Charles Christian Harman...

For more drama, suspense and entertainment, please see the Sepia Saturday site.

To write this post I made use of internet information viz. the comprehensive site of Herman Dekker and Aviacrash. And of course I am grateful to Michael D. for sending me the photographs and for telling me about the late Capt. Harman!