Eight people (five total crew from two aircraft and three on the ground) in Pacoima, California are killed following the mid-air collision between a Douglas DC-7 airliner and a Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet.

Pacoima is a neighborhood in the northeast San Fernando Valley, within the city of Los Angeles, California. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the San Fernando Valley.

On January 31, 1957, a Douglas DC-7B operated by Douglas Aircraft Company was involved in a mid-air collision with a United States Air Force Northrop F-89 Scorpion and crashed into the schoolyard of Pacoima Junior High School located in Pacoima, a suburban area in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, California.

The Douglas DC-7 is a retired American airliner built by the Douglas Aircraft Company from 1953 to 1958. A derivative of the DC-6, it was the last major piston engine-powered passenger aircraft made by Douglas, being developed shortly after the earliest jet airliner—the de Havilland Comet—entered service and only a few years before the jet-powered Douglas DC-8 first flew in 1958. Larger numbers of both DC-7B and DC-7C variants were also built, with a handful of aircraft converted to cargo hauling or fire-fighting after their commercial transport days had passed.

The Northrop F-89 Scorpion is an all-weather, twin-engined interceptor aircraft designed and produced by the American aircraft manufacturer Northrop Corporation. It was the first jet-powered aircraft to be designed for the interceptor role from the outset to enter service, as well as the first combat aircraft to be armed with air-to-air nuclear weapons in the form of the unguided Genie rocket. The name Scorpion came from the aircraft's elevated tail unit and high-mounted horizontal stabilizer, which kept it clear of the engine exhaust.