Canada: NEWFOUNDLAND: Death in the Fog

The wreck was only 22 miles southwest of the great international airport at Gander. There, beset by fog, a Douglas Skymaster of the Belgian Sabena Lines had crashed one morning last week, New York-bound from Brussels. In the dense forest and quaking muskeg it might as well have been in the Congo. Swiftly and efficiently, one of the most complicated rescues in flying history got under way.

Within three hours after the wreck was spotted, a Navy PBY dropped down on a lake three miles from the wreck. From the moored plane, a 13-man rescue party from the U.S. Army, led by Dr. Samuel P. Martin, onetime Arctic explorer, fought its way in rubber boats up the rocky, racing Southwest Gander River, tumbled repeatedly into the icy waters. They hacked their way through tangled forest to reach the wreck. A faint cheer went up from the survivors. Eighteen of the 44 were alive, all but four of them badly injured. Twenty-four had died in the crash (two died later). It was the worst accident in transatlantic flying history.

Soon a second party of 35 soldiers, woodsmen and Indian guides slashed through to the spot, while Navy planes dropped food, medicine, plasma and sleeping bags.

Help from the Army. Most of the passengers were too badly hurt to be carried through the bush to nearby Wolf Lake, where PBY planes were waiting. And no plane could land closer. Only helicopters could do the trick, and the nearest helicopters were 1,175 miles away in the U.S. At Elizabeth City, N.C., the Army dismantled a helicopter, flew the parts to New York. Another helicopter was waiting at LaGuardia Field. Both were loaded into C-54s and flown to Gander, reassembled.

In their burned clearing the first rescue party and the survivors, chilled by cold and rain, waited for the helicopters. Ruth Henderson, a New York Girl Scout executive, gave banjo imitations. Stewardess Jeanne Rook hobbled about, passing out medicines. For New York songwriter Rudy Revil, weeping over his badly burned hands, soldiers raked through the wreckage till they found his latest composition.

Three days after the crash the first of the helicopters dropped down out of the sky. Even a helicopter could not land on the muskeg. While the helicopter hovered a Navy PBY dropped a load of planks. Then the helicopter fluttered down on an improvised platform. The survivors, in basket stretchers, were lashed to the undercarriage of the helicopters, flown to the PBYs waiting on. Wolf Lake. The PBYs flew them to the hospital in Gander.

Back & forth, between plateau and lake, the helicopters hopped. Back & forth from lake to Gander the PBYs flew. The shuttle functioned without a flaw—till the very end. Then the PBY bringing out Jeanne Perier, 16, and her brother Etienne, 14 (their mother and sister were killed), blew a tire as it settled on the runway. “What was that?” cried Jeanne. “Just a tire blowing,” answered a flyer.

Whimpered Jeanne: “Just a tire this time, just a wing next time.”

By noon next day, some 80 hours after the crash, the survivors were all in the hospital. The dead were buried in the wilderness beside the wrecked plane.