TRAVEL: Dent in a Record

The KLM transatlantic DC-6B, with only twelve of 66 seats occupied, was just 25 miles from the safety of Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. The pilot, Captain Charles Harman, 36, a veteran of 170 Atlantic crossings, was more than an hour ahead of schedule on a flight from New York’s Idlewild Field. Some time in the next few minutes, the plane plummeted into the cold waters of the North Sea. Residents of the Dutch town of Schoorl reported that they heard an explosion, but no one knew what had gone wrong. All aboard were killed: 21 persons, including seven Americans.

The crash put a dent in a remarkable record: since an Air France plane crashed in the Azores in October 1949, the scheduled airlines had made more than 60,000 transatlantic hops between North America and Europe, carrying more than 2,000,000 people, without a fatality.