Ice

The blackest day in U.S. airline history came with a great mass of cold air from the Arctic. It thrust a freezing finger as far south as the Texas panhandle, rested its chilly knuckles on the Great Lakes, spumed in ice, rain and mist where its skin touched warmer air.

Within 24 hours this Arctic fist (to weathermen, a "Polar Continental Air Mass") produced two disastrous crashes; 34 men & women died.

First to go was Northwest Airlines Flight 5. Westbound from Chicago to Seattle, around 2 a.m. the big DC-3 rumbled above the blotted-out field at Fargo, N. Dak. Captain Clarence Bates, 41-year-old veteran of 10,000 airline hours, radioed down that he was beginning a standard approach to get under the 500-foot ceiling.

Two miles east of the field, a motorist saw the horrible finish. The big ship came out of the overcast in a long glide. It never leveled out. With a terrific roar it struck the ground in an open field, smashed into a deep ditch, lumbered out of it, burst into bright fire.

The motorist found the plane's pilot lying on the grass, in front of the wreck. He was screaming, "Get them out." It was too late. The wreckage was a gasoline-fired furnace. Not until six hours later had the last flames died away. Later Captain Bates explained the strange casualty that had ended a period of two years and nine months of fatality-free operation by Northwest. On the way down the ship had picked up ice. It did not appear dangerously heavy, but he could not pull the DC-3 out of its glide.

Next night American Airlines, proud of a record of five years and nine months without a fatal accident, sent its Trip I west from Buffalo. Its flight path was along the edge of that same fatal mass of cold weather. West of Buffalo about 115 miles, near the Canadian town of St. Thomas (Ont.), Trip I ran into trouble.

People on the ground heard the plane circling. Some, including two R.A.F. enlisted men, said its engines appeared to be missing. Some said they thought they saw a flare. Lower & lower it circled, barely missed the ground with one wing tip on the last turn. Then it crashed, burst into flames. Three bodies were hurled from the cabin, doused with gasoline. They burned with the rest, too close to the fire to be rescued. Of 20 passengers and crew, few could be identified when the wreckage cooled. Exception was the pilot, who still held a piece of the wheel in his hands. For an explanation of Trip I's crash, airmen would have no evidence such as Pilot Bates of Northwest gave. But R.A.F. men stationed near by had their own theory: ice.

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