The Blackest Hours

The U.S. public, long conditioned to the principle that faster travel means greater danger, had all but forgotten the disastrous airline crashes of last winter; U.S. airliners were taking off once again with full passenger lists. Then, like spring lightning, disaster struck, again & again. In 24 hours of the Memorial Day weekend, U.S. commercial aviation lived through the blackest hours of its lively history.

In Japan, an Army C-54 rammed into a mountain: 40 killed. In Iceland, a U.S.-made DC-3, operated by Icelandic Airways, crashed into a mountain peak: 25 killed. The crashes were scarcely noticed, because disaster had also struck resoundingly at home.

At New York City's LaGuardia Field, 42 were killed in a take-off accident that ended in flaming death in a United Airlines DC-4 for all but six of its occupants. It was the worst airline accident in U.S. history--but there was a worse one before the sun had set again. Next evening a Florida-bound Eastern Airlines DC-4, stricken by structural failure, plunged out of a sunlit sky into a Maryland bog, and the lives of the 53 passengers and crew were snuffed out in the twinkling of an eye.

Dead in scheduled airlines accidents in the U.S. during the darkest hours: 95.

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