"This Week, 1960: Plane Collision Over NYC"
Fifty years ago, two commercial airliners collided one mile above New York City, raining down destruction on a busy Brooklyn neighborhood. Victims' remains bloodied the snow after one jet hit the street at 200 mph, killing everyone aboard and six people on the ground.
The Dec. 16, 1960, crash of a United jet and a TWA propeller plane was the worst aviation disaster to date, killing 134 people, including 128 people on both planes. In its wake it left a legacy of improved air safety; it was first crash in which investigators made extensive use of so-called black boxes and it spurred a revamping of the air traffic control system to prevent future tragedies.
Photos of the crash show the broken United Air Lines DC-8 resting on Seventh Avenue, the main commercial strip of Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. At least 10 buildings were destroyed including a funeral home, a laundry and the Pillar of Fire Church. The dead included a garbage collector and two men selling Christmas trees.
Hopes were raised in Brooklyn when a young passenger was found alive, then dashed when he died.
"What was in many of our hearts was that God let him survive that horrible fall," said Eileen Bonner, a nursing supervisor at the hospital where 11-year-old Stephen Baltz was treated. "It just seemed like God wanted him to live. And then he didn't."
The other plane, a TWA Constellation, crashed into a military air base on Staten Island.
Link:
http://beforeitsnews.com/story/310/989/This_Week,_1960:_Plane_Collision_Over_NYC.html
Related story:
The Boy Who Survived a 1960 Midair Crash
On Dec. 16, 1960, a Friday, a United Airlines DC-8 and a Trans World Airlines Constellation collided in midflight. The TWA flight crashed on Staten Island; the United flight came down in Park Slope, starting a fire that also killed six people on the ground. In total, 134 would die from the crash.
In the two boroughs, bystanders witnessed a vivid and terrifying scene, The Times wrote the next day:
Through every personal account there ran the same thread of surprise and horror.
The scene in Brooklyn, where one plane fell in a densely populated district, reminded one witness of the bombed and burning villages of the Korean War.
In Staten Island, where the wreckage narrowly missed a community of wooden homes and a public school, witnesses said the blood-drenched snow and the bodies made them think of a battlefield.
Stephen BaltzAssociated Press Stephen Baltz of Wilmette, Ill.
One boy was found alive in the snow in Park Slope: Stephen Baltz of Wilmette, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. He had been flying alone; his parents rushed to his bedside, The Times reported:
“This was his first excursion alone,” Mr. Baltz told doctors. … He said his son had tried to smile but could not.
“We are grateful to the Almighty for this miraculous thing that has happened to our son and we have heartfelt sympathy for all those who are not as fortunate as we are,” Mr. Baltz said.
The boy’s face was covered with medication for the burns suffered in the crash, and his left leg was broken. The burns also were on his chest, left arm and back.
Churchgoers on that Friday night, during the Christmas season, carried newspapers with Stephen’s picture and prayed for him. Calls flooded the hospital from New Yorkers offering their blood for transfusions for the boy. Throughout the night, the nurse at his bedside would later remember, he would wake up and speak, sounding healthy.
In the end, Stephen was too badly burned to survive. He remained the crash’s sole survivor for only a night, dying at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. But for that one night, he was the source of hope for a city where two planes had gone down.
Link:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/the-boy-who-survived-a-1960-midair-crash/
Full gallery of photos:
http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/53491/deadly-brooklyn-plane-crash-1960#index/0
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