BELGIAN PLANE CRASH HELICOPTERS RESCUE

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24988, 24 September 1946, Page 7

BELGIAN PLANE CRASH

HELICOPTERS RESCUE

SURVIVORS

EIGHTEEN PERSONS NOW IN HOSPITAL

NEW YORK, September 22. Two Coast Guard helicopters were flown dismantled aboard an Army Transport Command aircraft frdm New York to Gander. Newfoundland, where there were assembled in record time and used to evacuate survivors of the Belgian airliner disaster. All 18 survivors ars now in hospital The managing director of the Sabena Company flew over the scene Although two of his children were survivors, his wife and 19-year-uld daughter were among the dead still in the wreckage. A doctor who survived the crash said that the weather was bad on approaching Gander and the aircraft could not land. She circled round, and it was not long before she crashed, almost immediately catching fire. One passenger and a menfber of the crew died before the arrival of the rescue party, and the others were killed instantly The helicooters landed on a tiny, treacherous plateau a quarter of *3 mile from the wrecked aeroplane, where the injured were carried on stretchers over a trail hacked through dense forest. The survivors were flown to a small lake five mile® away, from

which they were carried in flyingbeats to Gander. One of the airliner’s stewardesses, who urgently needed hospital treatment. reported that an explosion in mid-air caused the airliner to make a foroed landing.