43 Feared Dead In Everglades Crash

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30056, 14 February 1963, Page 13

43 Feared Dead In Everglades Crash

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) MIAMI (Florida), February 13. Teams of Civil Aeronautics Board investigators assembled overnight in Miami as rescue parties moved into the trackless Everglades swamp in the almost hopeless task of finding survivors of the Boeing 7208 jet airliner which crashed yesterday. The big plane crashed in the Everglades minutes after taking off from Miami for Chicago, apparently killing all 43 persons on board.

“The fuselage is busted up,” said Lieutenant-Commander James Dillon, one of two Coast Guard helicopter pilots who found and explored the wreck. “It’s been consumed by, fire. Badly burned gutted,” he said.

Wreckage of the great fourjet airliner, belonging to North-West Orient Airlines was sighted by a searching helicopter more than five hours after it took off into squally weather over Florida, the Associated Press reported. The discovery ended a tense period which began when the airliner failed to make mandatory reports of its progress to cruising altitude.

The plane's silence aroused a massive search by planes and helicopters of the Air Force, the Coast Guard and the Florida Civil Air Patrol. More than a score of other planes braved rain squalls and thunderstorms over much of Florida to search over the Everglades and other parts of Florida. The wreckage was found 43 miles west-south-west of Miami and six-and-a-half miles from a highway passing through the marshy, desolate, mostly uninhabited Everglades. The airliner took off from Miami carrying 35 passengers —33 Americans, a Cuban refugee and a Venezuelanthree flight officers and five hostesses.

Itclimbed into a rain squall sweeping in over Miami from the west and seven minutes after take-off requested permission to climb to 25,000 feet, gave a position check report, then failed to acknowledge a request from the control tower at Miami airport. Radar contact was lost at this point but it was at first thought that the squall and accompanying thunderstorms which cut down radar range were also responsible for the loss of radio contact. However, the plane failed to make any of the necessary flight position reports and within half an hour search operations began. Several planes and helicopters were diverted from the main search area round Tampa after two fishermen reported sighting the ball of fire about five minutes after the airliner’s take-off time, but it was not unital darkness began to set in that a Coast

Guard helicopter sighted the wreckage. The Coast Guard pilots said it looked as thought the airliner pilot had attempted an emergency landing. There was no immediate sign of an explosion. More than 20 air boats were mobilised to race toward the wreck through the pools and over the sawgrass of the Everglades. But the Coast Guard said only tracked vehicles could reach the airliner and air boats—lightdraft pontoon craft driven by aircraft engines—were not needed.

The area was sealed off to all but rescue craft and those carrying the C.A.B. inspection team which sought to determine the cause of the crash. Air traffic officials at Miami said there was no hint of trouble in pilot-ground conversations just before radio contact with the plane was lost.