CRASHED AIR LINER

Evening Star, Issue 26029, 18 February 1947, Page 7

CRASHED AIR LINER

CHARRED BODIES FOUND IN RAVINE ROAR OF EXPLOSION HEARD FOR MILES BOGOTA (Colombia), Feb. 16. The first search parties reaching Mount Talilazo (10,500 ft) after the D.C.4 air liner had crashed could i ot recover the bodies for 10 hours because the blazing .wreckage had set fire to the surrounding forest. The plane, belonging to the Colombian A vianca Air Lines, a subsidiary of Pan-American World Airways, was flying from the coastal city of Barranquilla to Bogota airport when it was apparently lost in fog- and struck the mountain about 200 ft below the peak, killing all the occupants.. * The plane exploded with a roar which was heard miles distant! Wreckage plunged 2,000 ft, into a ravine, which was blazing from end to end when the searchers arrived. Although only 30 miles from Bogota-airport, the scene, of the crash is.-.wild Andean country which is seldom visited.

A Pathfinder plane guided searchers from Supata, a nearby town which is about 300 air miles from. Barranquilla.' The party found fragments of wreckage, including a gasoline tank and some clothes, on a ledge above the ravine.

The preliminary death roll, which is the biggest in civil aviation history, shows that most of the victims were Colombians, but' there were nine Americans, including the pilot and copilot. and two British officials of the Tropical Oil Company. The Colombian Government . has decreed a day of national mourning. Members of the Police. Department, rbped together, made a difficult descent of the ravine, at the bottom of which they' found 54 charred and mangled bodies and the wreckage of most of the giant four-engined plane. .They wrapped the bodies in tarpaulins and began the long arduous task of hoisting them to the top of the ravine, which they do not expect to complete till to-morrow.

It was the second major Colombian air crash in less than a month, the first being an Avianca D.C.3 which fell in the Carare jungle on January 22. killing all 17 on board. The Associated Press . recalls (be greatest previous loss of life on a nonmilitary plane, which occurred when the Maxim Gorky, which was then the world’s largest land plane, crashed with another aircraft at Moscow in 1935. when the 48 people on the 3lnxim Gorky were killed and one died in the other craft.