Newsreel footage obtained exclusively by MyBayCity.com shows firefighters attempting to put out flames in the aircraft. April 6 Marks 50th Anniversary of Capital Airlines Tri-City Airport Crash
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Thirteen local people, a top athlete from Case Institute of Technology and a beauty queen were among victims of an Easter Sunday plane crash at Tri-City Airport 50 years ago April 6, 1958.
The British-built Vickers Viscount, Capital Airlines Flight 67, plunged into the muck about 2,300 feet short of the runway at 11:19 p.m., exploding and scattering bodies on Warner Law's cornfield.
The beauty queen was Miss Flint, Rosalind Lamkins, 20, a 5 foot five inch brunette who had been working in a beauty shop in Grand Rapids. She had been crowned by Gov. G. Mennen Williams. The athlete was Joe Girlando, a Case basketball player who averaged 22 points a game before his graduation as an engineer in 1957. he was working for the nuclear fuel division of Olin Mathieson Co., New Haven, Connecticut.
Eyewitness Nelson Girardin, of Bay City, who had taken his family to see the planes land, said they saw the plane hit on its nose, flip over and shoot flames 100 feet into the air.
It was the worst air disaster in this area and second worst in Michigan. Forty-four passengers and three crew members died.
Police, sheriff's deputies and firefighters from surrounding communities slogged through mud to recover bodies. Some charred bodies were recovered from the wreckage. The bodies were laid out in a hangar for identification.
A young serviceman who was home on leave happened to be at the airport that night and was pressed into service labeling bodies since he had worked at a local funeral home. He worked until 6 a.m. in the Dow hangar, calling the experience "horrible, gruesome," dealing with charred bodies. He recalls getting sick and not being able to fly for a long time.
Onlookers who tried to rush to the field to help were held back by authorities still in hopes of survivors, but no one lived through the crash.
The regularly-scheduled flight between New York's LaGuardia Airport and Chicago had taken off from Newark, with stops at Detroit and Flint, and was landing at Freeland when ice up to an inch and a half thick on the wings caused a loss of pitch control, according to a Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) report in 1959.
A stall warning device on the aircraft was not working and wind observing equipment at the airport was inadequate, the CAB said. The airport also was cited for lack of night-time visibility check points. More modern wind observing equipment was installed at the airport after the crash and corrective action was taken to insure that stall warning devices on Viscounts were functioning properly at all times.
At the time of the crash the ceiling was 900 feet, it was overcast with visibility of three miles and light snow was falling; severe winds were gusting up to 27 knots; temperature was 34.
Capt. W.J. Hull, 43, of Washington Township, New Jersey, was a highly-experienced pilot rated as a "million miler who had been with Capitol for 17 years and had just passed his physical on March 28.
The first officer was Earle M. Binkley, 27, of Levittown, New York, who had been with the airline for two years. Hostesses Ruth M. Denecke, 28, of St. Petersburg, Florida, was a four year veteran with the company.
Local people who died on the plane were:
Miss Prudence Windsor, Midland, chemist for the Dow Chemical Co.; Robert M. Benjamin, Saginaw; Mr. and Mrs. Norberg, Saginaw; R.D. McNally, Midland; Reginald H. McEachin, Saginaw; Mr. and Mrs. Earl Pelton, Midland; Miss Jean Hodgson, Midland; Dr. and Mrs. William K. Lee, Bay City; Lester Wilensky, Saginaw; Mrs. R.D. Carpenter, Bay City.
Other passengers included a General Motors executive from the A-C Sparkplug Division in Milwaukee, Joseph A. Carah, 50. Other passengers were from Wisconsin, Flint, Grand Rapids, Kentucky, Mount Morris, Pittsburgh, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Ohio and Indiana.
The Bay City Times was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize by the Michigan Associated Press for its coverage of the crash.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Don Gies, Salzburg historian,brought this anniversary to our attention. Gies had enlisted in the Army in early April and had sent his first letter home. Since the letter never arrived, he figured it might have been on the plane that crashed.) ###
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j.brun Says:
On February 02, 2009
at 11:55 PM
This article very good, but the airplane shown is not of the wreck on April 6, 1958. First, the CAB report states the engines had ground themselves nearly 5 feet into the ground on impact. Second, the Vickers Viscount 745D had the Rolls Royce Dart 510 engines with 4 bladed props. The picture shown has a three bladed prop.
John |
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dwood Says:
On November 08, 2013
at 05:37 PM
The airplane in the photograph is a Lockheed L1049G or H model Super Constellation.
The Connies engine cowlings have a distinctive shape and the presence of the air diffuser immediately behind the propeller spinner is a dead giveaway. Dave |
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amaxx6700 Says:
On January 16, 2014
at 12:02 PM
Neither the picture or the story is adequate. Wrong pic. The viscount grounded itself, nose first into Farmer Law's field after scalping a lone oak tree in that field. I lived six miles from the crash site and we saw the sky light up and a few seconds later we heard the first of what would be three or more explosions. My Uncle was first person there. He tried to approach the crash when an explosion occurred which ejected bodies out of the wreck. After the fire, their wasn't much left above ground to photograph.
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amaxx6700 Says:
On January 16, 2014
at 12:38 PM
In 1961, I believe it was, I flew the route flight 67 took from Detroit to Tri City in a Viscount. It was the only time I flew in that type. Of the 445 built, 155 incidents occurred with 144 of those incidents resulting in the loss of the aircraft. As a private pilot, I don't mind telling you that I was very uneasy about the performance of that aircraft. Far and away too much vibration and it seemed to tear its way through the sky. It seemed to me that the vibration and the tearing phenomena resulted from differences in the aircraft's engine performance. First one with more thrust than another. This cause a lateral rocking motion from side to side. Further, tail plane(horizontal Stab.)dihedral was severe enough to cause problems at low speed.
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Dave Rogers |
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