May they finally rest in peace...

1952 Air Force plane wreckage found in melting Alaska glacier

In this Monday June 25, 2012 photo provided by the U.S. Army, a Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) recovery team works at the site where military aircraft wreckage was found on Colony Glacier, Alaska. (AP Photo/U.S. Army)

(AP) ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.

Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done.

Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.

(Full story at title link)

Love the global warming spin the media added.

Love the global warming spin the media added.

I love the "save the whales" spin the media added.

Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification.

By flippers, maybe they meant the spatula left in the galley.

Here's a story with a few more details from the local newspaper up here. It's got quite a few details about the mishap and the search that followed. This part stood out to me:

The Globemaster was flying from McChord Air Force Base in Washington. With giant bay doors under its nose, the Globemaster, nicknamed "Old Shaky," was the largest cargo plane in the American arsenal at the time, the only aircraft capable of carrying a tank or bulldozer -- or 200 soldiers.

On this flight, it carried 52 men, mostly Air Force and Army personnel and at least one from the Marine Corps and one from the Navy.

It passed Middleton Island, in the Gulf of Alaska south of Prince William Sound, en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base. At about 4 p.m., the captain of a Northwest Orient Airlines passenger plane picked up a distress call.

A scratchy signal made the call almost impossible to understand, but the Northwest pilot heard, "As long as we have to land, we might as well land here."

Silence followed. Nobody heard from the plane again.

Details of the Globemaster's final moments were revealed Wednesday by Douglas Beckstead, the historian for the 673rd Air Base Wing at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Beckstead was looking over microfilm copies of the official reports on the incident.

"The weather was very bad with heavy clouds," Beckstead said. "They were flying with no visual references, going by altitude, a radio beacon and a stopwatch."

Edited July 1, 201213 yr by BB Stacker