Wreckage of 1952 military plane found on glacier

The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington
state.

An Associated Press report on Nov 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third
big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and
the sixth around the Pacific Rim.

Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it
to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather, said Tonja Anderson, whose
grandfather Isaac Anderson was among those on board the doomed flight. The
41-year-old Tampa, Florida, woman has researched the crash for 12 years
since her grandmother, now deceased, gave her details of the airman who died
at age 21, leaving behind a young widow and 1 ½-year-old son.

“I’m overwhelmed,” Anderson said Wednesday about the positive
identification. It’s something she has tried to long get from the military,
she said, only to be told that recovering the remains from the plane’s
hidden grave was unfeasible and would be too expensive.

“If they can bring me one bone of my grandfather or his dog tag, that
would be closure for me,” she said.

Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air
Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a
glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the
Globemaster.

According to an AP account, the civil air patrol member was Terris Moore, who
was president of the University of Alaska. After returning from the site, he
told reporters that the plane “obviously was flying at full speed”
when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding
and disintegrating over two or three acres.

Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were
enough for an identification. Moore said blood was found on a piece of
blanket and there was a “sickly-sweet smell of death.”

The debris was discovered June 14 while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying
a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The
guardsmen flew over the area several times.

Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the
area while the military investigation was conducted.

An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military
officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier.

The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and
possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the
command’s lab in Hawaii for analysis.

Source: agencies

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