| The 1960 New York mid-air collision, also known as the Park Slope Plane Crash, was a mid-air collision between two airliners that occurred over New York City on Friday, December 16, 1960. United Airlines Flight 826, bound for Idlewild Airport, collided with Trans World Airlines Flight 266, descending into LaGuardia Airport. One plane crashed into Staten Island and the other crashed into Park Slope, Brooklyn, killing all 128 people on both aircraft and six people on the ground. United Airlines Flight 826, Mainliner Will Rogers, registration N8013U, was a Douglas DC-8-11 carrying 84 people en route from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago to Idlewild Airport (later renamed John F. Kennedy International Airport) in Jamaica, Queens. The DC-8 itself had begun commercial service only fifteen months earlier, and United was one of its launch customers. On Flight 826, the Flight Crew consisted of Captain Robert H. Sawyer, First Officer Robert W. Fieberg and Flight Engineer Richard E. Pruitt. |
|---|
At 10:21 A.M. Eastern Time, the United plane advised its company radio operator that one of its VOR receivers had stopped working (although they did not notify air traffic controllers of the problem), making it harder to navigate in instrument conditions. At 10:25 A.M. Eastern Time, air traffic control issued a revised clearance for the flight to shorten its course to the Preston holding point (near South Amboy, New Jersey) by 12 miles (19 km). The United plane was supposed to circle the holding point at an altitude of 5,000 ft (1,500 m) at no more than 240 mph (210 kn; 390 km/h), but overshot. United later said the Colts Neck VOR was unreliable (pilots testified on both sides of the issue). ("Preston" was the point where airway V123 (the 050-radial off the Robbinsville VOR) crossed the Solberg 120-degree radial and the Colts Neck 346-degree radial.)
| The weather was light rain and fog (which had been preceded by snowfall). According to information from the United plane's flight data recorder (the first time a "black box" had been used to provide extensive details in a crash investigation), the plane was 12 miles (19 km) off course and for 81 seconds descended at 3,600 feet per minute (18 m/s) and slowed from more than 500 to 363 mph (434 to 315 kn; 805 to 584 km/h) when it collided with the TWA Constellation just ahead of the wings via one of the DC-8's engines. The Constellation's fuselage was torn apart violently, also ripping the DC-8's engine off its pylon. The Constellation entered a dive with debris being blasted out of the aircraft as it spiraled to the ground. The DC-8, without one engine, managed to remain in flight for some time. |  |
|---|
Although witnesses speculated at the time that the crew of the United plane was attempting an emergency landing in Prospect Park, about 9 miles (14 km) away from the collision point, or at LaGuardia Airport, there is no evidence the pilots had control of the DC-8 at any time after the collision.
The crash left the remains of the aircraft pointed southeast towards a large open field at Prospect Park, only blocks from the crash site. A Catholic high school teacher, from St. Augustine High School less than two blocks from the crash, testified at government hearings that he saw the faces of the pilots as the plane approached the school, and that the wing dipped to clear the school building just before the plane crashed.
This teacher's testimony was featured in a front page article and photo in the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune newspaper at the time of the hearings. A student at the school, who lived in one of the destroyed apartment buildings on the block of the crash site, reported to classmates that his entire family was in the only room of their apartment not destroyed by the crash and they thus survived. The crash left a trench covering most of the length of the pavement on Sterling Place in the middle of the street. It shook the school so violently that occupants thought that a bomb had gone off or the building's boiler had exploded. There was no audible voice radio contact with traffic controllers from either plane after the collision, although LaGuardia had begun tracking an incoming fast moving unidentified plane from Preston toward the LaGuardia "Flatbush" outer marker.
The United plane crashed into the Park Slope section of Brooklyn at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Sterling Place(40°40′38″N 73°58′25″W), scattering wreckage and setting fire to ten brownstone apartment buildings, the Pillar of Fire Church, the McCaddin Funeral Home, a Chinese laundry and a delicatessen. Six people on the ground were killed, including Wallace E. Lewis, the church's 90-year-old caretaker; Charles Cooper, a sanitation worker who was shoveling snow; Joseph Colacino and John Opperisano, who were selling Christmas trees on the sidewalk; Dr. Jacob L. Crooks, who was out walking his dog; and Albert Layer, the owner of the butcher shop located just off Seventh Avenue on Sterling Place.
source - wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_New_York_mid-air_collision
Click here to watch the video of the plane crash