DISASTERS: Journey's End

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The C-54 transport was nine hours out of Fairbanks, Alaska, on Thanksgiving night when Captain Albert J. Fenton raised Tacoma's McChord Field. What was the weather? The answer crackled back: visibility three-quarters of a mile, ceiling zero. Pilot Fenton asked to be talked in on ground controlled approach.

Fifteen minutes later, when Fenton swung into his final approach, visibility had dropped to one-sixteenth of a mile, a blanket of fog and smoke still hugged the ground. Fenton chose to go around. What was the weather at nearby Seattle-Tacoma Airport? Visibility ten miles, ceiling unlimited. That was the last the tower heard from Fenton. The big plane roared over the field, slashed into a stand of fir trees, and fell, flaming, in an open lot outside the city.

The explosion flashed against the walls of Pipefitter Ed Karl's house. Karl threw aside a book he was reading, raced out of his kitchen. When he got to the scene 100-yards away, he found a pile of burning wreckage and a scattered litter of broken bodies. Inside the blazing fuselage he heard a baby wailing.

For three hours rescue crews worked under searchlights to retrieve the dead. The dawn illuminated a tragic scene: the ground strewn with children's things—a boy's pair of skis, a doll, party dresses for a little girl. The C-54 carried 23 men, seven women, nine children. Three Army families, bound home from Alaska, were completely wiped out. Of the 39 passengers and crewmen on board, 36 were dead; a soldier died later of burns. It was the ninth crash of military aircraft during three weeks in the North Pacific area. The death toll: 210.