DISASTERS: Silence from the Gulf

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Both the U.S. Weather Bureau and National Airlines weather information service expected stormy weather in the Gulf of Mexico as National's Flight 470 left Miami for Tampa and New Orleans at 3:16 E.S.T. one afternoon last week. There was a low-pressure area over the Gulf, a cold front was moving out from Texas, and small-craft warnings were flying along the coast. But the weather was expected to remain well within the "limits of operating conditions" for the four-engined DC-6. Its captain, Ernest A. Springer, was a 44-year-old veteran of airline operation. National had safely flown the tri-city route 9,978 times.

The big plane made a routine landing at Tampa and took off again at 4:40 with 41 passengers—many of them holiday travelers bound for the Mardi Gras. It was due in New Orleans at 5:45 C.S.T., but Flight 470 was never completed. Captain Springer's last radio report, at 5:12, gave no hint of danger. After that, attempts to get in touch with the plane were answered only by a silence—silence and the howl of sudden heavy winds which battered the shore line hard enough to tear off roofs at Grand Isle, La.

During the night an operator at Mobile's Radio Station WKRG picked up what he thought was an S O S message, possibly from a hand-cranked "Gibson Girl" transmitter of the type used on life rafts. As a great sea-air search got underway the next morning, one of the 20-odd planes which took part sighted what seemed to be a raft, with six people clinging to it. But they were never seen again. A 20-ft. sea was running, and it seemed doubtful that survivors could cling to a raft for long.

Less than 30 miles off the Alabama coast, the searchers found bits & pieces of wreckage. The DC-6 was down in 100 feet of water; during the day seventeen bodies floated to the surface and were recovered. There seemed to be no doubt that all 46 people aboard had perished.