History

Remembering the Park Slope Plane Crash on Its 55th Anniversary

Fifty-five years later, there is nothing to immediately suggest that the intersection of Park Slope’s Sterling Place and 7th Avenue has born the brunt of more than a Brooklyn street’s typical quantity of death and tragedy. Yet, just over a half century ago to the day, 134 people perished in a hailstorm of flaming wreckage, drowning the…

by Hannah Frishberg

12/16/2015 0

Park Slope Plane Crash — A trapped car burns under the tail of the jet. Photo by Paul Bernius for the New York Daily News via Getty Images

Yet, just over a half century ago to the day, 134 people perished in a hailstorm of flaming wreckage, drowning the neighborhood’s now historic brownstones in an onslaught of bodies and jet fuel. At the time, the Park Slope Plane Crash, as it came to be known, was the U.S.’s deadliest commercial aviation accident.

December 16, 1960 — it started mid-morning, mid-air: Idlewild-bound United Airlines Flight 826 lost partial use of its radio navigation, and began circling through the day’s wet fog, the pilots not realizing the plane was 12 miles off course and rapidly descending.

En route to LaGuardia, Trans World Airlines Flight 266 violently collided with the United flight and both planes began spiraling towards the ground, engines and debris blasting from the aircrafts as they fell.

“I’ll never forget that day as long as I live,” air traffic controller Peter W. Bernhard told the New York Times. Bernhard had the last contact with United pilot Captain Robert H. Sawyer before the impact.

The TWA flight crashed into Staten Island’s Miller Army Airfield, disintegrating as it plummeted, scattering parts into the Atlantic and passengers into nearby trees.

In Brooklyn, embalmed corpses exploded onto the street as falling fuselage pummeled the McCaddin Funeral Home. The nearby Pillar of Fire Church detonated as the jet rammed it, while a Chinese laundry, grocery store, and local homes burst into flame.

Bodies littered the slushy pavement, every passenger and crew member aboard killed. The only fleeting survivor, an 11-year-old boy meeting his family in New York for the holidays, managed to briefly cling to life , despite being badly burned internally. He died of pneumonia the following day at Methodist Hospital.

In all, 134 were killed, including six people on the ground — a church caretaker, a sanitation worker, a man walking his dog, a local butcher, and two men selling Christmas trees.

Now, just over a half-century since the crash, not a single memorial marks Sterling Place or 7th Avenue for the dead.

Still, small remembrances are scattered throughout the neighborhood — a plaque in Methodist Hospital’s Phillips Chapel in remembrance of the crash’s victims, with the 65 cents in change Stephen Baltz had in his pocket melded to the side.

There is a monument in Green Wood Cemetery, rusted bits of the plane’s remainders in a neighbor’s backyard, a missing cornice on a grazed building, mismatched rebuilt brick sections on others.

Empty lots on Sterling Place remained surprisingly empty for decades after the crash demolished their former town homes. Now the sites house notably modern residential units that contrast with the rest of the block’s brownstones.

On this anniversary of the crash, it is interesting to note the contrast of the catastrophe with the neighborhood’s now-quaint reputation — although this world has seen far more horrific aviation disasters since 1960.

What a different time it must have been for Park Slope to be known not for its elite public schools and property values but a national tragedy.