HISTORIC DATE

Submitted by ub on

Fifty-Three years ago this day, Friday, December 16th 1960 marked the beginning of what was to become a grim week for man-made disasters and mishaps in the New York Metropolitan Area. On that Friday at a little before 11am in poor weather, two commercial airliners collided in mid-air over lower New York Harbor just east of Staten Island that resulted in the loss of 134 lives; one of the aircraft, a relatively new United Airlines DC-8 Jet spiraled out of control and crashed into the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn; the other, an older TWA Lockheed Constellation propeller aircraft attempted a futile crash-landing on Staten Island.

Tragically, there were no survivors from either aircraft, except for one small boy, who died a mere 24 hours later. Have a look at part one of this A&E-produced "mini-doc" of the crash from the early 90's ... noteworthy on several counts ... It contains a fair amount of rare, color footage of the crash aftermath, interspersed with film, & videotape/kinescope(s) of LIVE broadcast TV reports from the scene, including the voice and on-camera views of Gabe Pressman. You'll also hear the voices of NBC's Bill Ryan as well as Frank McGee.

By:Ed Stack

United DC-8 & TWA Connie - "Mid-Air Collision" - 1960 - Part l/lll: http://youtu.be/fjiyMqU_zqE