Melting glacier reveals remnants of historic alpine rescue
Archaeological Service Bern head Adriano Boschetti pores through 72-year-old plane debris.
LONDON— After an emergency landing on a Swiss glacier, the group of 12 Americans drank melted snow and survived on rations of one chocolate bar a person until daring pilots shuttled them to safety after five days marooned on the ice.
Relics of that adventure and the rescue of all those on board, including an 11year-old girl and the captain’s mother, resurfaced after 70 years this month when scorching temperatures in Europe caused the glacial ice to recede.
The melting uncovered a large part of the wreckage of the U.S. Air Force transport plane, including a wing and items from the cabin.
Parts of the C-53 aircraft, also known as a Dakota, had already been discovered over the past 20 years. But the heat waves washing over much of Europe, which many have linked to climate change, have permitted the retrieval of many more artifacts that recount the death-defying story of the 1946 flight.
The plane had been heading to Marseille, France, from Munich, carrying American officers and family members. The pilot, Capt. Ralph H. Tate Jr., found himself navigating among snowy peaks in turbulent weather and was forced to make a risky landing on the glacier to avoid crashing.
One passenger, a sergeant, broke his knee in the crash, but the others had relatively minor injuries. Snow covered the plane and formed a kind of igloo that helped them survive, Swiss rescuers said, adding that the plane had “miraculously missed a crevice 250 feet wide and 50 feet deep.”
The passengers used wooden parts of the aircraft and mixed gasoline and oil to light a fire.
Two Swiss pilots became the heroes of an extensive rescue operation, flying German-made reconnaissance planes fitted with skis to land on the ice and pick up the stranded Americans. The planes could carry only two passengers at a time, so numerous gut-wrenching trips were needed to rescue everyone.
The 11-year-old on board, Mary Alice McMahon, smiled as she got out of the rescue plane, chewing a piece of gum.
It was the first time the Swiss air force used planes in a mountain rescue.
The survival of everyone aboard after the plane hit a glacier at 280 km/h continues to amaze experts. “It was the most improbable story in the history of international aviation, for a passenger aircraft cruising at a speed of 280 kilometres per hour, to hit the ground with everyone on board unhurt,” Peter Brotschi, an aviation expert, told the state broadcaster SRF after the recent discovery.
Adriano Boschetti, an archeologist for the Bern region, which includes the crash site, said most of the aircraft was still under the ice, at an elevation of about 3,350 metres.
Boschetti said the Swiss air force would work to retrieve the fragments, “after which we will choose the ones we will show to the public.”