CHAPTER 1

PLANE VANISHES INTO THIN AIR—

WHAT HAPPENED?A PRESS RELEASE FROM ANCORAGE, ALASKANovember 20, 1952

A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue todayto the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemasteraircraft which vanished, Saturday night, over theGulf of Alaska. Air force Officials cautioned, however,against any undue optimism, pointing out that thesignal was not picked up again, and past experiencesin Alaskan air tragedies have shown that mysteriousradio transmissions are not uncommon and have provedvalueless in searches. Names of the crew, includingMarlon l. Scott, Airman 3c, Lebanon, Indiana werereleased yesterday. The other passengers have not beenidentified.

Twenty-four search planes are poised here, readyto fan out when weather permits, over the 150 miles totiny Middleton Island., the four-engine transport's lastcheckpoint. The weather outlook was poor. The 41 Armyand Air force passengers and 11 crewmen yesterdaywere listed officially as missing in the continuing plagueof United States military air disasters throughout theworld.

Since November 7, six planes have crashed ordisappeared. They carried 162 men, of whom 82 are nowconfirmed dead, 72 missing and eight survived. Three ofthe troop carriers were lost in Alaska, two in Korea andone in Montana.

The weak radio signal, which could have come fromemergency equipment carried by the Globemaster, waspicked up yesterday by the CAA station at Yakataga, onthe Alaskan Coastline about 150 miles east of MiddletonIsland. The S.O.S. was so dim no bearing could be taken,but authorities at Elmendorf Air Base here said the signalon the navigational distress frequency might have been"Gibson Girl" radio transmitters attached to the plane'sfuselage.

The United States Air force sent the above pressrelease to my parents as well as the hometownnewspaper, The Lebanon Reporter. As fate would haveit, I was in Korea at the time. I have since uncoveredadditional information that is far more inclusive anddefinitive of what exactly happened.

for example, an Associated Press article fromNovember 1952, described the C-124 Globemaster lossas a "staggering one." But it was not the first nor wouldit be the last military plane with Alaskan ties to go downthat month.

On November 7, a C-119 "flying Boxcar," flying fromElmendorf Air force Base in Anchorage to Big Delta,crashed into Mount Silverthrone (on the east side ofMount McKinley), killing 19 men.

On November 15, another C-119, en route fromElmendorf to Kodiak Naval Air Station, disappeared with20 men on boar

On Thanksgiving Day, a C-54 Skymaster from LaddAFB, Fairbanks, carrying servicemen and their families,crashed short of the runway at McChord AFB in SouthTacoma, killing 37 of 39 aboard.

Additional transport planes crashed in Korea and onenear Billings, Montana. Over a three-week period, ninemilitary planes crashed in the Alaska, Pacific Northwestand Korea Theatres. In the month of November alone,128 servicemen were lost.

By late December—during a period which coveredonly six weeks—the number of lives lost in militaryaviation disasters around the North Pacific Rim had risento nearly 300.

It is at this juncture that our story really gets bizarre.According to the same AP report a major search effort forMarlon's aircraft ensued. The wreckage, unbelievably, wasspotted by the crew of a B-17 bomber on November 25, 1952.

Dr. Terris Moore, President of the University of Alaska,landed his ski-equipped plane at the site of the wreckageon November 28 with lt. Thomas Sullivan of the TenthAir Rescue Group.

A story in the Anchorage Daily Times on December1, 1952, reported Moore and Sullivan were able toconfirm—through numbers on the tail section—that thewreckage was, indeed, from Marlon's Globemaster C-124.According to the pair of investigators only the plane's tailassembly and flippers were intact.

Moore told the Times "the plane hit the mountainside,exploding and disintegrating upon impact."

Wreckage was scattered over two to three acres while"six to eight feet of snow covered everything."

The investigators indicated they found blood on apiece of blanket at the scene.

"All aboard met instant death," Moore said.

A 12-person ground party planned a hike up themountain to recover the remains of the 52 persons onboard—from a base camp at the 4,000-foot level to thecrash scene at about 8,000 feet. However, weatherconditions and inaccessibility due to several "overhangingavalanches" doomed further recovery efforts.

Our Dad was known for his assiduous record-keepinghabits, especially when it involved personal achievementsof his children. His intent was to save, in scrapbookform for future posterity, photos and clippings fromthe local newspaper, the Lebanon Reporter. But otherimportant documents were squirreled away as well. Thisproved fortuitous in the writings of events surroundingMarlon's missing aircraft. My younger brother, Jon, wholives in Lebanon in the family homestead, found severalscrapbooks that were in a storage closet. This provedto be a treasure trove of documents from the Air forcethat chronicled the time the plane went missing and thefollow-up letters that sealed the fate of Marlon and theother military personnel.

In addition to that official correspondence, I includethe following condolences from a friend n Lebanon:

As previously noted, I was in Korea at the time whenmany of the events surrounding the plane crash wererevealed to my family. In hindsight I find it regrettablethat I made no further inquiries into the further detailsbecause I had made my own solitary peace with the lossof my brother and moved on. I was under the impressionthat Mom and Dad, and my siblings had done the same.It was not until six decades later that I found out thatwas not the case.

While rummaging through one of the scrapbooks,I uncovered additional letters from the Air force to myparents, including the following—approximately onemonth after the crash—from the McChord Air force BaseCommander.

34TH AIR TRANSPORT SQUADRON
1705TH AIR Transport Group
Continental Division, MATS
McChord AfB, Washington

23 December 1952

Mr. & Mrs. lawrence D....