Posted on 12/12/2005 6:25:39 AM PST by NorthOf45
Ceremonies mark ’85 Gander crash
248 U.S. soldiers killed instantly
The Chronicle Herals
From Our Wire Services
December 12, 2005
GANDER, N.L. — Twenty years later, Joe McGuire vividly remembers getting the call.
He was at home, asleep the morning of Dec. 12, 1985, when the ring of his telephone jarred him awake with news that an airplane went down after takeoff from the Gander International Airport.
There were 248 U.S. soldiers on board the Arrow Air charter flight and eight civilian crew.
McGuire, then the assistant commander for the RCMP in Gander, rushed to the scene.
"When I got down there it was still burning and everything was black," McGuire says in a telephone interview from Gander, where he is now retired.
"There were bodies in the lower part of the site laying everywhere. Most of them were badly burnt."
Rescuers were held at bay by a wall of fire as 45,000 kilograms of jet fuel burned off.
As soon as they could, RCMP, Canadian military personnel from the nearby 9 Wing base, fire department and airport officials swept the crash area, a long stretch of sheared and burning forest.
They were looking, and hoping, for survivors.
"There were none," McGuire says.
That was the hardest part, says McGuire, who was involved in rescue following the crash of a Czechoslovakian State Airlines flight at the same airport in 1967.
Thirty-two of the 69 passengers in that case survived.
"There were survivors which gave the emergency services who responded to it a good feeling, because there were people they could save," McGuire says. "In this instance, there was nobody."
Malinda Parris was preparing to welcome her husband, pilot Chief Warrant Officer Rudy Parris, home for the holidays.
It was two weeks before Christmas and Parris had decorated the house and filled the kitchen with his favourite foods.
She was dressing for a homecoming ceremony at the army base in Fort Campbell, Ky., when the television flashed the news that would change her life.
"It was like jumping out of a helicopter or airplane. The fall was endless," says Parris, 61, of Herndon, Ky.
Two hundred and forty-eight soldiers were killed instantly, most from the division’s 502nd Infantry Regiment that had spent the past six months in Sinai ensuring compliance with the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Memorials were dedicated in Fort Campbell and Arlington national cemetery in Washington, and 248 Canadian maple trees were planted alongside a monument in nearby Hopkinsville, Ky.
A solemn statue marks the crash site in Gander, N.L.
On Monday, the U.S. Army will honour the soldiers with military and civil memorial ceremonies at the Arlington cemetery, at the base in Fort Campbell and at the Hopkinsville park.
The anniversary comes as the 101st is grieving new deaths in Iraq — 19 Fort Campbell soldiers died in November.
In Gander, members of the 101st Airborne and representatives of the U.S. Embassy and Canadian Forces are expected at a memorial service and a wreath-laying ceremony at the crash site.
Rest in peace, brave warriors.
Ping
Has it really been twenty years? It seems like yesterday.
This was, I believe, the second rotation of GIs to the Multinational Force in Sinai. That particular DC-8 used by Arrow had a ton of problems and everybody knew it. DoD really began to sit down on charter airlines after that, with good result. I don't think there's been a similar happening since.
Same here - kind of set you back a step or two, didn't it? I remember calling my folks before the flight left, telling them that I loved them - but not saying that it was a "just in case" call.
I second that. We had a young man from my hometown on that plane.
Sgt. Michael Murray, may he rest in peace.
There's never been a definite cause determined for that accident. The Canadian authorities blamed it on an "undetermined" loss of lift and increase in drag after takeoff, probably due to icing. Four members of their board dissented and pinned it on an inflight fire.
http://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19851212-0
}:-)4
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.