History Book: DC-6 airliner crash near Aristes claims 43 lives 75 years ago

Sep. 9—Joseph Demelfi, a Lehigh Valley Railroad foreman, was on the job when he witnessed a sight he would never forget north of the Schuylkill-Columbia County border on a June afternoon in 1948.

As a stunned Demelfi watched, a United Airlines Douglas DC-6 airliner descended from the sky and crashed in a remote area near Aristes about 1:41 p.m. on June 17 — 75 years ago.

"The plane was coming toward the mountain with one wing down when it struck a high tension line," Demelfi told the Pottsville Republican.

The resulting crash claimed the lives of all four crew members and the 39 passengers aboard.

One of the worst plane crashes in the region's history, the carnage shocked experienced emergency personnel and news crews who reached the crash site in about an hour.

"Big Ship, Bodies Within, Blown Into A Million Pieces In Blast," the Pottsville Republican headlined on June 18, 1948.

Reporter Ken Brennan felt compelled to warn readers of the grizzly scene in the opening sentence of his report.

"This is not pleasant reading," Brennan wrote. "It is a story, incredibly impressed in our minds for a lifetime, of devastation and death, written while the stench of burning flesh still lingers hauntingly in our nostrils."

Standing beside the remains of a transformer that exploded when the plane struck the high tension wires, Brennan described a scene of unbelievable destruction with wreckage littered over a quarter-mile area, 100 feet up a coal bank.

He compared it to a battlefield in World War II.

Nine women and two children were among the casualties.

Earl Carroll, a Broadway producer, showman and songwriter, was on the plane. He was best known for Carroll's Vanities, a Broadway review in the 1920s and 1930s.

Beryl Wallace, a singer and actor who performed in Carroll's "Murder At The Vanities" on Broadway, was with Carroll on the plane.

Venita Varden, who had been married to the actor Jack Oakie, was aboard. Oakie received a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Charlie Chaplin's "The Great Dictator."

Henry L. Jackson, men's fashion editor at Collier's Weekly and a co-founder of Esquire magazine, was also aboard.

United Airlines Flight 624 stopped over in Chicago on its way from Los Angeles to New York, according to a Civil Aeronautics Administration board investigation.

Flying at 17,000 feet, the four-engined propeller-driven craft descended to around 11,000 feet on its approach to New York City around 12:23 p.m.

A forward cargo hold fire indicator light illuminated, leading the crew to believe a fire was in the cargo hold.

Proper procedure called for opening the cabin pressure relief valves to vent gas buildup in the cabin and cockpit prior to discharging CO2 (carbon dioxide) fire extinguisher bottles to suppress the fire. Apparently, that was not done.

Consequently, CO2 gas seeped into the cockpit and partially incapacitated the flight crew.

The crew put the aircraft into emergency descent and, as it descended, it struck a 66,000-volt transformer, severed power lines, burst into flames and crashed into a wooded hillside.

Carl Womer, a Mount Carmel bus driver, witnessed the crash and called it into the Mount Carmel Item newspaper.

A plane had crashed into a transformer of the Hazle Brook Coal Co., Womer told the paper.

Workmen at the colliery who witnessed the crash said a left motor was on fire prior to the crash.

The woods were set on fire immediately.

Fire companies from Ashland responded, but others in the area were not immediately available because they were attending a firemen's convention in Sunbury.

Ira F. Roadarmel, of Mount Carmel, one of the first persons at the scene, told investigators the largest piece of the plane remaining was an engine. The rest was scattered in small pieces.

On its descent, the plane missed Mid Valley Colliery No. 2 by only about 100 yards.

George Minnick, a colliery employee, told investigators he saw the plane bank.

"Suddenly, there was a horrible crash," he said. "All you could see was a mass of flames. It sounded as though the end of the world was coming."

Ironically, the CAA investigation found, the warning of a fire in the cargo compartment had been a false alarm.

(Staff writer Devlin can be reached at rdevlin@republicanherald.com)