Historic US aircrash site receives government protection

Just reading AIR DISASTER-the prop era, and 1 chapter is about this accident. It was Super Constellation N6902C Star of the Seine, and DC.7 N6324C Mainliner Vancouver, the Connie ended up approx. 1000ft above the Colorado river on a rocky shelf, the largest piece was the tail fin which ended upside down. The DC.7 was 2500ft up then fell into a deep gorge! no large pieces just burnt pieces, reports stated that parts were driven 20ft into the granite, and coins in a purse were fused together. It was in such a bad place to access they flew Swiss mountaineers in to help in reaching it.

To most Americans, even those in the USAF, all ‘aircraft’ are ‘jets’, the two terms are synonymous to them. I well remember when we took the P-63 to Alconbury airshow in the 1980s, all the ground crew guys spent the whole weekend referring to it as a ‘jet’.

Was that the weekend I was clouted by an errant B25 prop?

Wiki has some info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Grand_Canyon_mid-air_collision

As the article says, it was a particularly historic crash since it led to the overhaul of the nation’s ATC system.
I wonder how much wreckage is left? It was a violent crash, so there probably wasn’t a lot of very large pieces to begin with.

The Army (or Air Force) recovered much wreckage and victims under difficult circumstances given the helicopter state of the art in at the time. I believe H-21s were used for their hot/high capabilities but even they were sorely challenged.

If anyone has a period technical magazine article, I’d like to learn more about the recovery operations.

The tailplane looks like an inverted Constellation one to me, with the remains of the outer fins still in place.

To most Americans, even those in the USAF, all ‘aircraft’ are ‘jets’, the two terms are synonymous to them. I well remember when we took the P-63 to Alconbury airshow in the 1980s, all the ground crew guys spent the whole weekend referring to it as a ‘jet’.

Interesting to see the tailplane in the article photo is described as the tailplane from the TWA “jet”, yet the article says the collision involved a Lockheed Constellation and a DC-7, so one or other is clearly incorrect (and the tailplane looks DC-7 ish to me).

As ever, another example of well-researched journalism :(.

All it would have taken is a moment or two on wikipedia or google (other web sites are available 😉 ) to avoid such an elementary mistake…d’oh!