“On the 16th of December, 1951, a Curtiss C-46 twin engine airplane crashed in the city of Elizabeth, New Jersey. The disaster was an immense shock to local residents… but it wouldn’t be the last shock they would have to endure…”
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 – Intro
00:40 – Background
03:04 – The Elizabeth Plane Crashes
09:48 – The Aftermath
MUSIC:
► “Glass Pond” by Public Memory
SOURCES:
► Accident Investigation Report SA-248, published by the Civil Aeronautics Board, April 1952. Available via: https://www.baaa-acro.com/sites/default/files/import/uploads/2017/01/N1678M.pdf
► “Terror over Elizabeth New Jersey” by Peter Zablocki, published by The History Press, November 2021. Link: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Terror_over_Elizabeth_New_Jersey_Three_P/6C1LEAAAQBAJ
► “How The City Of Elizabeth, New Jersey Saw 3 Plane Crashes In As Many Months In The 1950s” by Jake Hardiman, published by Simple Flying, March 2016. Link: https://simpleflying.com/elizabeth-new-jersey-1950s-plane-crashes/
► “How three planes crashed in three months in Elizabeth in ’50s” by Vicki Hyman, published by NJ.com, May 2015. Link: https://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/2015/05/how_three_planes_crashed_in_elizabeth_in_50s.html
► “Plan to reroute jets may mean more noise” published by NBC News, January 2008. Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna22594823
Accident Investigation Report SA-254, published by the Civil Aeronautics Board, May 1952. Available via: https://www.baaa-acro.com/sites/default/files/import/uploads/2017/01/N90891.pdf
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
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Nowadays two of those crashes would've been massive lawsuits against the owners of those planes due to the clear negligence of maintaining and repairing those planes. The inquiry should've been into how the hell do 2 planes have near-immediate failures due to crappy upkeep or parts within such a short time.
The port authority should never be involved in any travel logistics, they are thoroughly corrupt.
Love the impeccable English!
I remember this very well. I was living in downtown New York at the time, and once it became apparent that we had no power for a long time, people ventured outside, and soon ended up enjoying free beer, and food at many restaurants in the area as they desperately got rid of everything before it spoiled. Luckily, I did not have to work that day!
I think it makes it even more nerve wracking that there was no real reason for all those crashes. 3 in 3 months and then nothing!
I don’t think it mentioned but I hope that first pilot got a special memory medal or some kind of service, because what he did was awesome
👍🫶🏻🫵
three crashes in as many months. ?was the airport built on land sacred to local Native American people?
Still making money out of peoples misfortune
I imagine all these young pilots were WWII vets. Honorable of them trying to save as many lives on the ground as possible even if they knew they wouldn’t be saving their own
Time to move away from Newark!
I’m now wondering if there was ever a case where a plane crashed during peacetime in the exact same location as a previous plane crash?
Crashing into the playground of an orphanage is movie-levels of tragedy
Hard to make your brain grasp the title. A plane named Elizabeth ? How could it crash more than once ? Now I get it !
I'll bet that put a lot of people off flying back then. So sad for all the lost souls, may they rest in peace !
I bet most of the pilots in the day were ww2 Veterans
"Courage under fire…" 🇿🇦
I struggle to imagine what must have been going through those pilots’ heads in those moments, knowing your plane is going down and that all you can hope to do is minimize the damage as much as possible. They were real heroes. What a horrible series of tragedies.
Am I the only one who would've sold my crap and moved after the second plane hit my neighborhood? 🤷
Wow I live in Passaic County and I’m shocked I never heard of this. Newark Airport is where we all go to for our plane trips. To this day I’m use to planes flying over my house and neighborhood. As a kid we would look out the window and see planes from a distance, sometimes three at a time. At nighttime when we could only see the plane’s lights, it looked really cool. Man it must have been horrifying living In Elizabeth at that time. As somebody in the comments already mentioned, the cause could be just how early in the airline industry it was when they were trying figure out stuff. It’s sad but at least things are better now.
The c-47 did not fly well or at all on one engine.
In 1979 to the mid 1980's , the apartment complex ( Whispering Hills in Okolona ) I lived in was at times in the direct flight path of airplanes and jets landing at Louisville International Airport in Kentucky . I was always hoping and praying that there would never be a disaster there .
I left Louisville , Kentucky to join the United States Navy in 1984 and I haven't been back there to live since then . I still think about where I live and if I could ever be affected by an airline disaster .
It's actually three crashes in two months to the day. December 11, 1951, to February 11, 1952, is 62 days. At 31 days per month, this is obviously two months, not three.
My real name is Elisabeth (pronounced with a z) so this was a really bizarre one to get through for me. 🤣
An orphanage playground has got to be one of the worst places to crash. 😵
I like how easily they distracted the smaller children away from the windows.
I’m imagining the kids like, “Wow!!! A whole airplane just smashed into the ground right outside the wind- Oh? What’s that? You’ve got a glass of milk for me? Cool! Yeah, I’ll follow you into the other room to get it.“
Did they consider that someone working on the ground, like some disgruntled ground crew, actually sabotaged the aircrafts?
I lived in elizabeth 15 years ago and planes used to fly kinda low.
Scary, I used to live in Elizabeth,N.J.. was never aware of the crash.
'Children, come away from the window please, and drink yer milk' 🤣
1950s child rearing at its finest.
The narrator sounds like he's reading completely unrelated sentences off of a page. Doesn't sound like a story at all
More than half of Newark Airport is actually in the city of Elizabeth
Planes must have been noisier. I grew up under the flight path of La Guardia. I also lived near JFK as an adult. You get used to the noise.
I don’t believe in coincidences! Something was going on.
😮 I LIVED ON THE STREET WITH THE ORPHANAGE! Just a few houses down!!! Growing up, it was dilapidated and abandoned – and had countless ghost stories told about it.
Holy crap, I never thought I'd see the day when MY HOME TOWN was on Fascinating Horror, let alone my old street! So surreal!
I kept expecting Mulder and Scully to investigate this….
Kind of hillarious that they "distracted" the children from an airplane crash with MILK! HAHAHAHA
Take-off and landing have always been the most dangerous part of flying even today most disasters occur on either take-off or landing. While it seems unusual that 3 crashes would occur in in 3 months, keep in mind this all occur during the height of winter which means visibility can be severely limited and this was long before all the modern radar and avionics that allows for safe flying in incremental weather. Even the first crash due to failed parts on the aircraft which was most likely due to improper maintenance could be attributed to the winter cold climate because people tend to be less focus and more prone to making mistakes when they are cold and if you factor in the fact the maintenance crews at Newark were servicing 100,000 flights a year, that was mixing exhaustion with the cold weather which can only had made mistakes more likely.
What a run of bad luck. No wonder the city's residents wanted the airport shut down.
Did they check to see if this airport was perhaps built upon a Native burial ground?
How does 1 junkyard end up with hundreds of bank safes?
kids in 1951 must have found milk a lot more interesting than i do, because i don't think that would have distracted me from a plane crash.
We're lucky that this happened long ago, before the area would have been built up to a relatively extremely high level of population density.
My first through upon the mention of the orphanage's involvement was that 1.) These accidents are getting worse in some dimensions, and 2.) It is almost like the unseen hand of fate was becoming increasingly insistent that something be done to fix the problem, and wasn't taking no for an answer.
"And, filled in with hundreds, of bank safes". All that good, recycle steel going, into the ground, when with that time period, America could use all that scrap metal🤨⁉️
Hairy Ass Truman
When I was a little kid, we lived in the Weeqhaic section of Newark. My Dad took me in his car to drive over to the National Airlines crash site. It was the next morning I'll never forget what I saw.
I'm 77 years old now
Want to hear more?
I wonder if it was an angry mechanic possibly could have sabotaged those three planes