The Waterbury Democrat., 1936-04-08
Eleuen Persons Are
 Crashed To Death
(Continued from Page l

4 V DO~GH& rom Page D
 Charles H. Smith, IT, New Kensing- ton, Pa.
 The other victims were Frank Hardeman, 33, and John J. O'Neil, 32, officials of g. Jersey City local of the International Brotherhood of Iron Workers, en route to 8 union convention in St. Louis, Guy R. D'Arc, an engineer of Sac Paulo, Brazil, and G. w. Heffernan, a salesman, of New York.
 Viewing Debris
 Uniontown, Pa., April 8.-UP)-l The great silver airliner that hurled II persons to destruction lay today in 6 little clearing that it smashed cut for itself near the top of Pine Knob, battered, twisted and torn mass of glistening white metal.
 At sunup made my way over rutty, frozen mountain road to in- spect the scene of the disaster. The road is used chiefly for hauling out wood. There are only two or three houses along 1t. Following it's wind ing course to the ridges of Cheat mountain, of which Pine Knob is part, could not help reflecting on the irony of its name. It was the last mountain that separated the plane from safety as it flew blindly in yesterdays fog. Twenty five feet more altitude and it would have cleared.
 Wreckage Piled Up The wreckage is piled up on the mountainside about five miles up the road from the Summit hotel. The first thing you see is the path that natives hacked through the underbrush last night to carry out the bodies of the dead. At the road, they loaded eight of them into big wagon, and the other three into a light truck, and took them down the mountain to Uniontown.
 Fifty yards up the path, you can see the Wreckage on ahead another 100 yards. For 300 yards the plane had shared a swath from the tops of trees, whose branches filtered the ground.
 Apparently the liner had hurtled into the side of the ridge. From the condition of the trees, it appeared that when the craft first hit them, Pilot Otto Ferguson must have pulled the rudder back and given the two powerful motors full throttle. But the plane already was too badly damaged to respond enough to clear those last 25 feet and it dived sidewise into the ridge.
 Like Junk Heap
 The main cabin part of the ship was crumpled, torn and battered, much like an empty tin can in a junk heap. From a torn part of metal sticking out above 1t fluttered the grey and yellow jacket of one of the Valley Forge military school cadets who perished.
 The fire which followed the crash seemed to have been confined to the front of the cabin. Upholstery was burned off many of the metal seats. On few, it was scorched and blistered.
 The front of the plane and the propellorS were twisted around at right angles to the Dc y. One wing was torn off by the trees, some of which are three to five inches thick, and lay some 50 yards away. Both the great motors also had been wrenched loose. One was smashed into the ground 150 feet away and the other about 30 feet distant. Instruments Shattered The trailing aerial of the planes radio was still attached to the fu- selage, but was looped over nearby trees. The radio itself and the many other instruments were so shattered that it seems doubtful whether investigators will be able to learn anything from them.
 Around the wreckage I found a few letters that had been scattered out of the planes mail pouches. Most of them were gathered up earlier by postoffice employees from Uniontown. There was blood on rock nearby, against which one of the victims had been placed.
 State highway patrolmen had roped off the wreckage to prevent sightseers from tampering with any thing that might be of value to the investigators. First of them on the scene this morning was Cammy Vinet, chief of the State Bureau of Aeronautics.
 When I arrived, a workman with a pot of black paint was busily cov- ering over the VIVA insignia on the Wreckage.
 Today the treacherous fog and snow were gone. Visibility over the mountains was practically unlimited and the sun was shining brightly.
 Last night blizzard had swirled down from the mountains, plotting out everything and forcing me back when I tried to reach the plane from the other side of the ridge. Be- fore I was turned back on the trip passed rescue workers bringing Mrs. Meyer Ellenstein, one of the three survivors, down from the wreck.
 They had carried her for two miles through the woods on an in- DroYiSed 6tretcher. Then they were