The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-01-31
SIX MEN
 G0D0WN
 IN CRASH
Heroic Pilot Trudges Five Miles for Aid-Reseue
 Party Starts Out
By LachIan Macdonald Anchorage, Times Reporter


 WHITEHORSE, Y. T. Jan. 3l-- R-Backtracking on an heroic's search pilots trail through waist deep snow led rescue party to give other crash survivors aid, early today as the great C-54 plane search pressed on.
 The survivors, three reported in- jured and the other two "all right" were being brought to military camp hospital today.
 They crashed 21 miles south of this Yukon base yesterday while engaged with more than 50 other planes in the search for a missing US. Air Force C-54 transport with A aboard.
 The rescue party slogged through five miles of waist deep snow to the C-47 search plane crash scene at the base of isolated Caribou Mountain.
 Rescue Party op Trail
 The party followed the trail left 1 by It. Charles H. Harden, pilot of the crashed CAT. With his face broken and bloody, he stopped a truck on the Alaska Highway late yesterday after a desperate five mile hike.
 1 He stopped the truck early in the long sub-Arctic night by signaling frantically with his flashlight. l Harden is from Elmendorf Field, Anchorage, Alaska The rescue party is headed v It. Edwin Gulczynski of Camp Carson, Colo.
 Help On Way"
 Planes circled over the wreck age throughout the night to assure the men that help was on the way. How seriously three of the men were injured was not known. Hat- den was unable to tell. Among the swo who escaped with shock and minor bruises was Jack Borges, of the Midnight Sun BToadcasting Co, Anchorage, who was aboard as civilian observer. Names of the others were not learned, but all were crewmen from Elmendorf Field.
 Plunges Into Trees
 Harden's plane plunged into the trees near the foot of Mount Cari- bou in midmorning while flying low in search of the vanished C-54.
 He waited with the others for several hours, then set out alone for help. For six hours he struggled through waist high snow and brush then darkness fell, but he kept on.
 Waves Flashlight At 7:20 p.m (Yukon Standard Time) he reached the road There he was found by the Engineer Corps workers, standing unsteadily in a snow bank and weakly waving his flashlight. Blood trickled down his face. One foot was crippled. Willard Batchelder. 34. of Duluth. Minn., one of the men in the En- gineers' truck, said:
 He waved his flashlight like mad, afraid we wouldn't stop. When we did he said, God. was afraid you guys wouldn't see me-"
 Batchelder's companion, Ronnie Watson, 32, nodded agreement and said Harden was completely done l in"
 Misses Crushing
 The exhausted pilot had carried his pack and sleeping bag with him in the long, arduous trek through the woods. He said he had planned to sleep by the road side if no one had come along. While making his way out, Harden barely missed being crushed by falling tree. Batchelder and Watson joined the ground crew. forging to the crash survivors with food and med- ical supplies.
 The swift moving operation tenn porarily eclipsed the search for the C-54 which disappeared on homeward flight from Anchorage to Riggs Field, Ell Paso, Tex.
 Airway Secured
 The big four engine transport last reported over Snag. 20 miles inside the snowbound, mountainous Yukon Territory. It is believed down somewhere between Snag and Fort Nelson. B. O., but the entire 1900 mile airway to the American border is being secured by scores of planes. Thirty-two rescue craft from