The Daily Alaska empire., 1951-12-17
Crippled Ship Barely Misses Midtown Crash
Second Worst Airline Disaster in History
 of Commercial Flying

ELIZABETH, NJ. Dec. 17--tR-A flaming Florida bound airliner = it's pilot battling it to the end = missed midtown crash by yards yester- day, then smashed into river bank fringed with buildings. All 56 persons aboard perished.
 It was the nations second worst
 commercial airline disaster, top /, ped in horror only by the death of 53 persons June IA, 1850, in the
 Lake Michigan crash of a New York to Minneapolis plane.
 The Seth and last broken, charred body was dragged from the nose of the smashed plane this morning. Police believed 1t was the body of either the pilot or one of the CO., pilots. Rescue workers halted op- erations after midnight and resumed when daylight came.
 But onlookers called 1t a miracle that hundreds didn't die as the two- engined plane rattled windows and shook the very earth in it's death plunge. Terrified, screaming child ren fled it's path.
 Clips Home It crashed in the only fairly open space for mile around. Even then it clipped a vacant home and smashed an unused water pumping station, slightly injuring one man.
 T kind of think he hit the spot Intentionally to save us," resi- dent said of the pilot, Albert c. Lyons of Miami.
 And another spectator of the grim drama as Lyons fought the burning, sinking plane, parking lot operator J. P. Ward, added:
 "Thc pilot ought to have a place in heaven for trying to save it."
 The nonscheduled C-46 plane took off from nearby Newark air port at 3:02 pm. (EST). It crashed seven minutes later It was headed ', for Tampa and Miami. with 48 adult passengers, four children, a three-man crew and stewardess.
 Just Taken off
 It was a scant three miles from the. airport when it came down in this city of more than 100000 popu- lation. Elizabeth is about 10 miles from New York City. l It was the first crash in 9 months of non-scheduled airliner one that takes off on an irregular sched- ule, usually when it has full load. i The plane was operated by Miami Airline. Inc. The line has been in operation since March, 1946, and it's five planes have flown more than | 100,000,000 passenger miles.
 The ill-fated plane seemed to : be in trouble even before 1t cleared the ground in Its takeoff. Its
 right engine was smoking badly
 and emergency crews had sprung to an alert.
 State and federal officials began an immediate probe into the tra- gedy, goaded by the white-hot anger of townspeople who long have complained of the shuddering, ter rifying thunder of plane takeoffs. 1 Only few weeks ago. residents of Elizabeth threatened to block Newark airport runways with their bodies to end takeoffs over their homes. As result, the Port of New York Authority - which operates Newark airport = undertook to build a new runway pointing to the sea instead of Newark and Eliza beth.
 Hundreds Endangered
 Said State Sen. Kenneth c. Hand, who called the protest meeting and was on the scene of yesterdays crash:
 Tt was only miracle that hun- dreds of people weren't killed. Ap- parently the plane missed apart ment houses by small fraction.
 Maybe this will make the Civil i Aeronautics Authority realize that you can't have airports so close to heavily congested cities"
 Besides Lyons. the plane carried two co-pilots, J. R. Mason and Ed- ward Lily. both of Miami. The stewardess. Doris Helms. also was from Miami. Lyons. who learned to fly when he was 16, was an instruc- tor at Riddle Airfield near Clewiston, Fla. during the Second World War.
 Most of the passengers were from New Jersey and New York. A few were from New England. as far north as Maine. Some were return ing to their homes in Florida.