BusTalk

Hart Bus · Age: 74 Joined: 24 Apr 2007 Posts: 1150

According to an article in today's NY Post, this Thursday is the 50th anniversary of the mid-air collision between a TWA plane and a United Airlines plane over Staten Island. The TWA plane went down in SI killing all 44 aboard. The United plane was trying to land in Prospect Park fell into Sterling Place in Brooklyn, a few blocks short. That plane had 84 planes. The lone survivor died several days later from his injuries. Six people on the ground also were killed bringing the toll to 134.

Thursday there will be a monument and plaque erected to their memory, over the grave where the remains of three unidentified victims were buried.

Sad irony to this event was that Paul Konigsburg's (sp?) a/k/a HeyPaul mother died of a heart attack that day. It took two hours to get a ambulance to their apartment in Marine Park because all rescue equipment had been dispatched to Park Slope.

roymanning2000 · Age: 75 Joined: 01 Aug 2007 Posts: 198

I remember coming home from school for lunch and hearing them talking about this on television. Considering where these planes collided, it's amazing more people weren't killed on the ground.

The TWA plane was a Lockheed Constellation which had taken off here in Dayton. If memory serves me correctly, the United plane was a DC-8 from Chicago.

Roy