CANNELTON, Ind. (AP) — Fifty years ago next week, a plane flying at 18,000 feet suddenly broke apart and hurtled at 600 mph into a southern Indiana bean field. All 63 people aboard were killed.
A stone monument built soon after the March 17, 1960, incident has long marked the site near the Ohio River town of Cannelton where a Northwest Airlines plane crashed as it headed from Chicago to Miami. But the community this weekend will hold its first large-scale commemoration this weekend of the Lockheed Electra turboprop crash that left a smoldering 50-foot-wide crater and scattered debris and body parts for five square miles.
The anniversary weekend includes a memorial Saturday and screenings of films about the crash at two local museums. Family members of a dozen victims are expected to attend a reception at the town's community center Saturday afternoon. A church service Sunday in nearby Tell City will honor victims.
Experts later blamed the crash on weakness in the plane's metal coupled with turbulence. One wing and part of the second had come off in midair as the plane slammed to the ground.
Perry County resident Roy Graham Jr. told the Evansville Courier and Press that he recalls hearing "a racket in the air. My wife looked out the window and saw an engine falling. I ran out and saw the plane coming down."
Graham, now 73, and others rushed to the scene to find the crater, which sank about 25 feet deep into the ground, and debris. Victims' clothing hung from the trees.
The granite memorial in Cannelton is the lone reminder of the crash, on a dedicated one-acre site, though occasional pieces of debris still surface after heavy rains. A separate marker financed by the airline now stands in a Tell City cemetery, where human remains are buried in a mass grave.
"I'm not sure if this crash had occurred anywhere else there would be a memorial," said Larry Oathout, who heads the Tell City Kiwanis, told the Courier and Press. He said that while many Americans recall where they were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated or Elvis died, "people here talk about where they were when the Electra went down."
