Richard
12-09-2010, 23:43
Some of y'all may remember this one - 12 Dec 85 - I do.
Richard :munchin
Fort Campbell To Mark 25th Anniversary Of Deadly Crash
Nashville NPR, 9 Dec 2010
In 1985 a plane crash in Newfoundland killed more than 200 soldiers from Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division. This weekend the post will hold a rememberance ceremony on the 25th anniversary of one of the deadliest air accidents in military history.
The 248 soldiers were coming home from a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East when their plane crashed on takeoff; there were no survivors.
Chaplain Roger Heath helped counsel the victims’ families and friends for months afterward. He says most every unit on post was affected.
“Soldiers who were here in those days still remember. You still think about them when you go and look at the memorial plaques and see the names, you still see some of their faces. So in 25 years a lot of soldiers have already left the military, retired, or ended their tour of service, but some of us are still around and still remember some of the guys that went.”
Fort Campbell has held a remembrance ceremony and wreath-laying each year since the crash. Heath says losing so many soldiers was particularly stunning because the tragedy happened in peacetime, but still, “a loss is a loss.”
http://wpln.org/?p=22367
Families Mark 25 Years Since Arrow Air Crash
Metro Toronto, 9 Dec 2010
Amy Gallo learned that her husband Rick had been killed in the deadliest plane crash on Canadian soil when their three-year-old son walked into the kitchen of their Kentucky home.
"He said: 'Daddy's dead,'" she recalled as she prepared to mark the 25th anniversary since Arrow Air Flight 1285 struck a lonesome hillside in Newfoundland.
The little boy had been watching cartoons in the living room when a news alert and footage from Gander, N.L., cut in.
"I went and looked at the TV and sure enough they were saying the plane was down and there were no survivors."
The map on television matched the one she had just shown her son of the route his father, Sgt. Richard Nichols, was taking home to Fort Campbell, Ky., after a six-month peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
He was among 248 U.S. troops who died Dec. 12, 1985, along with eight crew. It was his fifth wedding anniversary. He was 35 years old.
Most of the soldiers on board were members of the 101st Airborne Division Screaming Eagles. The fabled 101st, a legendary paratrooper unit, wears the American eagle emblem as a reflection of its military mission to crush its foes "by falling upon them like a thunderbolt from the skies."
Horrific photos of the fiery wreckage were soon beamed around the world as hundreds of reporters arrived in Gander.
Gallo had been at the Fort Campbell gym earlier that morning with hundreds of other wives and loved ones waiting to greet the troops. They were told to go home for two hours, that the flight had been delayed.
"They knew the plane had crashed when they sent us back home — and I'm still angry to this day," Gallo said.
A military reeling from the news had tried to buy time to grapple with how to help the families, she said.
"There were so many of us."
A controversial report from a rancorously divided Canadian Aviation Safety Board would later blame ice on the aircraft's wings. But four of the board's nine members issued a dissenting report raising the prospect of an on-board explosion.
Two eyewitnesses quoted in local newspaper accounts said they saw the glow of fire in the sky before the plane crashed.
Moreover, a review by former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Willard Estey found that the icing theory was unproven. But in the absence of a U.S. or Canadian public followup, theories of a possible terrorist attack have persisted along with claims of a coverup.
The troops had stopped in Germany and Gander for refuelling before the chartered Arrow Air DC-8 was to take them on the last stretch home in time for Christmas. The plane took off at 6:45 a.m. local time but was in the air for only about a minute before it lost altitude and hit the treed hillside sloping toward Gander Lake.
Earlier that morning, Nichols and other troops had formed long lines at the telephones at Gander International Airport.
"I love you" was the last thing he told her in a three-minute conversation, said Gallo, who later remarried and still volunteers with newly widowed military wives.
Robyn Stack, 71, retraced her son Shayne's last steps at the airport during a visit to Gander in October.
She met Cynthia Goodyear, who was working in the duty free shop when the troops came through that morning singing along to Christmas carols that were playing.
Many of them bought T-shirts that said: I Survived Gander, Newfoundland.
Stack spent much of her five days in Gander at The Silent Witness memorial on the exact site where the plane carrying her 24-year-old son went down. A statue of a soldier holds the hand of a child on either side. Up the hill where twisted hulks of metal smouldered among scattered bodies and debris, crosses hand-fashioned from small rocks lay on the ground.
Stack made one for Shayne. She said she couldn't face visiting the site before she shared stories of her loss with local author Gary Collins. His book "Where Eagles Lie Fallen: The Crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, Gander, Newfoundland" is a tribute to those who died and their families.
"It was just time for me to be there," she said. "It happened at the right time.
"I felt that place was like sacred ground."
Gallo plans to make her own pilgrimage to the place where her beloved husband, the father of her two oldest children, fell from the sky.
"I do need to go," she said. "I've got to put a little bit of closure there sooner or later because, even after 25 years, it's not closed."
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/canada/article/715241--families-mark-25-years-since-arrow-air-crash
Richard :munchin
Fort Campbell To Mark 25th Anniversary Of Deadly Crash
Nashville NPR, 9 Dec 2010
In 1985 a plane crash in Newfoundland killed more than 200 soldiers from Fort Campbell and the 101st Airborne Division. This weekend the post will hold a rememberance ceremony on the 25th anniversary of one of the deadliest air accidents in military history.
The 248 soldiers were coming home from a peacekeeping mission in the Middle East when their plane crashed on takeoff; there were no survivors.
Chaplain Roger Heath helped counsel the victims’ families and friends for months afterward. He says most every unit on post was affected.
“Soldiers who were here in those days still remember. You still think about them when you go and look at the memorial plaques and see the names, you still see some of their faces. So in 25 years a lot of soldiers have already left the military, retired, or ended their tour of service, but some of us are still around and still remember some of the guys that went.”
Fort Campbell has held a remembrance ceremony and wreath-laying each year since the crash. Heath says losing so many soldiers was particularly stunning because the tragedy happened in peacetime, but still, “a loss is a loss.”
http://wpln.org/?p=22367
Families Mark 25 Years Since Arrow Air Crash
Metro Toronto, 9 Dec 2010
Amy Gallo learned that her husband Rick had been killed in the deadliest plane crash on Canadian soil when their three-year-old son walked into the kitchen of their Kentucky home.
"He said: 'Daddy's dead,'" she recalled as she prepared to mark the 25th anniversary since Arrow Air Flight 1285 struck a lonesome hillside in Newfoundland.
The little boy had been watching cartoons in the living room when a news alert and footage from Gander, N.L., cut in.
"I went and looked at the TV and sure enough they were saying the plane was down and there were no survivors."
The map on television matched the one she had just shown her son of the route his father, Sgt. Richard Nichols, was taking home to Fort Campbell, Ky., after a six-month peacekeeping mission on the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.
He was among 248 U.S. troops who died Dec. 12, 1985, along with eight crew. It was his fifth wedding anniversary. He was 35 years old.
Most of the soldiers on board were members of the 101st Airborne Division Screaming Eagles. The fabled 101st, a legendary paratrooper unit, wears the American eagle emblem as a reflection of its military mission to crush its foes "by falling upon them like a thunderbolt from the skies."
Horrific photos of the fiery wreckage were soon beamed around the world as hundreds of reporters arrived in Gander.
Gallo had been at the Fort Campbell gym earlier that morning with hundreds of other wives and loved ones waiting to greet the troops. They were told to go home for two hours, that the flight had been delayed.
"They knew the plane had crashed when they sent us back home — and I'm still angry to this day," Gallo said.
A military reeling from the news had tried to buy time to grapple with how to help the families, she said.
"There were so many of us."
A controversial report from a rancorously divided Canadian Aviation Safety Board would later blame ice on the aircraft's wings. But four of the board's nine members issued a dissenting report raising the prospect of an on-board explosion.
Two eyewitnesses quoted in local newspaper accounts said they saw the glow of fire in the sky before the plane crashed.
Moreover, a review by former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Willard Estey found that the icing theory was unproven. But in the absence of a U.S. or Canadian public followup, theories of a possible terrorist attack have persisted along with claims of a coverup.
The troops had stopped in Germany and Gander for refuelling before the chartered Arrow Air DC-8 was to take them on the last stretch home in time for Christmas. The plane took off at 6:45 a.m. local time but was in the air for only about a minute before it lost altitude and hit the treed hillside sloping toward Gander Lake.
Earlier that morning, Nichols and other troops had formed long lines at the telephones at Gander International Airport.
"I love you" was the last thing he told her in a three-minute conversation, said Gallo, who later remarried and still volunteers with newly widowed military wives.
Robyn Stack, 71, retraced her son Shayne's last steps at the airport during a visit to Gander in October.
She met Cynthia Goodyear, who was working in the duty free shop when the troops came through that morning singing along to Christmas carols that were playing.
Many of them bought T-shirts that said: I Survived Gander, Newfoundland.
Stack spent much of her five days in Gander at The Silent Witness memorial on the exact site where the plane carrying her 24-year-old son went down. A statue of a soldier holds the hand of a child on either side. Up the hill where twisted hulks of metal smouldered among scattered bodies and debris, crosses hand-fashioned from small rocks lay on the ground.
Stack made one for Shayne. She said she couldn't face visiting the site before she shared stories of her loss with local author Gary Collins. His book "Where Eagles Lie Fallen: The Crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285, Gander, Newfoundland" is a tribute to those who died and their families.
"It was just time for me to be there," she said. "It happened at the right time.
"I felt that place was like sacred ground."
Gallo plans to make her own pilgrimage to the place where her beloved husband, the father of her two oldest children, fell from the sky.
"I do need to go," she said. "I've got to put a little bit of closure there sooner or later because, even after 25 years, it's not closed."
http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/canada/article/715241--families-mark-25-years-since-arrow-air-crash