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Northwest Airlines Flight 4422

A Douglas C-54 similar to the accident aircraft
Accident
Date	March 12, 1948
Summary	Controlled flight into terrain (CFIT)
Site	Mount Sanford, Alaska Territory
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas C-54G-1-DO
Operator	Northwest Airlines
Registration	NC95422 (formerly 45-513)
Flight origin	Lunghwa Airport, Shanghai, China
Stopover	Anchorage, Alaska
Destination	LaGuardia Airport, New York City, New York
Occupants	30
Passengers	24
Crew	6
Fatalities	30
Survivors	0

On March 12, 1948, Northwest Airlines Flight 4422 (NC95422) crashed into Mount Sanford, Alaska, with a crew of six and 24 passengers. The flight was a C-54 charter flying back to the United States from Shanghai. The aircraft refueled at Anchorage (Merrill Field) and took off at 8:12 P.M. to continue on to its destination, New York City (LaGuardia Airport). Instead of following the published airway, which detoured around Mount Sanford, the aircraft flew a direct line, crashing into the mountain. After the initial impact the wreckage slid down for about 3000 feet before coming to rest. There were no survivors. The passengers were American merchant mariners, crew members of the tanker SS Sunset, being ferried back home.

Rediscovery of wreckage

Many witnesses in the nearby town of Gulkana, Alaska, saw the crash, and the wreckage was initially located from the air but was completely inaccessible at the time. Snowstorms quickly buried it in a mountain glacier, and it was lost for over 50 years. Over the years, various individuals, lured by rumors of a secret gold cargo shipment from China, searched the mountain and came home empty-handed. Northwest pilot Marc Millican and Delta pilot Kevin McGregor had been searching the mountain together and on their own since 1995.

In 1997 Millican and McGregor located a few pieces of wreckage but were unable to confirm it was from Northwest 4422. Only in 1999, after obtaining permission from the National Park Service and victims' relatives, were they able to remove wreckage confirming it was from Flight 4422. No secret treasure was ever found. At the time of the crash it was determined the pilots were 23 miles (37 km) off course and may not have seen the mountain at night. An NTSB investigation in 1999 shows the propellers were spinning at high velocity when they struck the mountain, which supports this theory.

In addition to wreckage discovered in 1999, a mummified left hand and arm was found in the Alaska glacier. After nearly a decade, identifiable fingerprints were recovered from the remains by Edward Robinson. The remains were then positively identified by Michael Grimm on September 6, 2007 using fingerprints, making this the world's oldest known identification of post-mortem remains using fingerprint identification. The limb was from Francis Joseph Van Zandt, a 36-year-old merchant mariner from Roanoke, Virginia, one of the passengers on Flight 4422. Subsequently, using DNA from a descendant of Van Zandt, Odile Loreille, an expert in DNA analysis, was also able to identify the remains using mitochondrial and Y-DNA identification. Only the remains of Francis Joseph Van Zandt were ever recovered or identified. The bodies of the remaining 29 individuals still await possible recovery.

In popular culture

In 2013, Kevin A. McGregor published Flight Of Gold, a non-fiction account of the events of Flight 4422, the multiple previous efforts to locate and explore the crash site, and McGregor and Millican's search for the crash site and its rumored valuable cargo.

See also

• 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident – Airliner that crashed onto a mountain glacier in 1947 and remained undiscovered until 1998.

References

1. ^ Accident description at the Aviation Safety Network
2. "CAB report for March 12, 1948 accident involving NC95422, Docket No. SA-168, File No. 1-0025". Civil Aeronautics Board. July 23, 1948. Retrieved July 30, 2022.
3. Felknor, Bruce (June 21, 2000). "Tragic Voyage of the SS Sunset Crew". USMM.org. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
4. Theresa Mattick (October 1999). "Finding Northwest Flight 4422". Air Line Pilot. p. 18. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved November 5, 2009.
5. "Major Airline Disasters: Involving Commercial Passenger Airlines 1920–2011". Airdisasters.co.uk. Retrieved February 22, 2013.
6. "Remains from 1948 plane crash identified". NBC News. August 18, 2008. Archived from the original on December 6, 2020. Retrieved October 19, 2023.
7. Archived August 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
8. "EVIDENTŽ Crime Scene Products – Merchant Marine Identification". Evidentcrimescene.com. Archived from the original on October 16, 2013. Retrieved October 14, 2013.
9. "Mummified remains from 1948 plane crash identified" (PDF). Associated Press. August 17, 2008. Retrieved November 5, 2009. - Alternate link at NBC News, Alternate link at Toronto Star.
10. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on October 6, 2008. Retrieved September 16, 2010.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
11. McGregor, Kevin A. (2013). Flight of Gold: Two pilots' True Adventure Discovering Alaska's Legendary Gold Wreck. In-Depth Editions. ISBN 9780988977242. Archived from the original on August 11, 2020. Retrieved February 6, 2020.

External links

• Report by the Civil Aeronautics Board - PDF

62°12′47″N 144°07′37″W / 62.213°N 144.127°W / 62.213; -144.127

v t e Northwest Airlines (Northwest Orient)
History	Accidents & incidents Flight 2 (1938) Flight 1 (1939) Flight 5 (1941) Flight 4422 (1948) Flight 421 (1948) Flight 307 (1950) Flight 2501 (1950) Flight 2 (1956) Flight 710 (1960) Flight 1-11 (1960) Flight 706 (1962) Flight 705 (1963) Flight 293 (1963) Flight 305 (1971) Flight 6231 (1974) Flight 255 (1987) Flight 5 (1990) Flights 1482 and Flight 299 (1990) Flight 85 (2002) Flight 327 (2004) Flight 188 (2009) Flight 253 (2009)
Destinations	List of Northwest Airlines destinations
Category

• 1948 in Alaska
• Accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-4
• Airliner accidents and incidents in Alaska
• Airliner accidents and incidents caused by pilot error
• Airliner accidents and incidents involving controlled flight into terrain
• Aviation accidents and incidents in the United States in 1948
• Copper River Census Area, Alaska
• March 1948 events in the United States
• Northwest Airlines
• Northwest Airlines accidents and incidents