Broomstick at the Mast

Passengers on the big old Boeing flying boat Bermuda Sky Queen began complaining almost as soon as she took off from Foynes, Eire. The Sky Queen's owners, American-International Airways, Inc., had provided few comforts for her nonscheduled flight to Baltimore. She carried 62 passengers and seven crew members--one of the biggest human cargoes ever crammed into a transatlantic airplane. After a night in the air, the complaints grew. The steward served nothing but orange or tomato juice for breakfast, told passengers tartly that he "had other things to do beside cook food."

But a little later the Sky Queen's people abruptly forgot the scant fare and the lack of reclining chairs. The plane was running out of gasoline. She had been airborne for 18 hours and 32 minutes on a flight which had been scheduled for 17 hours; a night of violent headwinds had erased all chances of her reaching her first stop at Argentia, Newfoundland.

The Sky Queen's captain--a boyish-looking, 33-year-old ex-U.S. Navy pilot named Charles Martin--decided what to do. While he still had gasoline for almost three hours' flight, he doubled back toward the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Bibb, which" was on station as a weather ship about 900 miles northeast of Newfoundland. He found her, with fuel to spare. But as the plane settled lower, the tense and silent passengers saw a fearsome sight. The gale-driven waves were rolling 35 feet high and 100 feet from crest to foaming crest.

At the moment of impact, it seemed that the Sky Queen had been swallowed. People watching from two circling trans-'atlantic DC-45 saw her disappear completely in a great wash of white water. Then, miraculously, she reappeared "like a huge whale" and wallowed noisily toward the rolling Bibb.

Giant Swing. That was only the beginning of the Sky Queen's ordeal. The sight of her, tumbling and pitching "like a giant swing at Coney Island," made Captain Paul Cronk, commander of the Bibb, feel "horrified" and "sick." He had been awakened by a steward only a little before, had "found myself frozen stiff in the middle of my quarters" by the news that the plane carried 69 people.

The plane seemed possessed of devils. It washed down on the cutter, crashed into the ship's hull and stove in its own nose. For seven hours, the cutter could do little but stand by as close as Captain Cronk dared, and make a lee as the plane's crew nervously jockeyed the Sky Queen's nose into the wind.

Ten Thousand Goodbyes. In those long hours, the cabin of the wildly pitching plane became a stinking chamber of horrors. Many of the passengers expected to die, waited for the plane to open up with the smash of every sledging wave. Passengers and crew grew violently seasick, vomited helplessly on themselves and each other. Exhausted children were sick, fell asleep in the foul, chilly air, woke and were sick again.

Mothers were almost too weak to care for their babies. Said Mrs. Albert Ritchie of Great Neck, Long Island: "I believed there was no escape from the plane. . . . The babies' screams just tore every mother's heart to pieces. Every woman would say, There, there.' But that was about all they ever said. Our three-year-old son, Gordon, spent hours on his father's knee . . . never saying a word. We said ten thousand goodbyes with our eyes that day."

The heroes of those awful hours in the plane were nine U.S. merchant seamen, homeward bound after delivering a tanker to an English buyer. They nonchalantly ate sardines and crackers, reassured the passengers and tied bibs made of torn sheets around the necks of retching men & women.

At 3:15 p.m. it became evident that rescue operations, no matter how desperate, had to begin--the plane had begun to leak and many passengers were approaching the point of hysteria. Captain Cronk signaled a suggestion that the chief pilot call for volunteers. Three of the seamen got calmly into a rubber raft, were let down toward the cutter on a line and were safely picked up by coast guardsmen.

Swamped Raft. After that, the heaving arena between ship and plane became the scene of desperate endeavor. The Bibb laid down oil slicks. A bigger, 15-man raft was maneuvered up to the plane, loaded and gotten out to open water where a small boat pulled passengers aboard. Three loads--seven people, then ten, then eleven --jumped or were pushed out of the plane into the raft. It was wild work.

The fourth trip--with 16 aboard the raft--went badly. The raft was swamped; a motor launch which managed to get its people aboard was hit by a wave which killed its engine and all but swamped it, too. Captain Cronk took the Bibb over to the swamped launch. As passengers began to be washed out of it, seamen leaped into the water for them; others reached out from life nets over the cutter's side to haul them to safety.

'No Greater Happiness. Through that nerve-racking night, the Sky Queen was blown 60 miles, and there was little the Bibb could do but make a lee, keep her searchlights on the plunging plane and wait for the worst. There were still 24 men and one woman aboard the plane. But the flying boat's hull stayed intact. In the morning, with the wind abating, the last of the passengers and crew were safely taken off. The cutter riddled the Sky Queen with gunfire, stood by while she burned and sank, then turned home.

When she came into Boston harbor four days later with a broom tied to her mast in token of a clean sweep rescue, she was given a tumultuous reception. Small craft swarmed around her, fireboats threw spray, whistles blew. Thousands lined the waterfront to see her. City officials and Coast Guard brass came aboard to offer captain and crew their congratulations and a horde of reporters descended on the Sky Queen's passengers.

Captain Cronk was no orator, but on this occasion few men could have put it better. Said he: "I can say that we were very happy ... to help. There is no greater happiness than in pulling people out of the sea. I don't know how to describe it but I don't think you can get that kind of happiness making any kind of money."

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Four days after the Bermuda Sky Queen's forced landing, a Bristol land plane, operated by the French Compagnie des Transports Aeriens Intercontinentaux, crashed in the Mediterranean on a flight from Marseille to Oran, Algeria. Forty-one died; two were rescued.

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