Airliner Lands in Jersey Swamp When Fog Veils Newark Field
New York Times Jan. 7, 1938
Five Passengers and the Crew of Three Are Safe Stewardess Is Heroine when Crash Appears Imminent
NEWARK, N. J., Jan. 7 -An n American Airlines plane carrying five passengers, a crew of three, and 780 pounds of mail, dropped out of a pea soup fog and teeming rain shortly after 3 o'clock this morning to a safe, mud cushioned landing in the Jersey meadows. Pilot Usher Rousch made the landing after narrowly missing fences at the south end of Newark Airport.
The plane settled down in a water-coursed gulley. The under- carriage was smashed, one motor was damaged and Rousch suffered a gash over the right eye when his head struck the control panel. The passengers, mildly shaken, got out into the swamp with Stewardess Veronica Lally until the danger of an explosion was past. Then they re-entered the plane to await help. After a mile hike through the swamp the pilot returned with rescue party of police, firemen, doctors and postal employees, who conducted the passengers to the airport.
Pilot Rousch, due at 2:39 A. M. from Chicago, by way of Detroit and Buffalo, arrived on time, following the radio beam that ends at the airport. The fog was so dense; he could not see the field. Ground crews could hear the plane circling overhead. Miss Lally, a native of Janesville, Wis., and a graduate nurse of Mercy Hospital there, warned the passengers of possible trouble and fastened their safety belts. Then she served tea, crackers, and cheese, and Rousch jockeyed for a landing in the fog.
The passengers were Jack Ryan of Evanston, Ill., a motor boat salesman; A. Rush Watkins, Chicago dog-food manufacturer; W. E. , Ogilvie, public relations man for stockyard interests, and Michael Lunder of Boston, and Herbert Shapiro of Dover, N. H., business men returning from a shoe manufacturers' convention in Chicago.
After cruising about twenty-five minutes, Rousch discovered a hole in the fog, got a glimpse of the ground and quickly shot down. As the wheels of the ship were about to touch the ground, however, the pilot saw that he had come down at the end of the field, with no space for coasting. Rousch jerked at his controls and the huge plane swooped over the wire fences on either side of the State highway, Route 25, and another fence around a parking lot. Contact with the fences here would have meant almost certain disaster. Soon Pilot Rousch slanted his plane for another try and eased it as best he could into the marshes, about a mile south of the field, in the direction of Elizabeth. He immediately set out on foot for the airport, while his co-pilot, Stan Gerding, got into radio communication with Theodore. A. Schmidt, night manager of the airline at the field, and notified him that one was safe. It took the pilot an hour to reach the field. The fifty men who manned rescue apparatus then headed for the plane, with Rousch leading. By 7 A. M. every one was back at the airport. When the passengers had partaken of coffee and other stimulants, they praised highly the conduct of Pilot Rousch and his assistant, and particularly Miss Lally.
Airline officials said the plane would have to be dismantled sledded out of the marsh.
©Copyright Henry M. Holden
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