1947 Héðinsfjörður plane crash

Icelandic plane crash Accident 1947 Flugfélag Íslands DC-3 crash Hestfjall í Héðinsfirði.JPG Héðinsfjörður seen from its headwaters; Hestfjall, on which the DC-3 crashed, is on the left. 29 May 1947 Controlled flight into terrain Héðinsfjörður in northern Iceland 4 21 0 25 TF-ISI Douglas DC-3 (cropped).jpg TF-ISI, the aircraft involved in the accident Douglas DC-3 Reykjavík AirportReykjavík, Iceland Akureyri AirportAkureyri, Iceland Flugfélag Íslands TF-ISI On 29 May 1947, a Douglas DC-3 aircraft of Flugfélag Íslands crashed on Hestfjall is Hestfjall (Héðinsfirði) on the west side of Héðinsfjörður is Héðinsfjörður, a fjord in northern Iceland. All 25 people on board were killed. It is the deadliest air accident in Iceland. Accident and recovery The aircraft was manufactured in 1944 as a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and later converted to DC-3 standard for civilian use. It was registered as TF-ISI to Flugfélag Íslands, now Air Iceland Connect, the domestic Icelandic airline. It left at 11:25 on a scheduled one and a half hour flight from Reykjavík Airport to the former site of Akureyri Airport."Accident description", Aviation Safety Network, Flight Safety Foundation, retrieved 27 February 2018.Hörður Geirsson, "Flugslysið í Héðinsfirði", Morgunblaðið, 29 May 1997, pp. 34–35 is. It was heard over Skagafjörður and seen flying low over the water towards Siglunes is, the northernmost point between the Siglufjörður and Héðinsfjörður fjords on the northern coast,"Allir sem í henni voru fórust: Búið að flytja 24 lík til Akureyrar", Morgunblaðið, 31 May 1947, p. 1 is.Vegagerðin.is, "Flugslys 1947", via Magnús Rúnar Magnússon, Héðinsfjörður.is is. This page has photos of the wreckage from the crash.Kristján Már Unnarsson, "Flaug mjög lágt hjá Reyðará rétt áður en hún fórst í Héðinsfirði", Vísir, 25 November 2014 is. The last person to see the aircraft, who as a nine-year-old boy was on a farm 2 km from where the wreckage was found, recalled in 2014: "vængurinn ... er neðan við grastorfuna sem ég stend á" - "the wing ... [was] lower than the grassy mound I was standing on". but failed to arrive. The weather was very foggy and searchers were unable to locate the wreckage until next morning, when it was spotted from one of three search aeroplanes on the side of Hestfjall, the mountain to the west of Héðinsfjörður. The DC-3 had disintegrated, slid down the mountainside, and caught fire. There were no survivors of the four crew and 21 passengers. The pilot was presumed to have been flying visually over the water, as was normal at the time since there were few navigational aids on the route, and to have become aware of the mountain only at the last moment. The accident is estimated to have happened at 12:48."Crash of a Douglas DC-3 on Mt Hestfjall: 25 killed", Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, retrieved 27 February 2018. The bodies were taken by boat to Ólafsfjörður and from there, draped in the Icelandic flag, to Akureyri, where a dockside ceremony on their arrival on the evening of 30 May was attended by a crowd of about 4,000 people, and they were then transported to Akureyrarkirkja. Legacy The accident is the deadliest air accident in Iceland and the second deadliest involving an Icelandic aircraft, after the crash of Icelandic Airlines Flight 001 in Sri Lanka in 1978.KMU, "Sjöunda mesta slys íslenskrar flugsög", Dagblaðið Vísir, 8 April 1986, p. 2 is. In 1997, fifty years after the accident, the Súlur Kiwanis Club of Ólafsfjörður erected a memorial below the crash site in the form of a two-metre Celtic cross. A book about the accident, Harmleikur í Héðinsfirði by Margrét Þóra Þórsdóttir, was published in 2009.Margrét Þóra Þórsdóttir, Harmleikur í Héðinsfirði, [Akureyri]: Tindur, 2009, 9789979653295 is"Silfur Egils: Steinunn, Böðvar og flugslysið í Héðinsfirði", Eyjan, Pressan, 11 November 2009, archived from the original on 28 February 2018 is. In 2020, the accident was featured in the fourth episode of the documentary TV series Siglufjörður – saga bæjar on RÚV.Davíð Roach Gunnarsson and Egill Helgason, "Mannskæðasta flugslys Íslands varð í Héðinsfirði 1947", RÚV, 26 January 2020, retrieved 19 August 2022 (with video, 3 mins 10 secs) is References Iceland Hedinsfjordur Category:Aviation accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-3 Hedinsfjordur Category:Aviation accidents and incidents in Iceland Category:Eyjafjörður