Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that a day after 40 people had been killed in an unsuccessful takeoff from La Guardia aboard a United DC-4, in the worst commercial air disaster to date in the country, a four-engine Eastern Airlines DC-4 crashed at 6:30 p.m. from a thousand feet into a wooded area near Port Deposit, Md., in Whittaker's Barrens, close to the Susquehanna River, killing all 53 persons aboard, making it the worst commercial air disaster to that point in the nation's history. The plane was headed from Newark to Miami, and 49 of the dead were passengers.

The airplane had gone down at a 45-degree angle, but eyewitnesses differed on what occurred beforehand, many saying that they heard an explosion and saw the tail section rip away. Others said that it appeared to be flying smoothly when the engines suddenly emitted a loud roaring sound and the plane turned on its back, began to fall, exploding when it hit the trees.

The largest remaining wreckage was no more than 12 feet in length. Debris and dismembered bodies were strewn over an area 20 yards by 75 yards in dimension. By dawn, 52 distinguishable bodies had been collected by rescue workers, but most were mutilated beyond recognition.

The plane crash at La Guardia the previous day, the death toll of which had since risen by one more, was said by the Civil Aeronautics Board to have probably been caused by a freak, sudden gust of wind during a thunderstorm, causing the plane to be unable to lift off the ground during takeoff. According to the C.A.B. official, to his knowledge such a condition had never before caused a crash of a large plane.

On September 18, 1946, near Sabena, Newfoundland, a DC-4 had crashed in hilly terrain, killing 27 of 44 aboard. On October 3, 1946, a DC-4 had crashed on takeoff from Newfoundland, killing all 39 aboard. On October 12, 1946, a DC-4 tried to effect an emergency landing in dense fog in Washington, wound up crashing through a farmer's lumber pile, hit a well-house, broke through a high-tension wire carrying 2,300 volts, and finally came to rest in a valley where it burst into flames, destroying the ripped-asunder plane but nevertheless, through the calm presence of mind of the crew in evacuating all aboard, did not cause any passengers or crew the long walk in the shadows of Shangri-La or elsewhere, injuring only two. On January 6, 1947, a DC-4 caught fire as it landed in Chicago, again, thanks to the skill of the pilot who was able to put the plane down softly on a snow-laden runway absent its landing gear, enabled it to meet its end without injury to passengers or crew.

The series of mishaps during the prior nine months involving the DC-4, albeit some apparently ascribable to anomalous weather events, may have been forecasted by the fact that the State Department, before the war, did not object to the provision by Douglas Aircraft of the plane's plans to the Japanese, despite the official policy of the State Department discouraging such sales.

Douglas had also sold to Japan the plans for the DC-3, a plane which also came to have a checkered past. On September 7, 1945, one crashed into a cypress swamp near Florence, S.C., as it attempted an emergency landing after experiencing trouble, killing all 22 aboard. On September 4, 1946, a DC-3 crashed shortly after takeoff in Paris, killing all 21 aboard. The following day, near Elko, Nev., another one crashed on approach to the airport, killing at least 20 of 24 passengers aboard, though only one small boy was known at the time of the report to be alive. On September 28, 1946, one crashed near Alto Rio Doce, Brazil, killing all 25 aboard. On November 13, 1946, one went down in snow-covered mountains, 50 miles north of Burbank, California, killing all eleven aboard. Another DC-3 had crashed on January 13, 1947 near Galax, Va., killing all eighteen aboard. Another had crashed on takeoff on January 26, 1947 in Copenhagen, taking the life of opera singer Grace Moore and twenty others, the plane, according to Danish officials, carrying too much baggage weight to get off the ground. And, on January 16, 1942, Carole Lombard and 21 others had perished in a DC-3 when it crashed into a mountainside a few minutes after taking off from Las Vegas on a clear night, although the accident was ascribed to human navigation error rather than any fault of the aircraft.

President Truman signed the 350 million dollar aid bill for war-devastated countries in Europe and Asia, aimed at Italy, Trieste, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Poland, and China. Fifteen million was earmarked for the U.N. Children's Emergency Fund.

In Berlin, it was reported that the Soviets intended to confiscate the potatoes still on the farms in Brandenburg Province, to ensure adequate food supplies until the following harvest.

In Rome, Premier-designate Alcide De Gasperi, who had recently resigned, announced a new Cabinet.

Apparently, Mr. Nitti approved, if Mr. Capone was yet to weigh in.

The soft coal operators rejected the demand of John L. Lewis for a 35 cents per hour increase in wages, causing negotiations to be broken off, with only a month left until the Government would turn back the year-long operation of the coal mines to the owners. The operators had offered 15 cents per hour. The daily take-home pay under the Lewis proposal would be $13.05, while the operators' proposal would provide $11.35. The Southern operators, representing a quarter of the mines, were negotiating separately, and those negotiations were to continue the following Tuesday.

In Rowan County, N.C., voters were voting on a referendum for controlled sale of liquor through ABC stores. Some 4,000 had voted by noon.

Whether, as the late Tom Jimison once suggested of Charlotte, they were staggering to the polls in Salisbury to vote dry, was a yarn yet unwoven.

The Presbyterian Church, meeting in conference at Montreat, N.C., called for a positive stand on civil rights of minority groups across the nation, condemning all organizations and individuals whose purpose was to hinder minorities' exercise of civil rights or to deny rights on the basis of race, creed, class, or color, furthermore urging HUAC to investigate the Klan and other like groups, "akin to Fascism", with equal vigor applied to investigations of Communists, and that communities be on guard to place the influence of their churches on the side of forces which would seek to uphold the rights of all.

They also asked the President to maintain his promise to withdraw Myron Taylor as U.S. envoy to the Vatican at the point when the Italian treaty had been ratified, already accomplished.

As previously elucidated on the pages, some Protestant sects in the nation viewed having a representative at the Vatican as a violation of the First Amendment Establisment Clause, implying separation of church and state, posing by that position the delicate conundrum of how this objection fit in composite domestic union without violence done the anti-discrimination resolution, as the Vatican is a separate sovereignty, not just a Church.

On the editorial page, "Let Us Go on Bended Knees..." tells of the Republicans cutting a good many programs important to the South, as they sought to achieve economy in the budget. The school lunch program for poor school children was being slashed by several million dollars previously allocated to each of the Southern states, where it was most needed. The program had been saved by the votes of Southern Democrats, joining their party in one of the few votes in which they deserted the coalition of Republicans to defeat New Deal measures. But now the Republicans were stripping the program of its vitality.

"The Presbyterians' Wise Choice" tells of the Presbyterian Church, meeting in conference at Montreat, electing Dr. John Cunningham, president of Davidson College, as its moderator for a year. The piece thinks it a good choice, as Dr. Cunningham was well qualified for the position, having served in several churches, including one in Winston-Salem, before coming to Davidson in 1941, where he had distinguished himself as an administrator.

"There Are Tests and Tests" tells of Senator William B. Umstead, always photographed unsmiling and dour in aspect, implying a strict and sober temperament, having belied that notion recently when a bill came before the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, on which he sat, to provide for medical tests to determine whether a person was driving under the influence of alcohol. Senator Umstead thought it unfair as it would be a grave injustice to the man who could drink a quart of bourbon a day and not show any ill effects from it.

A piece from the Greensboro Daily News, "Heat and Higher Education", tells of a heated meeting in Raleigh by the Board of Trustees of the Greater University, regarding an issue over hiring for the faculty of Woman's College in Greensboro, (later UNC-G), Randall Jarrell, poet and former literary editor of The Nation, and East Carolina Teachers College Professor Dennis Cooke, prompting concern that the latter was kidnaped for the purpose and that the former was too soft, being a poet, to qualify for the faculty. The feathers ruffled were softened and both were finally approved.

The piece hopes that future meetings would be well air-conditioned, not mentioning the probable concomitant hope that they would, by the lights of poets and other scholars, also be Well eruditioned.

Drew Pearson tells of a Chicago Tribune cartoon painting Senators Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, George Aiken of Vermont, Wayne Morse of Oregon, and Charles Tobey of New Hampshire as "Benedict Arnolds". But the Michigan Senator took it in stride and good humor, sat with the other three Senators, Morse, Aiken, and Tobey, when they invited him to do so in the Senate cloakroom, as the "radicals", they said, had to stick together.

Joseph & Stewart Alsop find it likely, in light of Henry Wallace's successful speechmaking tour of the country following his return from Britain and France, that a third party would form in the ensuing months preceding the 1948 election, with Mr. Wallace becoming the candidate.

Samuel Grafton labels "obscurantist" the effort of the Administration to have Congress allocate 25 million dollars for the purpose of establishing loyalty of Government personnel. The sum implied that there were 25 million dollars worth of Communists and other disloyal people within the Government, even if the sum was intended to enable a careful study of the situation to avoid trampling civil liberties. The opposition was using it to make it seem thusly worthwhile, transforming it into a more obscurantist movement than the initial thrust. Thomas Dewey was on the bandwagon, labeling it, in a recent speech in New York City, as a "$25,000,000 spraying with DDT".

A letter writer sets forth his views, as addressing the colonists at Philadelphia on the Declaration of Independence, regarding his belief that the issue in the upcoming referendum on controlled sale of liquor was not whether it would lead to an increase or decrease of consumption of intoxicants but whether control would be regulated or remain under racketeers who operated through bootleggers, with the profits going to serve illicit enterprises rather than legitimate concerns.

A letter writer informs that the first Sunday in June was National Shut-Ins Day. He had been a shut-in at Black Hospital in Spartanburg for the previous eighteen years and wanted Congress to recognize the day officially, sought announcement of it within the pulpits.

That way, you can learn to play.

Framed Edition

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