FATAL CROSSING
The Mysterious Disappearance of Northwest Flight 2501

by Valerie van Heest   (About the Author)

A True story of what was in 1950 America's worst aviation disaster
On June 23, 1950, a DC-4 with fifty-five passengers and three crew departed LaGuardia airport in New York en route west to Minneapolis just as a furious squall line swept down from the north. Minutes after midnight as the plane reached the eastern edge of Lake Michigan, Captain Robert Lind radioed a request to drop altitude, but Air Traffic Control could not comply due to other traffic in the area. That was the last transmission from the plane. The next morning, people around the country awoke to newspapers and radio broadcasts reporting that Northwest Flight 2501 was presumed lost with all 58 men, women, and children.
   Although the Navy and the Coast Guard spend four days combing the lake off the shores of southwest Michigan they found no survivors or the wreck, rendering it impossible to determine a cause for the accident. As the lakefront tourist town of South Haven prepared for the surge of Fourth of July vacationers, officials scoured the beaches, hauling away debris from the plane and putrid pieces of human flesh and internal organs, that had washed ashore. Flight 2501 took its rank as the worst commercial aviation disaster in the country.
   In this gripping account of that fateful day and its aftermath, award-winning author Valerie van Heest puts the readers on the plane with the passengers and crew on that fatal lake crossing. She examines the events leading up to the accident, the families’ mourning, the court battle, and the modern day efforts to find the plane through a joint venture between her organization Michigan Shipwreck Research Associates and author Clive Cussler's National Underwater Marine Agency. In the process, she explores the reasons for this needless tragedy and makes a surprising discovery that would bring together the victim’s families, reinforcing the truth that although gone, loved ones are never forgotten.

Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-9801750-7-3   6" x 9"   

Soft Cover |   $16.95 Coming soon 

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