The Fall of the Screaming Eagles

By Ed Magnuson

Christmas has not been kind to the Screaming Eagles of the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division. In December 1944, during the Battle of the Bulge, the paratroopers of the 101st were under siege in Bastogne, Belgium, short of food and ammunition and encircled by German panzer units. In a Christmas Eve message to his men, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe asked rhetorically, "What's merry about all this? We're fighting, it's cold, we aren't home." Yet McAuliffe cheered up his troops, who held on valiantly until the German advance was blunted. The general's one-word reply to a Nazi ultimatum to surrender--"Nuts!"--made history of its own and epitomized the defiant spirit of one of the Army's finest units.

Last week, in another Christmas season, 245 men and three women of the 101st made noncombat history in a tragic way. They, along with eight civilian crew members, were killed in the worst military air disaster ever. Headed home for the holidays to Fort Campbell, Ky., after six months of multinational peacekeeping duties in the hot winds of the Sinai Peninsula, the troopers died in the bleak brush and deep chill of Newfoundland when their chartered DC-8 jet failed to sustain its takeoff from Gander International Airport. The blue- and-white plane rose less than 1,000 ft., then smashed, tail first, into a small hill, disintegrating in flames about a half-mile from the end of the runway.

The devastation was total. Only a twisted 20-ft. section of the plane's fuselage remained intact. The stricken craft left trees burning and strewn like pickup sticks in its wake. The DC-8's debris and the soldiers' personal effects were scattered in all directions. A boot remained upright. A knife hung from a web belt. A stuffed bear lay in the snow. Two tiny dresses meant for a trooper's daughter somehow escaped the flames.

All of the plane's 256 occupants died instantly. While most were in civilian clothes, some still wore their black jumping boots and the unit's American eagle emblem, selected at the division's creation in 1942 as befitting its military mission: "To crush its enemies by falling upon them like a thunderbolt from the skies." This time there seemed to be no enemy but misfortune, and the Eagles had become victims of their own fatal plunge.

Even before the Gander crash, 1985 ranked as the worst year for aviation fatalities. The total (excluding the Soviet Union, which does not report its air accidents): 1,948, far beyond the previous 1974 record of 1,299. The disaster was also the second to strike American troops assigned to peacekeeping roles in the fractious Middle East. On Oct. 23, 1983, a terrorist's suicidal truck-bomb attack on a Marine headquarters in Beirut killed 241 servicemen. Though a Lebanon-based terror group, Islamic Jihad, claimed it had caused the latest crash with a bomb, Canadian officials quickly discouraged speculation that sabotage may have been involved. Pentagon officials agreed with that early assessment.

Investigators from Canada's Aviation Safety Board, who rushed to oversee what may be a lengthy probe, were weighing several factors that might have played a role in the crash. Some U.S. air-safety experts, who had no firsthand information, pointed to the weather: ice had formed on other planes at Gander that night, and some pilots had taken deicing precautions. Captain John Griffin of the doomed aircraft had not. Other experts noted that the 90-ton aircraft, packed to capacity and loaded with more than 60 tons of fuel, may have been approaching its maximum load for a safe takeoff.

Questions were raised as well about the maintenance record of the stretched- out DC-8, which was built in 1969 and had logged 50,000 flying hours for a succession of five owners. The plane's final owner, Miami-based Arrow Air, has a less than exemplary record. After inspections last year, the Federal Aviation Administration fined Arrow for faulty record keeping on its maintenance procedures, for using outdated service manuals and providing inadequate instruction to maintenance personnel. The small airline and charter service sometimes shuttles troops for the U.S Air Force's Military Airlift Command, but Arrow was flying the soldiers of the 101st on a contract with the ten-nation Multi-National Force and Observers organization.

The doomed members of the Third Battalion, 502nd Infantry, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) were part of a U.S. force of 779 troopers being rotated out of the Sinai, where they had manned observation posts and checkpoints to enforce Camp David Peace Treaty accords against Egyptian or Israeli military use of the region. Two hundred and fifty soldiers had arrived home by charter earlier in the month, and the final detachment was scheduled to arrive at Fort Campbell this week.

After leaving their encampment at the Red Sea port of Sharm el Sheikh, the high-spirited Americans, dressed for the most part in blue jeans and tennis shoes, spent a day at Cairo's luxurious Hyatt El Salam Hotel. Many soldiers stopped in the Hyatt's Bazaar Shop to buy such Christmas gifts as papyrus, Arabic phrase books and necklaces adorned with Sphinx pendants. "They were laughing and dancing a little to the belly-dance music playing in the shop," recalled Proprietor Nagui Makari. The Americans, guarded by Egyptian uniformed police and plainclothesmen, enjoyed an early-afternoon meal in the grand ballroom, dining on tomato soup, roast chicken and French pastry. One of the officers offered a prayer: "We are going home. We have finished our job. Let us thank God."

When the soldiers left Cairo International Airport Wednesday evening, a quirk of fate saved Private First Class Eric Harrington of Lake City, Fla. The unhappy soldier could not find his passport, and he was sent back to Sharm el Sheikh to await this week's rotation home. His buddies departed on a 1,900- mile flight to Cologne, West Germany, where the DC-8 landed for a 90-minute refueling stop. Security there was described as tight. After a 2,700-mile Atlantic crossing, the plane touched down at Gander to refuel again for the final, 1,700-mile leg to Kentucky.

The Gander terminal's duty-free shop was open during the one-hour stop, and Clerk Cynthia Goodyear found the place invaded by exuberant Americans who sang along to the recorded Christmas carols as they picked out gifts. One blond soldier bought a money clip inscribed "Super Dad" for his father and crystal glasses for his mother. "They were clicking their fingers and just so happy to be going home," Goodyear recalled. One favorite souvenir: a T shirt reading I SURVIVED GANDER, NEWFOUNDLAND.

As the DC-8 prepared to lift off once again, a light snow was falling under overcast skies, but visibility was a good twelve miles. Pilot Griffin was first told by the tower to take off to the west, which would have put the plane quickly over the town of Gander and its 12,000 residents. Fortunately for the town, the wind shifted and the captain was directed to use a runway toward the south.

After clearing the Arrow DC-8 for takeoff at 6:45 a.m., the Gander tower operators heard nothing more from the crew. The four-engine jet began its roll, speeding past Deadman's Pond on its left, and its wheels left the runway at 6:49. It was airborne for less than one minute before veering to its right and dropping.

"I saw the plane kind of make a slow descent and disappear, and a mushroom of flame shot right into the air," said Boyce Jardine, who was driving nearby. "Actually, there was no noise at all. It was like watching a silent movie." But others heard a sound. "I saw a flash in the sky, like a sunset," said Judy Parsons, another motorist. "Then, in a couple of seconds, I heard an explosion. Then black smoke starting coming up." The witnesses seemed to agree on one vital point: the plane exploded after it plowed into the small trees near Gander Lake, not before.

Rescue crews reached the site in eight minutes and quenched the fires in 90 minutes, but none of the plane's occupants could be helped. Soon the area was eerily dark except for the colored lights and searching flashlights of the workers, whose main duty was to retrieve bodies. The victims were placed on plastic sheets in neat rows in a nearby hangar. Their bodies were to be flown this week to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where forensic experts would undertake the difficult chore of establishing firm identifications.

At Fort Campbell, some 200 relatives and friends had gathered for the expected early-morning homecoming of husbands, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters. A military band was in place in the base gymnasium for a merry Christmas welcome. But reports of the crash soon spread through the crowd, and at 9 a.m. Brigade Commander John P. Herrling somberly confirmed the rumors.

Flags at the base dropped to half-staff, and preparations were begun for a memorial service this week to be attended by President Reagan. Later, two-man military teams began carrying out a duty as difficult as any combat the legendary division has experienced. At houses and apartments across the U.S., the grim messengers knocked on doors to deliver the feared official notification: the Eagles had fallen.

With reporting by Peter Stoler/Gander, with other bureaus