Search ends for plane 75 years after the then-worst crash in US history

A level crashed into Lake Michigan successful 1950, sidesplitting each 58 radical connected board

SOUTH HAVEN, Mich. -- A radical is ending a 20-year hunt for a level that crashed into Lake Michigan successful 1950, sidesplitting each 58 radical connected board, aft sweeping the immense assemblage of h2o utilizing sonar exertion and adjacent getting enactment from an acclaimed escapade writer.

When Northwest Orient Flight 2501 crashed, it was the worst aviation catastrophe successful U.S. history.

Valerie van Heest, enforcement manager of the Michigan Shipwreck Association, said she has mixed feelings astir ending the search, which began successful 2004.

“It’s a hard happening to person to accidental due to the fact that portion of maine feels similar we person failed," van Heest told The Detroit News, “but we person done truthful overmuch to support representation of this mishap and these victims astatine forefront that I consciousness similar we’ve done amended for them than if we’d recovered the wreckage.”

After covering 700 quadrate miles (1,813 quadrate kilometers) of Lake Michigan, Van Heest said scientists judge the level broke up into pieces excessively tiny to beryllium detected by side-scan sonar and apt "sunk into the muck” connected the bottom.

The plane, a propeller-driven DC-4, near LaGuardia Airport successful New York astatine nighttime connected June 23, 1950, with 2 stops planned connected the way to Seattle. An aggravated tempest abruptly appeared and the level went down.

Debris and assemblage parts washed ashore successful South Haven, Michigan.

"We cognize this level deed the h2o with large force, and we cognize determination was nary mode to past this," said van Heest, who has written a book astir the mystery, “Fatal Crossing.”

Clive Cussler, an writer whose escapade fiction has sold successful the millions, financially supported a hunt until 2017. Also known for his ain shipwreck hunting and underwater exploits, Cussler died successful 2020.

"I anticipation someday the families of those mislaid volition person closure," Cussler wrote successful 2018.

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