Wright Museum Curator Dennis Webster places photograph on the Flight 44-2 exhibit
An exhibit to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of an airplane crash in Cattaraugus County opens this Saturday.
On a foggy December night in 1951, a large passenger airplane crashed into a mountain ridge in Cattaraugus County killing 26 people. The crash left 14 survivors in the snow and cold for three days and two nights. It’s the longest stranding of a large group of airplane crash survivors in North American history.
The Lucile M. Wright Air Museum in Jamestown will commemorate the tragic event, memorialize the victims of the crash, and honor the bravery of the survivors and rescuers for the first time with the opening of the exhibit on the crash of Continental Charters Flight 44-2 and the historic events that followed. The exhibit features a timeline of the December 29, 1951, flight scheduled from Miami to Pittsburgh and Buffalo, to its tragic end on Bucktooth Ridge in the small town of Napoli, along with photographs, maps, interviews, and artifacts from the crash.
The Wright Museum display features a ‘Salute to Rescuers’ with photographs of the police officers, firefighters, farmers, and local citizens who participated in the historic effort to get survivors and casualties off the ridge.
Tim Lake, author of Hang on and Fly, the authoritative book on Flight 44-2, has worked with the museum to develop the exhibit and will be available on October 17th to discuss his research on the flight and sign copies of his book. A limited number of copies of Hang on and Fly will be available for a donation to the museum.
As part of the commemoration, the Wright Museum has commissioned Stacey Mrva of Ironwood Studios in Springwater, New York, to create a sculpture of a C-46, the aircraft that crashed on Bucktooth Ridge. The sculpture, with a six-foot wingspan, includes artifacts collected from the debris field over the past 75 years. Mrva will also attend the opening.
The exhibit includes two short videos. One features Lake, and the other is an interview with the late Pearl Moon, a stewardess who survived the crash and spoke about it decades later.
The Lucile M. Wright Air Museum is located on the first floor of the Hotel Jamestown Building at West Third and Cherry Streets in downtown Jamestown. The grand opening of the Flight 44-2 display will run from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., Saturday, October 17. The exhibit is permanent and will be available for viewing whenever the museum is open. The museum’s regular hours are 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Fridays, and 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on Saturdays.
Admission to the Wright Air Museum is free. More information is available on the museum’s website, lucilemwrightairmuseum.org, or by emailing wrightcurator@gmail.com.
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