A near-capacity load of 64 passengers, most of them Puerto Ricans, filed aboard the Pan American World Airways' DC-4, leaving Puerto Rico on a tourist-rate ($64) flight to New York for Easter. At 11:11 a.m., with a crew of five, the four-engine airliner took off from San Juan's Isla Grande Airport. Minutes later, the pilot reported engine trouble. At 11:22, the crippled plane, unable to reach the airport again, crashed into the sea. Battered by ten-foot waves, it broke up and sank in two minutes.
In those chaotic last moments, a Minnesota couple...
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