NYC Neighborhood's Nightmare before Christmas
New York City looked like a scene from a Christmas card 50 years ago Thursday with decorations up and snow falling.
But the holiday spirit was suddenly shattered when two commercial airliners collided in midair, CBS News Correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports.
(Scroll down to watch a video of this report)
Brooklyn Air Crash: 50 Years Later
There is almost no sign of it, almost no memory of it, now, but on Dec. 16, 1960, the Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood of Park Slope was ground zero. The world had never seen a plane crash as deadly.
It was a huge story. CBS News' Charles Kuralt led a live special report.
One hundred thirty-four people died when a United Airlines jet ripped the top off a Trans World Airlines plane in snow and fog over Staten Island, N.Y. Both planes crashed to the ground burning. The United DC-8 slammed into the densely populated Brooklyn neighborhood.
"I thought it was a bomb," one observer said at the time.
Six people on the ground were killed including two men selling Christmas trees.
"I saw this big fire, and I saw the tail end of a plane, and I just couldn't believe that a plane was in the street," another witness said back then.
Peter Bernard was in the control tower that day, assigned to the United flight. After the pilot called him, he tried calling back.
"The pilot didn't acknowledge," said Bernard. "We waited, and we said 'United 826, this is Idlewild approach control, how do you hear?' No answer."
"Nobody is really sure where the two planes were at that moment," Kuralt said.
The government later determined the United flight was 11 miles off course and modernized the air traffic control system to keep closer track of airplanes.
There was one survivor of the crash in Brooklyn. An 11-year-old boy, Stephen Baltz, somehow crawled from the wreckage.
"He fell out of the sky," said Ilene Bonner, a nurse supervisor at the hospital where Baltz was taken. "He was an absolutely charming child."
"That was the miracle of this morning," Kuralt said during his special report.
Everyone thought it was a miracle, especially the boy's father.
"We're grateful to the almighty for this miraculous thing that has happened," Baltz's father said at the time.
Through the horror of hindsight, that gratitude was premature. Baltz died the next day. His lungs had been ruined by the smoke and fire.
There's a plaque in the hospital where he died with some coins - still scorched - that Baltz had in his pocket, one of the few remaining memories of a Christmas season a half century ago when death and fire poured out of the sky.
