Travellers' Checks | How Hong Kong’s first and worst commercial plane crash happened 70 years ago
- US president Theodore Roosevelt’s grandson and the older brother of Rong Yiren, later China’s vice-president and founder of Citic Group, among 35 killed
- DC-4 came down in fog 15km from Kai Tak airport in December 1948
Hong Kong’s first major commercial airline accident – and still its worst – occurred 70 years ago, on December 21, 1948, when a China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) Douglas DC-4 Skymaster arriving from Shanghai crashed into Basalt Island during a foggy approach to Kai Tak airport.
All 35 passengers and crew were killed in the crash, the site of which – some 15km east of Kai Tak – was visited the next day by local reporters.
“Carrion birds circled over the island as the police worked. Almost all the dead seemed at least partially decapitated, apparently due to the tremendous momentum with which they were hurled through the fuselage when the plane crashed,” read a report in the December 23 issue of the China Mail.
“One man seemed to have had an idea of what was coming. His blackened hands were held before his face. Attitudes of the rest indicated they met death without even knowing it was upon them.”
The most prominently reported fatality was the American-operated airline’s Shanghai-based vice-president, Quentin Roosevelt II. The 29-year-old was a grandson of former United States president Theodore Roosevelt.