The sight of a jetliner’s proud tailfin — still in full livery as it rises from a scene of wreckage — is one that can send especially mournful chills through New Yorkers of a certain age; reawakening the blurred outlines of a nightmare never completely forgotten. When that sight (an Afriqiyah Airways Airbus, in Slide 2) is accompanied by news that the only survivor was a young boy, the memory grows irresistible.
Allyn Baum/The New York Times (1960)Fifty years ago, a United Air Lines DC-8 collided over New York Harbor with a Trans World Airlines Super Constellation. The United aircraft fell to earth at Sterling Place and Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn. The lone survivor — and that for only a day — was Stephen Baltz. He was 11 years old.
This photograph was taken for The Times by Allyn Baum.
