Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya Flight 571

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Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya Flight 571
FokkerAnde1972.jpg

The machine in the summer of 1972
Accident summary
Accident type Controlled flight into terrain
place Remote mountainous border region in Argentina , at the border with Chile 34 ° 45'54 "S 70 ° 17'11" W
date October 13, 1972
Fatalities 29
Survivors 16
Aircraft
Aircraft type Fairchild FH-227D
operator UruguayUruguay Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya (military)
Passengers 40
crew 5
Lists of aviation accidents
Fernando Parrado and Roberto Canessa with the shepherd Sergio Catalán

Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya Flight 571 was a flight of the Uruguayan Air Force from Montevideo to Santiago de Chile . The machine of the type Fairchild-Hiller FH-227 crashed on October 13, 1972 on a mountain slope in the Andes at an altitude of 4000 meters. After 72 days in the ice, 16 out of 45 inmates were rescued.

The events have since been known as the "miracle of the Andes". To survive! by Frank Marshall is the best known cinematic processing of these events.

crash

Paris plan pointer b jms.svgCrash site in the Argentine Andes

The 40 passengers were members, coaches and members of the rugby union team Old Christian's Club , which was one of the most successful in Uruguay with two championship wins (1968 and 1970). The team was supposed to play a friendly game in Santiago, Chile.

The journey began on October 12, 1972 in Montevideo . Due to bad weather conditions, a stopover with an overnight stay was necessary in Mendoza (Argentina). The next day the flight continued to Santiago de Chile . The mountain peaks lying on the direct line had to be flown around in the south due to the insufficient maximum altitude of the machine. The aircraft first flew south on the Argentine side and then turned west to fly over the Andes over the Planchon Pass (2507 meters). After crossing the Andes, you should turn north towards Santiago at the level of the Chilean city of Curicó . At the beginning of the Andes overflight, the machine had a tailwind, which, however, turned and turned into a headwind. After much too short a time, the pilots believed they were already on the Chilean side of the Andes and believed they had already flown over Curicó, which they also reported to the Santiago flight control. This in turn instructed the crew to turn north and begin a descent . As a result of this navigation error , which is still incomprehensible to this day , the accident finally occurred: The Fairchild plunged into the cloud cover, turned much too early to the north and thus flew into the middle of the high Andes. During the flight between the Andean peaks, which are up to 6000 meters high, the crew of the turboprop aircraft struggled with gusts of wind and icy snow showers. When the machine pierced the cloud cover, the pilots finally realized their fateful mistake and tried desperately to pull the machine up. However, the aircraft continued to experience severe turbulence and downdrafts . The right wing brushed a mountain ridge and broke off. It was thrown backwards and severed the stern with the tail unit.

Five passengers and one crew member were torn from the machine. Seconds later, the plane hit another ridge and also lost the left wing. The aircraft, now consisting only of the front part of the fuselage, hit a snow bank at a speed of about 350  km / h , slid downhill and finally came to a standstill at an altitude of about 3800 meters. All of the seats were torn from their anchorages and thrown forward, killing, trapping and seriously injuring several passengers. The nose of the aircraft was also severely depressed, causing the captain to die and the copilot to be trapped; he died of his serious injuries the following night. The torso eventually served the survivors as protective shelter for more than two months.

Of the 45 people on board, twelve died during or immediately after the crash. Five more died in the first night they faced arctic conditions. The temperature sank to values ​​between -30 ° C and -40 ° C during the nights.

On the eighth day, the survivors heard on a small radio that the search had been stopped and they had been officially declared dead. Another passenger died that day. Without the prospect of rescue, without the possibility of adequate care for the injured, without clothing that would have been appropriate for the weather conditions, and with almost no food, the condition of the survivors became more critical every day.

The scarce food supplies (a few bars of chocolate, a few cookies, a few bottles of wine) were quickly used up. Since the area had neither wildlife nor vegetation, the survivors were forced to eat the meat of the victims of the plane crash, which had been preserved by the snow and ice.

On the night of October 31, the survivors were surprised by an avalanche while they were sleeping , with the masses of snow penetrating through the aircraft fuselage, which was open at the rear, killing eight more people from the group. Among them were the captain of the rugby team, Marcelo Pérez, and the last of the five crew members, the on-board mechanic. The latter had already suffered a nervous breakdown when the plane crashed and was thus unable to help the passengers. A second avalanche that night completely buried the machine under itself. The survivors had to live below the surface for two days as a heavy snowstorm raged overhead. Since the dead, who were to be mourned at the beginning, had been buried by the avalanche, the avalanche survivors had to feed on the victims of the snowfall after a day of starvation.

Two other survivors died from their injuries in mid-November. The last fatality, Numa Turcatti, was on December 11th. He died from infection in his wounds.

cannibalism

The decision to resort to profane cannibalism (in which human flesh is seen as food) as a mere survival strategy was not taken lightly or accepted, as many relatives, friends or at least acquaintances of those who were still struggling to survive were among the dead. Some initially refused on moral grounds. However, after a few days, the desperate and hopeless situation forced everyone to resort to human flesh as food. Around six corpses were initially left untouched out of respect for the relatives who were still alive and were only intended to help survive in an extreme emergency. In the end, only the bodies of the mother and sister of Fernando Parrados , who was looking for rescue with Roberto Canessa, were unscathed . They were buried on the mountain.

Expeditions and rescue

The Parrados and Canessas route
The grave of the victims near the crash site

Several survivors ventured expeditions in different directions. Apart from the constant risk of freezing to death, there was a risk of snow blindness or falling into a crevasse. In addition, the air at this altitude was too thin for greater exertion.

The people in the best of physical shape included Fernando Parrado, Roberto Canessa, and Antonio Vizintin . The survivors saw a glimmer of hope when the expedition members found the missing stern three kilometers away from the hull. They hoped to be able to operate the radio in the cockpit with the battery from the stern. This attempt failed, however, because the radio required AC voltage for operation.

If Parrado, Canessa and Vizintin had kept the same direction on a previous expedition and had gone further east, then after a total of 29 km (20.9 km as the crow flies) they would have reached the Hotel Termas Sosneado ( 34 ° 46 ′ 16 ″  S , 70 ° 3 ′ 25 ″  W ). This was empty at the time, but provisions, first aid kits and clothing were available there. The cause was the same that made the pilots fly the plane into the mountain: They thought they were far in Chilean territory, but were still about 20 km further east on Argentine territory.

On December 12th, 62 days after the crash, Parrado, Canessa and Vinzintin embarked on an expedition to reach civilization. For two days, the remaining survivors were able to follow the expedition from the plane. On the third day Parrado and Canessa finally managed to reach the 4,650 meter high summit, completely exhausted and without adequate equipment. But instead of seeing the green valleys of Chile as hoped, a wide panorama with snow-capped mountains extended again. In the distance, however, Parrado discovered two peaks that were not covered by snow. So Parrado and Canessa decided to continue the route in this direction, albeit with little prospect of success. They sent Vinzintin back to the plane wreck in order to have bigger food supplies themselves. It only took Vinzintin a few hours to get back to the crash site.

After a total of ten days, Parrado and Canessa managed to march below the snow line and establish contact with civilization. They were found by the Chilean shepherd Sergio Catalán, who had another shepherd bring them to a refuge (" Los Maitenes ") and provided the exhausted young men with food while he rode to the next street and later with a truck to Puente Negro drove where he called the police. This initiated everything else so that the survivors could be rescued from the mountains. On December 22nd, two helicopters of the Chilean Air Force took off for the crash site, Parrado had to fly with them, otherwise the pilot would not have found the wreck. Since the load capacity of the helicopters was only sufficient for seven of the survivors, not least because of the height of the mountain peaks to be overcome, the remaining seven had to wait another night at the crash site; But they were looked after by a paramedic and two Andinists who also stayed overnight on the mountain. It was not until December 23 that the remaining seven survivors were rescued and taken to the Santiago hospital, where doctors found all of them were severely malnourished. Only one of them was in a condition that required medical attention.

The 29 corpses or their remains were buried under stones 27 days after the rescue operation by members of the Andean mountain rescue team and a Chilean priest about 80 meters from the crash site (outside the avalanche danger zone). In addition, a cross with the inscription “ Más cerca, oh Dios, de Ti ” (Spanish for “ closer, my God, to you ”) was erected as a memorial. The fuselage was then doused with gasoline and burned.

Fernando Parrado (Nando), Roberto Canessa (Musculo), Antonio Vizíntin (Tintin), Alfredo Delgado (Pancho), Ramón Sabella (Moncho), Eduardo Strauch, Daniel Fernandéz, Adolfo Strauch (Fito), Alvaro Mangino, Pedro survived the accident Algorta, Javier Methol, Roy Harley, Gustavo Zerbino, Roberto Francois (Bobby), Carlos Páez Rodriguez (Carlitos) and José Inciarte (Coche). All five crew members were among the dead: the commander, copilot, navigator, a technician and a flight attendant.

In memory of the rescue, the artist Carlos Páez Vilaró dedicated the extravagant Villa Casapueblo near Punta del Este in Punta Ballena to his surviving son Carlitos .

The survivors still live in close proximity in the Carrasco district of the capital Montevideo. Some of the survivors are giving lectures around the world today on surviving in extreme situations. In addition, some of them worked as experts in the 2010 mine disaster in Chile .

Javier Methol was the first of the survivors to die on June 4, 2015 at the age of 79.

Books and films

  • The writer Piers Paul Read , in collaboration with the survivors, wrote a complete factual report entitled Survival in 1974 , which became a worldwide bestseller and sold millions of copies.
  • This incident was first filmed in Mexico in 1976 by René Cardona under the title Supervivientes de los Andes (German title: Survival! ).
  • Due to the cannibalism taboo , Hollywood waited until 1993 to stage the events. Frank Marshall filmed the tragedy with more authenticity and respect for the torments of tragedy under the title Survive! . Several survivors, including Nando Parrado, acted as advisors during the filming.
  • The book 72 Days in Hell , published in 2007 in German translation, comes from Nando Parrado : How I survived the crash in the Andes .
  • In 2007 director Gonzalo Arijon made the documentary The Miracle of the Andes (Ethan Productions / ARTE TV; 112 minutes). In the film, the survivors look back on the events narrating; this is supplemented with replayed scenes, current recordings from the original location as well as contemporary images. In the same year the BBC produced the documentary Stranded.
  • The French writer Michel Vinaver wrote the play Flight in the Andes (Les Ordinaires), in which he orientated himself on the real occurrences of the accident.
  • In his novella Die Reise zum Horizont (2010, ISBN 978-3-85218-640-5 ), Jürg Amann reports in a laconic style about the survival rituals of the fallen, which end in the decision to leave the wreck and to a horizon of rescue break up.

Museo Andes 1972

In the old town of Montevideo there is a museum dedicated to the 29 victims who lost their lives in the 1972 plane crash in the Andes. Some of the previously unpublished pictures, drawings, documents, clothing of the survivors and parts of the aircraft are exhibited there. It also shows a timetable on which the events are documented.

See also

Aircraft accidents that have affected entire sports teams in the past include:

literature

  • Piers Paul Read : Survival. The real story of the plane crash in the Andes . riva, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86883-262-4 (1st edition from 1974, survived: the Andean Passion )
  • Nando Parrado, Vince Rause: 72 days in hell. How I survived the Andes crash. Goldmann publishing house. Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-442-15498-2 .

Web links

Commons : Fuerza-Aérea-Uruguaya-Flight 571  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Simon Biallowons: Crash in the Andes. 72 days at 4000 meters. In: G / Geschichte , No. 2/2017, pp. 54–57, here p. 57.
  2. ↑ Memories , on viven.com, the official information site, accessed on November 19, 2014.
  3. ↑ El largo adiós (Spanish) on montevideo.com.uy of June 4, 2015, accessed on June 5, 2015
  4. ↑ Murió Javier Methol, uno de los uruguayos sobrevivientes de la tragedia de Los Andes (Spanish) on soychile.cl from June 5, 2015, accessed on June 5, 2015
  5. ↑ Museo Andes sobre la tragedia y milagro de 1972 (Spanish)
  6. ^ Exhibition on the accident - official website of the museum in Montevideo; accessed on December 27, 2014

Coordinates: 34 ° 45 ′ 51.8 ″  S , 70 ° 17 ′ 9 ″  W.