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In 2004, explorers began a search for a plane that crashed into Lake Michigan in 1950, killing 58 people. They didn’t find it, but they revived the history of what once was the country’s deadliest aviation accident.
By Aishvarya Kavi
In June 1950, a four-engine, propeller-driven passenger plane headed from LaGuardia Airport in New York to Minneapolis encountered a violent storm over Lake Michigan and crashed into the turbulent waters below.
“If all aboard are lost, the crash will be the most disastrous in the history of American commercial aviation,” an article on the front page of The New York Times on June 25 reported about Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501. The search turned up no survivors and no plane, only small pieces of the wreck. All 58 people on board were declared dead.
