The dozen soldiers on United Air Lines Flight 14 from Portland to Denver on a red-eye flight that took off Jan. 30, 1946, were looking forward to their discharge or redeployment after returning from postwar assignments in the Pacific region.
Six civilian passengers were on their own missions, some on their way home and others across the country on business.
After the flight crew deviated from its planned course Wyoming, none of them would see the dawn.
Meanwhile, a sailor on the West Coast and his father in Idaho both had their seats on the flight taken away, not knowing at the time how lucky they were.
As the twin-engine DC-3 entered Wyoming airspace, it was fully loaded with 18 passengers and three flight crew. The weather outside was frigid and windy, but fairly clear — typical for flying over the southern part of the Cowboy State.
Pilot Walter P. Briggs had in recent weeks returned to United Airlines after three years of U.S. Army Air Corps service.
To get back into compliance as a commercial pilot, Briggs, 43, had served as copilot on two one-way trips between Portland and Denver and had flown in a jump seat four times to meet proficiency requirements for the route.
A few weeks earlier, First Officer Harry N. Atlas, 27, had completed United flight school. Flight 14 was his first on the route.
In the cabin, stewardess Dorothy Carter, 22, was in her second year for the carrier.
All-Night Flight
The crew and plane originated from Portland, Oregon, at 10:20 p.m. Jan. 30, flew to Pendleton, Oregon, and then Boise, Idaho.
The plane left Boise at 12:07 a.m. Jan. 31 for Denver. The authorized flight plan called for a cruising altitude of 13,000 feet between Rock Springs and Denver.
Flying between Rock Springs and Laramie included a dogleg route that avoided Elk Mountain northwest of Laramie, pushing the plane south once clear of the high and dangerous terrain.
A Civil Aeronautics Board picks up the story in a report dated Dec. 24, 1946.
“Until the aircraft arrived over Rock Springs, the flight was conducted without any apparent difficulty,” the report states. “However, as the flight approached Rock Springs, the captain requested and received a change in flight plan to remain at 11,000 feet.”
Another United flight from Oakland, California, to Cheyenne also flew at 11,000 feet. The plane’s pilot saw Flight 14 as it approached Sinclair directly ahead of it on the left side.
As Flight 14 went over Sinclair and its range station, which assists in air navigation, Flight 14 took a course directly for Laramie.
The flight from Oakland climbed to 11,300 feet as it hit clouds about 30 miles east of Sinclair. The copilot could see Flight 14 about 3 miles to the right blinking between clouds. Then, he saw a bright flash and a red glow.
The pilot tried to establish contact with Flight 14.
There was no answer.
Severe weather at the top of Elk Mountain on Feb. 1 initially hindered rescue efforts. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Search and rescue members reached the plane on Feb. 2 and found bodies scattered across the top of the mountain amid plane debris. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
The last body brought off the mountain was a serviceman who was on the flight. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
While an initial hearing did take place on the crash, the actual crash investigation had to wait until June. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Capt. Walter P. Briggs was the pilot on the DC-3 that crashed into Elk Mountain; Dorothy Carter, stewardess on the flight, had worked at United Airlines for one year. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Emergency Declared
A United flight from Laramie heading west saw the same explosion and glow.
Attempts to contact Flight 14 from the ground also were unsuccessful.
It was 2:47 a.m. United Airlines, the Civil Aeronautics Board, staff from Fort Warren and local first-responders began to mobilize a search and rescue effort. Planes flying above Elk Mountain that day located a deep, quarter-mile furrow in the snow on the northwest side.
A United Airlines search flight believed it had pinpointed the wreckage.
An eight-man search party tried to scale the mountain and got to within 300 feet of the summit. They were turned back by 75 mph winds and minus 40 temperatures.
“I was on my hands and feet at the last,” Peter Gallagher, a member of the response team, told the Associated Press afterward. “If we had gone on, we would have had to spend the night. If we had, I don’t see how we could have lived.”
On Feb. 2, 1946, a 25-member recovery party made it up the mountain and found the wreck and some of the bodies. One member reflected on the sight, knowing many of the passengers had just come back from military service.
“I looked at all those GIs around there. They were all guys who had been across and done theirs,” he told The Associated Press in a front-page story carried by the Casper Tribune-Herald. “One guy has six overseas stripes, and it wasn’t good to see.”
The team used picks and shovels to pry the frozen bodies free and then lowered them down a 1,000-foot incline to a waiting dog sled of nine Alaskan Huskies brought in from Fort Robinson, Neb.
Bodies Scattered
Recovery team members Stewart England of Cheyenne, Allen Garbutt and Ray Lefforge of Elmo told The Associated Press that winds on top the mountain were close to 100 mph and in many places they had to hack out footholds.
“The bodies were very lightly singed and scattered over a wide area,” England said. “It was getting dark and we were unable to count all 21 bodies, but there is no possibility that any passengers or crew escaped death.”
A team from Fort Warren collected the bodies of the servicemen and took them to a morgue on the base.
Gallagher, a postal inspector from Cheyenne, reported that the team was able to recover about 80% of the mail that was part of the cargo on the plane. Some letters were slightly burned.
The last body was recovered on Feb. 5.
Nearly all the servicemembers on the plane were from New York City or New York state. Other passengers included a couple from Sheffield, Illinois, headed home; a man from Vancouver, Washington, headed for New York City; a woman from Richland, Washington, headed to Denver; a New York man headed to Chicago; and another New Yorker headed home.
Because of the snow and severe conditions on the mountain, the investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board did not fully begin until June. Flight 14 was the fifth plane the dangerous mountain had claimed.
The Investigation
Investigators on June 25, 1946, found most of aircraft debris accessible except for the left engine, which had rolled over the crest of the mountain into a large snowbank.
The aircraft’s propellers gouged the side of the mountain, its wings were torn off and the fuselage ripped apart as it slid up the mountain at high speed for about 200 yards.
The plane’s compass had stopped at 80 degrees. Given the wind speed of 50 to 55 mph from the west-southwest and Laramie’s bearing being 98 degrees from Sinclair, investigators said it would have required a heading of 84 degrees to navigate the course safely.
The pilot had failed to follow the dogleg designed air path. Weather conditions and clouds around the peak led investigators to believe he was probably flying by instruments when the the plane hit the mountain.
“The flight path of the aircraft … had deviated south of the airway a distance of approximately 4 1/2 miles,” investigators wrote. “The doglegged airway was so designed in order to provide the most effective clearance from the night terrain to the south.”
As a result of the crash, the Civil Aeronautics Board recommended changes to airline regulations that would require all aircraft to fly 1,000 feet higher than the highest obstacle on its designated air path from distances of 10 miles out.
Missed Flight
Meanwhile the Casper Tribune-Herald carried a story Feb. 5, 1946, about how a young sailor named Robert E. Stanyer Jr. was bumped from Flight 14 in favor of another passenger who had a “New York priority.”
His grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. D. K. Thompson lived in Casper.
Later in the day, a man in Idaho Falls, Idaho, was about to board the plane during its stop there and his seat was given to a priority passenger who came rushing through the door.
“That man was Robert E. Stanyer Sr., father of the (sailor) bumped from the same plane … and son of Mr. And Mrs. Thompson,” the newspaper reported.
Robert E. Stanyer Jr. would go on to marry, have a son in Casper named Jerry and then move his family to Kansas.
Jerry Stanyer, who lives in Wichita, Kansas, told Cowboy State Daily that he had never heard the story of Flight 14 growing up.
He confirmed that his dad was in the service and that his great-grandparents were the Thompsons. He said his father did not share much about his grandfather, his own past or the fateful flight he fortunately missed.
“I never heard anything because of things left in the shadows,” he said.
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
