Precious cargo, lost

BY BILL VOSSLER

Gander International Airport has this memorial called “Silent Witness” for those killed in the crash. Public domain photo

“They had the most precious cargo of all aboard that airplane,” said Daniel Asmussen, 61, of St. Cloud, Minn. “Human beings. Each person on that flight had families and loved ones, and I knew some of the guys on that plane, including my best friend,” he said. “Two hundred forty-eight United States soldiers dead.”

Flight 1285 crashed shortly after taking off from Gander International Airport with those soldiers coming from Egypt via Cologne, Germany, then to Gander. They were flying back to their home at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Daniel said he joined the delayed entry program for the 101st Army Airborne in 1982, “Because I didn’t like what they did to the Marines in Beirut in 1981. So I started in basic on Sept. 13, 1983, at Fort Benning, Georgia, Harmony Church. That’s where I met my cohort battalion members, all the guys I served with. We all went through basic training together, Air Assault School, and I trained everywhere with those guys. We did everything together. We were all 19 years old, in the prime of our lives, and we had all this energy. It’s a huge special time in your life when you’re 19 or 20.”

Caskets of members of those killed on flight 1285 being taken for a memorial service. U. S. Government public domain photo.

In basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, Daniel said, you got very little sleep. “For 13 weeks they woke us up at 3:15 a.m. every day, and we ran everywhere, did pushups, struggled through obstacle courses, including one called ‘Mount,’ something that I can’t say in a family newspaper. Georgia is hot and humid, and that hill was straight up, and we had to run it up and down. That was bad enough, but worse was having to go out on patrol. You had to lay for hours out in the swamp on bivouac with little or no shelter. Or 300 guys would walk through the woods, stopping every five feet, which was boring and tedious. Whether or not we would have a good night depended on our drill sergeant.”

His favorite platoon sergeant, who became a personal friend, was Sgt. Hughes. “He would do a six-month tour of the Sinai with the peacekeeping group, then spend six months back home with his wife and a bunch of kids, and back and forth. He did it because it paid good money. The one thing all 300 of us had in common was that we were all poor.”

Daniel Asmussen of St. Cloud made this hat in memory of the members of the 101st Airborne Army who died in a plane crash, many of whom Asmussen served with during his time in the Army. Photo by Bill Vossler

Air Assault School

The procedures that Daniel learned at DeGlopper Air Assault School at Fort Bragg was what he enjoyed most about his time in the 101st Army Airborne. 

“We learned to rappel out of helicopters, and that was the most fun of all. We did the Australian rappel, which meant going down face first. So we fell out of helicopters and rappelled buildings, cliffs, walls, whatever they wanted us to do. We were 101st Airborne Army Air Mobile Eleven Bravo Infantry soldiers, trained to be moved to different places as ground troops who could rappel out of helicopters in all different sorts of formations to help the air mobile. We were bravo infantry soldiers trained to hit the ground out of helicopters so we could fight the enemy. What we had learned in Vietnam we kept using.”

Daniel was part of a United Nations Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping mission on the border between Egypt and Israel. “I was there in 1984, the year before the airplane crashed, to observe whether Israeli army came over the border, which they didn’t. Our group included different troops from all over the world, even Fiji. It was really boring duty,” he laughed.

Once their time in Egypt was up, they were packed into the McDonnell Douglas DC-8, the same airplane that crashed a year later. “We were on flight 1284. We went from Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, on the edge of the Sinai Peninsula, to the Cairo airport. From there the flight was 19 hours.”

Fort Campbell memorial for those soldiers who were killed when flight 1285 crashed. U. S. Government public domain photo

What troubles Daniel to this day, is what they did to that airplane. “They removed all the seats and replaced them with a netting like on lawn chairs so they could get more soldiers in the airplane. It was totally uncomfortable, no stewardesses, no food because the kitchen had been removed, no first class, which had also been removed.”

When they landed at Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, “All of us had to get out of the airplane. It was -35 degrees, and they put us in an unheated hangar for 10 hours, freezing, with C rations for our meal. That was all part of training us, I guess.”

Most troubling was that nobody guarded the DC-8 airplane after it was refueled and while it was empty during that time at Gander. “That lack of security, with no guards at all, meant anybody could walk up to that plane and do what they wanted. Because of what happened in Beirut, we knew some people didn’t like us, so the plane needed to be guarded. But I understand why it wasn’t, because with that -35 temperature and a flat plain all around, guarding it would seem crazy.”

When it came time for them to embark, he said, “We were packed in that plane like sardines, with all our gear and everything. That airplane was old, and had been used in Vietnam to haul bodies back to America. We were MOF (Maintenance Operations Flight), so we knew a lot about airplanes, and when we took off from Gander, we knew we were grossly overweight with all that netting taking the place of the regular seats so they could get more soldiers in, all of whom weighed 200 pounds each or more, and then all of our equipment.”

As the DC-8 began to rise, heading back home to Fort Campbell, “The engines were screaming and crying,” Daniel said, “and the plane was twisting and bending and when we got off the ground at Gander we cheered and prayed, including those that weren’t religious, ‘Thank you, God, that we got off the ground.’ We thought our flight, Arrow Air Flight 1284 was going to crash. But we didn’t. That was left to the flight the next year, Arrow Air Flight 1285, which was grossly overloaded as ours had been.”

On the morning of Dec. 12, 1985, flight 1285 taking 248 soldiers and eight crew members from Gander International Airport and heading home to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the McConnell Douglas DC-8 made it a little over a half mile from the start of its flight, where it stalled, crashed, and burned, killing everybody aboard.

The Canadian Aviation Safety Board said unexpectedly high drag and reduced lift from ice on the wings is what caused the crash. However, according to Wikipedia, “A minority report stated that the accident could have been caused by an on-board explosion of unknown origin before impact, with one of these dissenting investigators later telling a United States congressional committee that a thin layer of ice could not bring down the aircraft.”

Also from Wikipedia, “Witnesses driving on the highway (over which the airplane flew) stated that they saw a bright glow emanating from the bottom of the aircraft before it struck terrain just short of Gander Lake and crashed approximately 3,500 feet beyond the departure end of the runway. It struck an unoccupied building and exploded; this started an intense fire fed by the large amount of fuel carried on board for the final leg of the flight.”

“I know there was an explosion before it crashed,” Daniel said. “I saw a video on it. Somebody at Gander Airport did the same as they did to the marines in Beirut. I’m convinced that terrorists who didn’t like Americans did it.”

“I knew some of the guys on board that flight, including my good friend,  platoon Sergeant Hughes. All of those men had their lives played with. That airplane was filled with the most precious cargo it could possibly have had on board. They all had families and loved ones, and it was the worst day ever for the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Army. It just makes me sad and really emotional, and I’ve kept it bottled up for too long, so I wanted to get the information out so we don’t forget these men who died 40 years ago this December.”