ALL 29 ON BONANZA PLANE DIE IN CRASH NEAR 'VEGAS.

9 MILES FROM CITY -- TORN WRECKAGE DISCOVERED ON MOUNTAIN.

Las Vegas, Nev. (AP) -- Searchers found on a mountain top today the wreckage of a Phoenix-to-Las Vegas airliner that crashed in a snowstorm Sunday night, killing all 29 persons aboard.
The shattered twin-engine Bonanza Airline prop-jet lay scattered across Arden Dome, a rocky, flat-topped butte, 4,410 feet high and nine miles southwest of Las Vegas.
Half a dozen bodies were strewn near the craft. Others were inside or buried in the snow. The wreckage did not burn.
Snow continued falling until about 8 a.m. Then, under partly cloudy skies, 150 workers began the task of bringing out the bodies.
Helicopters, Clark County sheriff's jeeps, Navada highway patrol cars and Air Force rescue trucks streamed into the area.
The plane lay pointed toward Las Vegas and broken into three sections -- tail, fuselage and cockpit -- in a line stretching about 150 yards.
The search by cars and jeeps stretched through the night after the Fairchild F27, Bonanza's flight 114 from Phoenix vanished from McCarran Field's radar screen at 8:27 p.m.
The plane was heading northeast, dropping down into the mountain-rimmed Las Vegas Valley for an instrument landing.
Searchers in a jeep spotted the wreckage about 7 a.m. from another ridge 10 miles away.
Copters flew over the debris, then rescuers made their way to it in jeeps, rescue vehicles and on foot.
The plane's left engine lay to the rear of the tail. One wing, torn off, was to the right of the cockpit.
Copters ferried a dozen men with shovels and baskets to the top of the butte. About 150 others established a camp in an arroyo about 500 feet below, building a fire by which to warm themselves between turns at rescue work. A power-line service road leads to the campsite.
The temperature -- 30 degrees last night -- was up to 45.
Bonanza said names of victims would be announced in Las Vegas after relatives have been notified. It was the first fatal crash in the history of the 8-year-old airline.
In Arden -- a community of about 50 people about five miles north of the wreck site -- civil defense workers prepared soup, hot food and coffee flown by helicopters to the rescue workers.
"They need a lot of help up there," said Maj. R. H. BUCKNELL, JR., Clark County civil defense director, speaking from Arden's civil defense office.
BOB McCOY, 37, freight agent at the Union Pacific Railroad station in Arden, said his wife and three children were out playing in the snow Sunday night when they heard a plane go over. They thought nothing of it at the time, he said.
"I think the plane hit the Good Springs-to-Las Vegas power line," he said. "The lights went out all over this area and stayed out for three or four hours. They woke us up when they came back on about 1 a.m"
Searchers had been directed to the Arden Dome area by a motorist who told officers he saw the plane skimming the ground last night in a whirl of snow eight miles south of Las Vegas. The witness said the plane had one wheel down, as if it were trying to land.
Sheriff's officers said BOB BAKER, a Las Vegas, man, told them: "I was driving on Highway 91 between 8 and 8:30 p.m. when I saw a Bonanza plane, 70 to 100 feet off the ground, heading southeast. There were no landing lights on. One landing gear was down."
BAKER'S location was about where the plane was last sighted on radar but his sighting have the plane a different direction; south instead of north.
Sheriff's jeeps and squad cars gathered on Highway 91 -- the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas -- near the railroad-siding settlement of Arden, where BAKER said he had seen the plane.
The season's first snow was falling heavily as the search was launched. Soon after the F27 disappeared McCarran Field was closed to traffic. Another Bonanza plane, Flight 104, landed north of the city at Nellis Air Force Base.
Six to eight inches of snow covered the open desert country near Arden, and higher drifts stalled many rescue-party cars.
The highway and the railroad run through the bottom of the 4,500-foot-high valley, which is within sight of the neon glow of the Las Vegas strip to the north. Most of the valley is open country where a plane could possibly survive a forced landing.
Not many miles away on the east and west are mountains. On the west, in the Clark Mountains, slopes climb steeply to 8,504-foot Potosi Mountain. To the east foothills rise to 5,000-foot heights.
Bonanza officials hoped at first the plane might have been flown to another field after its pilot somehow lost radio communications. The plane carried enough fuel to keep it aloft until 11 p.m.
Soon after that MYRON REYNOLDS, Bonanza's vice president in charge of operations, told newsmen: "The fuel point has been passed. We must assume the plane is down. We just don't know where."

PASSENGER LIST INCLUDES 8 LAS VEGANS.
Las Vegas (AP) -- Eight Las Vegas residents, including the crew of three, perished in the crash of a Bonanza Airlines' ship.
The dead included a Bonanza employe, WILLIAM T. RILEY, his wife, and infant.
There were no Northern Nevadans listed on the flight list.
The list of dead:
RAMON ARMENDARIZ, Hermosillo, Mex.
MRS. RAMON ARMENDARIZ, his wife.
LOUIS SELDNER, Hermosillo, Mex.
MRS. LOUIS SELDNER, his wife.
MISS KATHY HAGGIN, Las Vegas.
M. J. ROBERTSON, Terre Haute, Ind.
MRS. M. J. ROBERTSON, his wife.
MRS. ROGER BUIKEMA, Holland, Mich.
DR. BURKE M. SNOW, Salt Lake City.
MRS. BURKE M. SNOW, his wife.
DARWIN ANDERSON, Tucson, Ariz.
F. BAUMANN, Phoenix.
DANIEL C. TURLEY, Tempe, Ariz.
GORDON YOUNG, New York.
HARRY DAMRON, Tucson, Ariz.
DOUGLAS LEANDER, Chathams Township, N. J.
BRYAN GATEWOOD, New York City.
MRS. PENNY LYNN SCHNEIDER HICKS, Bonanza employe, Las Vegas.
WILLIAM T. RILEY, Bonanza employe, Las Vegas.
MRS. WILLIAM T. RILEY, his wife.
RILEY Infant.
H. WILL, Calgary, Alberta, Can.
Four Unidentified Adults from Mexico City.
Crew members were identified earlier as:
Capt. HANK FITZPATRICK, 41, pilot.
REMER SCHULZE, 26, copilot.
MARY TRAVIS, 23, all of Las Vegas.

Reno Evening Gazette Nevada 1964-11-16

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Researched and Transcribed by Stu Beitler. Thank you, Stu!