Albany, NY Plane Crashes Into Houses On Landing Attempt, Mar 1972

ALBANY PLANE CRASH KILLS 17.

Mohawk Airlines Flight 405, on a landing path for Albany County Airport, hit one house and crashed through another house in Albany Friday night, killing at least 17 persons of the 47 aboard the flight.
The plane was making its final approach to the east-west runway when it hit the house at 48 Edgewood Ave., spun and crashed through the front of the house at 50 Edgewood Ave.
The force of the crash twisted the house off its foundation, dropping the front of the house into the basement and lifting the rear section about four to five feet off the ground.
The residents of the house, JOSEPH ROSEN, his wife and two sons, LAWRENCE, 8, and ROBERT, 6, were at home at the time of the crash, but escaped.
Neighbors rushed to the crashsite and the younger boy was the first to be pulled from the wreckage.
All available ambulances from a wide area, including those from Troy, Rensselaer County, Schenectady, and Saratoga County, conveyed the injured to St. Peter's, Albany Memorial, Albany Medical Center and Veterans Hospitals, all in Albany.
At shortly after midnight, St. Peter's had 15 victims dead from the crash, Albany Medical Center had two.
To get to the victims, workers ripped loose bricks, siding and other building rubble before they could work to take the dead and injured from the plane.
The pilot and co-pilot were among the dead.
An emergency first aid station and temporary morgue were set up in the garage of 48 Edgewood Ave., the first house the plane hit.
Staffing the station were doctors and nurses from nearby hospitals. Also on the scene was Albany County Coroner, John Marra.
The plane went down shortly before 9 p.m. Authorities at the airport, about three miles from the crash scene, said the plane "dropped off" their radar scopes.

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