The Nineteen Seventy-Three Mount Dutton Crash

Out in this rugged corner of the Alaska Peninsula, on the eighth of September, nineteen seventy-three, a World Airways cargo jet flew into the side of Mount Dutton in the predawn dark. It was a Douglas D C Eight, flying a military contract from California toward the Philippines, with a fuel stop planned here at Cold Bay. All six people aboard, three crew and three passengers, were killed.

The plane struck the mountain near Cold Bay, at roughly three thousand five hundred feet. Investigators ruled that the captain's failure to follow the published instrument approach procedure was the probable cause. The crash is remembered in these remote communities where aviation has always been a lifeline and a risk.