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Arrow Air Flight 1285

Arrow Air Flight 1285 crash site
Summary
Date	December 12, 1985
Type	mid-air explosion
Site	Gander, Newfoundland
Fatalities	256
Injuries	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	McDonnell Douglas DC-8
Operator	Arrow Air
Tail number	N950JW
Passengers	248
Crew	8
Survivors	0

Arrow Air Flight 1285 was a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 registered N950JW. On December 12, 1985, the aircraft was chartered to carry U.S. servicemen from a six-month stay in the Sinai, where they had served in the Multinational Force and Observers peacekeeping force, back to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

Around 6:45 in the morning, Flight 1285 took off from Gander International Airport in Gander, Newfoundland, Canada bound for Kentucky. Shortly after take-off, the aircraft experienced an increase in drag and reduction in lift, which resulted in a low-altitude stall from which recovery was impossible (according to the Canadian Aviation Safety Board). The aircraft then crashed to the ground, creating a fire that burned for four hours.

The nine-member Safety Board was nearly split on the matter of the probable cause of the accident. The five-member majority supported the official report which concluded that the cause of the sequence leading up to the stall and crash could not be determined, with icing a possibility. The four-member minority opinion, however, was that the crash was possibly caused by detonations of unknown origin in a cargo compartment which led to an in-flight fire and loss of control of the aircraft:

". . We cannot agree — indeed, we categorically disagree — with the majority findings . . . The evidence shows that the Arrow Air DC-8 suffered an on-board fire and a massive loss of power before it crashed . . . The fire may have been associated with an in-flight detonation from an explosive or incendiary device."

256 people died: 248 U.S. servicemen and 8 crew. That death toll constituted the deadliest plane crash in Canada (and remains so to date in 2006),^[1] and the highest death toll on any day for the U.S. armed forces since World War II, even including combat losses, the greatest of which occurred in 1983, after the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut.

Those servicemen who died were from the following divisions: all but 12 were members of the 3d Battalion, 502d Infantry, and 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); 11 were from other Forces Command units; and one was a CID agent from the Criminal Investigations Command.

There is a memorial to the 256 victims at the crash site overlooking Gander Lake in Newfoundland.

1. ^ Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved on October 22, 2006.

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