The survivors of the Gremlin special

The Gremlin special was the nickname for a certain Douglas C-46 Skytrain, a commonly used American military cargo plane that saw extensive service during World War 2. On the 13th of May 1945, a small crew of 5 took 19 other passengers for a sightseeing flight over the Shangri-La valley in New Guinea.

Due to thick mist in the region and a pilot unfamiliar with the terrain, the Gremlin special crashed into the side of a mountain, killing all but 5 of the passengers. The initial crash was devastating, and the next day 2 of the survivors died from their injuries with the remaining 3 all being badly hurt.

The survivors were Corporal Margaret Hastings, Sergeant Kenneth Decker, and Lieutenant John McCollom, all of which were capable and experienced service personnel who had been through basic survival training, though none of them received anything close to what they’d need to survive this accident.

Basic United States survival training during the 2nd world War wasn’t exactly what you’d call “advanced”, with the teachings being closer to things like, running water through some cloth before you boil it, and other almost obvious things.

( A Douglas C-47 Skytrain)

Since they were stuck in a thick jungle and only had some basic equipment with them, the situation seemed pretty bad and only got worse when they remembered the stories of the tribes of the area they landed in, stories that involved primitive cannibal tribes who ate outsiders.

The crash caused quite a noise and sent up a thick plume of smoke, making it easy to see for miles, and since the survivors of the crash were too weak to travel they made an easy find for the Dani Tribe.

The crew of the Gremlin special were the first people in the world, outside of other local tribes, to encounter the Dani tribe. A native people who had lived in the Shangri-La valley for generations and were in fact known to eat other people.

Fortunately though for the crew they only tended to do this to other tribes they were at war with and offered help to the crew, which they had no choice but to take. The tribe looked after the 3 survivors until on May 17, a search and rescue plane dispatched to find the crash site of the Gremlin special saw the 3 survivors lying on the floor near the wreck.

10 support troops and 2 medics air dropped into the trees and tended to the survivors, all of which was documented by a journalist named Alexander Cann who was sent to record the rescue and also the initial interaction with this newly discovered tribe.

They were eventually rescued when another Douglas C-47 Skytrain towed a glider into the valley, which was then loaded up with the survivors and towed to a nearby base in Hollandia. Out of the original 24 people on board the plane, 21 of them died.