Almost exactly 50 years ago, on October 13, 1972, several members of a rugby team boarded a plane from Montevideo in Uruguay to Santiago in Chile to play a friendly match.
But along the way they encounter very adverse weather conditions. Because of this, the pilot miscalculated the plane’s landing point and crashed into a mountain in the Andes.
12 people died instantly. Another 17 died later, due to the cold or injuries sustained during the accident.
Only 16 men survived.
With repeated searches for the plane and survivors, the authorities decided to end the rescue operations after just over a week.
The fuselage was covered in snow, making it difficult to identify the wreck.
With the goal of survival
For the 16 survivors, this was to be the start of many days of hard fighting for survival.
From the moment the plane crashed, it took 72 days for them to be found.
Initially, the 16 men fed on the plane’s stores of candy and wine. When these warehouses were emptied, the men were forced to fill their stomachs with cotton from airplane seats.
Eventually one of the survivors, medical student Roberto Canessa, suggested that they feed on the human flesh of the dead.
RESISTANT: Coche Inciarte (ex), Roberto Canessa and Carlos Paez at the crash site, 30 years later. Photo: Jon Freeman / NTB
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– If one of us died, the others were forced to eat our bodies, adds Canessa Independent.
In the 2007 documentary “Stranded”, the 16 men describe how they used glass shards to cut the dead, then rationing the small pieces between them.
One of the other survivors, Carlitos Paez, tells the Independent that he has no difficulty eating human flesh.
– It doesn’t taste like anything special.
Two airports closed
Help is a stone’s throw away
Eventually, Canessa and one of the other survivors, Fernando Parrado, decided to leave the rest of the group to seek help.
During the five-kilometer journey up the mountain, they took a homemade sleeping bag and socks filled with human flesh.
After ten days, they spotted three men each with a horse. By throwing a stone wrapped in paper towards the side of the river of the knights, Parrado conveyed the message that the survivors of the wreck of the plane were in danger of life.
STRONG RESOURCE: In 2016 Roberto Canessa published the book ‘I had to survive’ which describes his experiences in the Andes. Here he is a guest on the British TV show “Lorranie” in the same year. Photo: Ken McKay / NTB
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Shortly before Christmas Eve, December 22, 1972, the two men were rescued by helicopter. At this point, Parrado and Canessa intervened under 40 kilos.
The rest of the survivors of the plane crash were also rescued the next day.
