A small twin-engine propeller of the impoverished Fuerza Aérea Uruguaya, a Fokker F27 which in the absence of frequent warfare in the South Americas is used as charter for civilian passengers, he is engaged in slalom among the very high peaks of the Andean mountain range. It is October 13, 1972, and the small Dutch-made transport plane, measuring just twenty-five meters in length, holds forty civilian passengers on board – half of them are football players. Rugby of the Old Christians Club – in addition to five military crew members: Colonel Ferradas, the co-pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Lagurara, a lieutenant employed as a navigational officer, and two sergeants, respectively a flight attendant and an engineer. It is not designed to withstand high altitudes in weather conditions unfavorable. Although it can reach a ceiling height of over eight thousand meters, this is why the Fokker flies low, following a meticulous route that, to bring the plane to its destination in Santiago del Chile (after an unexpected stopover due to weather conditions in Mendoza, Argentina), search and find the passes and passes in the high snow-capped mountains.
Fly low in the mountains is the most prudent choice, but also there more complex route to follow on the maps, for an aircraft that, in addition to having almost all of the controls entirely manual, offered the crew an “essential” on-board instrumentation.
The crew makes some calculation errors in plotting, or following, the route. And when the commander is certain that he is about a half hour flight from Santiago, he approaches a gradual descent towards the ground, while a turbulence surprises the small twin-engine that falls into a vacuum and losing a hundred meters of altitude in a few seconds, he finds himself flying blindly, wrapped in thick fog and low clouds, near the rocky heights. Ferradas and Lagurara try to recover altitude by pushing the Rolls-Royce Dart engines to maximum power. But before exiting, the Fokker’s right wing touches one Rocky wall. By detaching completely and depriving the plane of one of the two engines. The Fokker carom among the rocks, losing the left wing and the tail, which cuts off cleanly and takes some passengers away with it. The navigator and the sergeant in charge of welcoming the passengers are sucked out of the cockpit. They fly away.
The fuselage of the Fokker crashes like a torpedo launched from a plane on an esplanade. Glide fast on the fresh snow, for two kilometers, amid the screams of terrified passengers, as if it were a big man bob. It stops only after having impacted with a pile of snow solidified by the harsh temperatures. The aircraft, registered as 571, stops at an altitude of 3,657 meters near the Tinguiririca volcano. Still in Argentine territory. The survivors, on the other hand, victims ofcalculation error and the instrumentation out of phase due to the impact, will be convinced that they are at an altitude of 2,133 meters in Chilean territory. In fact, before dying, Lieutenant Colonel Lagurara will claim to have “passed Curicò“.
Only later will human error be assumed due to the negligence of the pilots, who did not calculate flight times, or to a possible malfunction of the Vor system (used before the advent of GPS, ed) originated from magnetic interference caused by perturbations. These would have triggered “erroneously” the signaling of Curicó’s passage on the vertical – as the second driver repeated several times before dying shortly after the impact from the injuries sustained.
Between the impact and the descent, twelve people die, including the commander. Of the thirty-eight survivors, some will die from injuries sustained during the impact. Others following an avalanche. Others due to malnutrition and fatigue – which at over three thousand meters above sea level with temperatures below minus 30 degrees centigrade at night makes itself felt on the human body, even the most athletic and prepared.
Rescue so “close” and the odyssey that resulted in cannibalism
As soon as the Santiago control tower lost all contact with the Fokker, the Servicio Aereo de Rescate (Sar) at Los Cerrillos airport was put on alert. Analyzing the records of the latest communications between the Chilean control tower and the Uruguayan aircraft, the commanders of the SAR immediately hypothesized a course error and, expanding the area of research to a large area in the Andes north of the Planchón pass, made helicopters take off in an attempt to locate the wreck and recover any survivors.
Although the search area was exact, the reduced visibility and the light livery of the aircraft that blended perfectly into the snow prevented the air rescue teams and mountain guides of the Chilean Carabineros corps from locating the wreck, in which they lived in excruciating hardship. and suffering those survivors who, after finishing the poor rations of chocolate and jam, were forced to the extreme act of feeding on human flesh of their dead comrades.
On 21 October, the Chilean authorities decided to officially stop the search. While those privately financed by family members continued, and went a few kilometers from the real position of the survivors, who survived a good 72 days. Until December 23, when the expedition of two passengers who decided to cross the Andes to seek help, alerted the Servicio Aereo de Rescate a second time that sent two Bell Uh-1 Iroquois helicopters to San Fernando, where they had arrived – after a march of 10 days for a distance of 50 kilometers in the snow – Fernando Parrado placeholder image e Roberto Canessa.
Thanks to the indications of Parrado, who decided to get on the helicopter to lead the rescue, that same day the remains of the Fokker were identified and first aid was brought to the 14 survivors. As it was not possible to transport all the passengers, climbers and a nurse were left on the spot to provide first aid to those who were forced to spend the last night in the “carlinga” that had called home for over two months. Hospitalized with “symptoms of high mountain respiratory failure, dehydration, trauma and malnutrition“, some showed a loss of up to 40 kilos.
A stone and an oval ball for salvation
When Parrado and Canessa met on their way the “first man” to ask for help, exhausted, at the limit of their physical capacity, it was a stone that saved them. The one launched by a herdsman, Sergio Catalán, who, not hearing the faint words from the other bank of the river that separated them, wrote a message on a sheet of paper, wrapped it around the stone, and threw it to those two men evidently tried by a grueling journey. It was then that Parrado wrote with a lady’s lipstick that he curiously had with him: “I come from a plane that crashed in the mountains. I’m Uruguayan. We’ve been walking for ten days. I have a friend who is injured. There are 14 injured people waiting on the plane. We need to get out of here quickly and we don’t know how. We don’t have to eat. . We are debilitated. When do they come to get us? Please, we can no longer walk. Where are we? “.
They were near Los Maitenes, in Chile. The herdsman’s race to reach the first barracks of Carabineros to warn them of his extraordinary encounter and the intervention of other herdsmen met on the way, who hastened to join the two travelers to feed them and lend them. their first aid was decisive.
In 2012 the survivors of this extraordinary adventure gathered on the rugby field for the famous match they were supposed to play against Chileans of the Old Grangonian Club forty years earlier. On that, and on many other occasions, paying homage to the comrades who lost their lives on that mountain, they remembered how important team spirit was in those terrible 72 days of survival.
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