TWA and United Airlines Aircrafts Collide in Mid-Air 

United Airlines Flight 826, Mainliner Will Rogers, registration N8013U, was a Douglas DC-8 en route from O'Hare Airport in Chicago to New York International (Idlewild) Airport in New York City, New York, on December 16, 1960.

Trans World Airlines Flight 266, Star of Sicily, registration N6907C, was a Lockheed Super Constellation en route from Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, to New York's LaGuardia Airport.

The two aircraft collided in mid-air in heavy clouds a mile west of Miller Field, a military airfield on Staten Island, at 10:33 a.m. Eastern Time. Weather conditions at the time were light rain and fog (which had been preceded by a snowfall).

According to information from the United's flight recorder (the first time a "black box" had been used to provide extensive details in a crash investigation) the United plane was 12 miles (19 km) off course and in 81 seconds dived 3,600 feet (1,100 m) a minute and dropped its speed from more than 500 miles per hour (800 km/h) to 363 miles per hour (584 km/h) when it slammed into the right side of the TWA plane at between 5,250 and 5,175 feet (1,577 m).

The collision occurred about a mile west of Miller Army Field. The TWA Constellation crashed onto Miller Field, with some sections of the aircraft landing in New York Harbor on the Atlantic Ocean side. As the TWA plane spiraled down it disintegrated, dropping at least one passenger into a tree in the New Dorp neighborhood. It crashed into an empty field at the northwest corner of the field—although within a few feet of the neighborhood.

The United plane was supposed to have been circling a point called "Preston" off the New Jersey coast, was supposed to have been at 5,000 feet (and not diving down from 8,700 feet) and not traveling more than 240 miles per hour. United was to say the ground beacon was not working (pilots testified on both sides of the issue).

At 10:21 a.m., Flight 826 advised its company radio operator that one of its VOR receivers had stopped w...

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- On Dec. 16, 1960, 11-year-old Stephen Lambert Baltz became the sole survivor of the horrific midair crash of a United Airlines jet and a TWA plane over Staten Island near Miller Army Field.

Millions of today's baby boomers and their parents prayed and hoped against hope that the boy from Wilmette, Ill., would survive.

But despite the best efforts of 10 doctors, he succumbed to his injuries after 26 hours.

Had he lived, Stephen Baltz would be celebrating his 60th birthday today, Jan. 9, 2009.

Stephen, a brown-haired schoolboy, was flying unaccompanied on the United DC-8 from Chicago to New York to join his mother and his 9-year-old sister. He had missed the flight two days earlier because of a sore throat. They planned to visit his maternal grandparents in Yonkers.