Abandoned Plane From 1971 Crash Finally Found in Rhode Island

Fifty years ago, a plane crashed deep in the woods in Rhode Island, killing one passenger aboard and injuring five others. The plane was left at the crash site and now decades later one videographer has found it.

Jason Allard has made a series of videos from abandoned places across the Ocean State and his latest is from the site of a 1971 plane crash in the middle of some woods. Though he never says exactly where he found it or what flight he is referring to, I think I have figured that out.

Honestly, when I first watched this YouTube video I became instantly intrigued. Of course, Allard's video is made incredibly well, but it was the fact that I felt I knew the site that really pulled me in. From Reddit and YouTube comments, it seemed people felt this crash site was in West Warwick or East Greenwich, an area I am very familiar with, and so I just had to learn more.

The digging wasn't easy and the results are still largely theory, since Allard never reveals many of the details of the crash. But the information I found lines up pretty well with the video's few specifics and I'm pretty sure I'm on the right track.

According to the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives, the flight in question took place on Monday November 22, 1971 – just three days before Thanksgiving. Two couples along with the pilot and co-pilot were traveling from Chatham, Massachusetts back home to New Jersey through rain and snow on a very cold and windy day.

Just as the aircraft was making its way across Rhode Island, passengers reported seeing ice forming on the wings. That ice caused the left engine to fail and the plane could not keep a safe level of altitude.

Reports say the pilot tried to make an emergency landing at nearby T.F. Green Airport, but was unable to make it. Both engines must have seized, as the airplane stalled and crashed into the woods in East Greenwich.

There were so many trees as they went down that the wings were ripped from the plane, causing it to flip upside down and the fuselage was cracked open on impact. Local newspapers report that the woods was so dense where they crashed that a helicopter had to lower a doctor to the site to administer aid to the passengers.

Luckily that helicopter was able to make it to the site because the rest of the rescue workers had to trudge through two feet of mud for a half-mile to get out there – and then needed crowbars and axes to free the survivors.

It all sounds like an incredibly harrowing tale that I kind of can't believe happened in an area I drive through nearly every day. If the site is where I'm thinking, these woods are no joke. They are dense and a brook runs completely through them, making them muddy and swampy year-round.

It makes the video Allard made and his quest out to this abandoned plane all the more intriguing and impressive to me.