On 29 May 1947, a

Douglas DC-3 The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version ...

aircraft of Flugfélag Íslands crashed on on the west side of , a

fjord In physical geography, a fjord or fiord () is a long, narrow inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier. Fjords exist on the coasts of Alaska, Antarctica, British Columbia, Chile, Denmark, Germany, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Ice ...

in northern Iceland. All 25 people on board were killed. It is the deadliest air accident in Iceland.

Accident and recovery

The aircraft was manufactured in 1944 as a

Douglas C-47 Skytrain The Douglas C-47 Skytrain or Dakota (RAF, RAAF, RCAF, RNZAF, and SAAF designation) is a military transport aircraft developed from the civilian Douglas DC-3 airliner. It was used extensively by the Allies during World War II and remained in ...

and later converted to

DC-3 The Douglas DC-3 is a propeller-driven airliner manufactured by Douglas Aircraft Company, which had a lasting effect on the airline industry in the 1930s to 1940s and World War II. It was developed as a larger, improved 14-bed sleeper version ...

standard for civilian use. It was registered as TF-ISI to Flugfélag Íslands, now Air Iceland Connect, the domestic Icelandic airline. It left at 11.25AM on a scheduled one and a half hour flight from

Reykjavík Airport Reykjavík Airport ( Icelandic: ''Reykjavíkurflugvöllur'') is the main domestic airport serving Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, located about from the city centre. Having shorter runways than the city's larger international airport Kef ...

to the former site of

Akureyri Airport Akureyri Airport ( is, Akureyrarflugvöllur , regionally also ) is a single-runway international airport in Akureyri, Iceland, south of the town centre. Icelandair and Norlandair link the airport with several domestic locations. History Schedule ...

."Accident description"
Aviation Safety Network, Flight Safety Foundation, retrieved 27 February 2018.Hörður Geirsson
"Flugslysið í Héðinsfirði"
''

Morgunblaðið ''Morgunblaðið'' (, ''The Morning Paper'') is an Icelandic newspaper. ''Morgunblaðið''s website, mbl.is, is the most popular website in Iceland. History ''Morgunblaðið'' was founded by Vilhjálmur Finsen and Ólafur Björnsson, brother of ...

'', 29 May 1997 . It was heard over

Skagafjörður Skagafjörður () is a deep fjord and its valley in northern Iceland. Location Skagafjörður, the fjord, is about 40 km long and 15 km wide, situated between Tröllaskagi to the east and the Skagi Peninsula to the west. There are t ...

and seen flying low over the water towards , the northernmost point between the Siglufjörður and Héðinsfjörður fjords on the northern coast,"Allir sem í henni voru fórust: Búið að flytja 24 lík til Akureyrar"
''Morgunblaðið'', 31 May 1947, p. 1 .Vegagerðin.is
"Flugslys 1947"
via Magnús Rúnar Magnússon, ''Héðinsfjörður.is'' . This page has photos of the wreckage from the crash. but failed to arrive. The weather was very foggy and searchers were unable to locate the wreckage until next morning, when it was spotted from one of three search aeroplanes on the side of Hestfjall, the mountain to the west of Héðinsfjörður. The DC-3 had disintegrated, slid down the mountainside, and caught fire. There were no survivors of the four crew and 21 passengers. The pilot was presumed to have been flying visually over the water, as was normal at the time since there were few navigational aids on the route, and to have become aware of the mountain only at the last moment. The accident is estimated to have happened at 12.48PM."Crash of a Douglas DC-3 on Mt Hestfjall: 25 killed"
Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives, retrieved 27 February 2018. The bodies were taken by boat to

Ólafsfjörður Ólafsfjörður () is a town in the northeast of Iceland located at the mouth of the fjord Eyjafjörður. The town is connected to Dalvík on Eyjafjörður by the 3.5 km one-lane Múli tunnel (the ''Múlagöng'') and to Siglufjörður by the ...

and from there, draped in the Icelandic flag, to

Akureyri Akureyri (, locally ) is a town in northern Iceland. It is Iceland's fifth-largest municipality, after Reykjavík, Hafnarfjörður, Reykjanesbær and Kópavogur, and the largest town outside Iceland's more populated southwest corner. Nicknamed ...

, where a dockside ceremony on their arrival on the evening of 30 May was attended by a crowd of about 4,000 people, and they were then transported to

Akureyrarkirkja Akureyrarkirkja (, regionally also ) or The Church of Akureyri is a prominent Lutheran church at Akureyri in northern Iceland. Located in the centre of the city, it was designed by Guðjón Samúelsson (1887–1950) and completed in 1940. Akur ...

Legacy

The accident is the deadliest air accident in Iceland and the second deadliest involving an Icelandic aircraft, after the crash of

Icelandic Airlines Flight 001 Loftleiðir Icelandic Airlines Flight 001, a charter flight, was a Douglas DC-8 that crashed on 15 November 1978, on approach to the international airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka. The crash killed 8 of the 13 Icelandic crew members, 5 reserve cre ...

in Sri Lanka in 1978. In 1997, fifty years after the accident, the Súlur

Kiwanis Kiwanis International ( ) is an international service club founded in 1915 in Detroit, Michigan. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, and is found in more than 80 nations and geographic areas. Since 1987, the organizatio ...

Club of Ólafsfjörður erected a memorial below the crash site in the form of a two-metre

Celtic cross The Celtic cross is a form of Christian cross featuring a nimbus or ring that emerged in Ireland, France and Great Britain in the Early Middle Ages. A type of ringed cross, it became widespread through its use in the stone high crosses er ...

. A book about the accident, ''Harmleikur í Héðinsfirði'' by Margrét Þóra Þórsdóttir, was published in 2009. In 2020, the accident was featured in the fourth episode of the documentary TV series ''Siglufjörður – saga bæjar'' on

RÚV Ríkisútvarpið (RÚV) (pronounced or ) ( en, 'The Icelandic National Broadcasting Service') is Iceland's national public-service broadcasting organization. Operating from studios in the country's capital, Reykjavík, as well as regional cent ...

.Davíð Roach Gunnarsson and Egill Helgason
"Mannskæðasta flugslys Íslands varð í Héðinsfirði 1947"

, 26 January 2020, retrieved 19 August 2022 (with video, 3 mins 10 secs)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hedinsfjordur air crash Hedinsfjordur Accidents and incidents involving the Douglas DC-3 Hedinsfjordur Aviation accidents and incidents in Iceland