Adrien Bosc - Constellation

3 p.m. — Contradictory news: the airplane was observed going down in flames. But survivors have been spotted: they signaled to the pilot of the rescue plane .

Since first light, the aerial ballet has resumed at Orly, everyone in the crew lounge is sharing memories of the colleagues who went down in the Azores. The stewardesses talk about their friend Suzanne Roig, a swell kid, tired of the business and talking about quitting it. The pilots, for their part, remember the jokes Charles Wolfer told and Raymond Redon’s marriage just two weeks before to a young Algerian woman. Some still believe in a miracle, could the passengers have survived? A horde of newspapermen scavenge for the slightest quote. Henri, the barkeep at the airport, is pressed into service: “It’s not possible. Just last night I brought Marcel a drink. He was in that corner of the bar, where he always sits, handing out autographs.”

In the boarding area, a passenger arrives from Lydda in Palestine. His flight was held up in Rome by adverse weather, and he missed his connection to New York on the Constellation F-BAZN. He is furious, storms at the airline personnel, suddenly his anger melts away, the attendant at the boarding counter has informed him that they have no news of the Paris — New York flight of October 27.

The Air France situation room has been a hive of activity since the middle of the night. After intercepting the telegram from Portuguese aviation, the brass at the airline decide to mount their own rescue mission. The chief executive officer, Max Hymans, and the chief operating officer, Didier Daurat, choose the inspector for civil aviation, Charles-Henri de Lévis-Mirepoix, to lead the expedition. A familiar of General de Gaulle — he was an attaché to his military cabinet in London — the duc de Lévis-Mirepoix is one of those aristocrats of the skies, a distant cousin to Captain de Boïeldieu in Renoir’s Grand Illusion . He even has a specious resemblance to the actor Pierre Fresnay and, in the photographs that show him in uniform, wears white gloves. A few weeks earlier, he had published at Arthème Fayard a magnum opus on the history of aviation, The Century of the Airplane .

At noon, the Air France rescue mission takes off. By Lévis-Mirepoix’s side are Fabre, Fournier, Marion, and Genouillac. Kept informed of developments during the flight, the French mission tries unsuccessfully to land on São Miguel Island. The airstrip is inadequate, and, at 5:00 p.m., the plane is forced to fall back to the airport at Santa Maria. They will have to wait a night before reaching the island where the tragedy occurred.

The first Portuguese rescuers disembark at the port of Ponta Delgada on São Miguel two hours after the announcement by the search plane. The team, reinforced by a crew of locals, proceeds to Algarvia, the village at the foot of Mount Redondo. In the early afternoon, villagers in tow, the team sets out for the crash site. The path, steep and muddy, rises some 2,600 feet before reaching the airplane wreck. Near the top of the peak, battered and broken, Constellation F-BAZN is still burning. The shredded sheet metal of the fuselage is strewn over the area in shapeless, calcined slabs. The Connie is nothing more than scattered metal. The fog mixes with the fire to make a single cloud, buffeted by the winds. The pulverized wings plowed deep into the mucky soil, while the blades of the propellers, detached and lying horizontal, form the last steps to the summit. No sign of survivors anywhere in this desolate scene. The rescuers come to the bitter realization that the figures seen moving around the site earlier were looters from the village. The cargo and personal effects from the Constellation were spirited away during the morning. Last night, the peasants were roused from sleep by an explosion. Examining the sky, they saw a conflagration high on the peak. The more impetuous rushed up there in the dark.

Mount Redondo rises to an altitude of more than three thousand feet, its summit forming a kind of rounded hillock. The plane lies in the shadow of this knob. The Constellation slammed hard into the ridge top. Traveling at full speed, it burrowed in, came apart, unscrewed itself all down the slopes. Melted into the aircraft, or ejected from it, are the black and disfigured bodies. The work area is quickly cordoned off, and the Portuguese team group the passengers together on the ground. Identifying the victims proves a challenge from the start.

The sixth edition of France-Soir extinguishes all hope:

6:07 p.m — Telegram from Santa Maria: “No survivors.”

6:10 p.m. — According to the residents of the village of Algarvia, the airplane burst into flames on hitting the mountaintop .

6:13 p.m. — It is now certain that a major disaster has occurred. Air France has just announced, “The rescue teams have reached the wreck; there are no survivors.”

That night, Prince Aly Khan of Pakistan, the husband of Rita Hayworth, narrowly escapes an airplane accident. The plane makes an emergency landing on the Croydon airfield, in the suburbs of London, shortly after taking off from there. It lands without mishap using a single engine. Aly Khan immediately boards another plane.

In a letter to the vice president of his company mailed on Wednesday, October 26, 1949, the day before his trip, Kay Kamen joked with his close colleague about his airplane phobia. It was a long-standing source of amusement to them, given how seriously the businessman suffered from aviophobia, or aerophobia, as the doctors variously called it. The Superga tragedy on May 4, 1949, had done nothing to reassure him. The aircraft, a Fiat G.212, crashed into the Basilica of Superga on a ridge above the Po River Valley, and the entire Torino soccer team had been killed. Some of the most famous players of the postwar years, just after winning their fifth scudetto . A tragedy for the tifosi of Turin and for Italy as a whole.

But for Kamen it was more a topic for jokes than a real handicap in his work. His business came first, and any fears came afterward. Had he not bet his career on a poker hand one morning in July 1932, laying fifty thousand dollars on the desk of a certain Walt Disney as though on the green baize of a casino table? He was a man of shadow, but what a shadow, the king of merchandising, the inventor of one of the most profitable economic models of the twentieth century: the marketing of products derived from cartoon characters. A small gruff man, hiding his game behind heavy-framed round glasses, giving himself an air of seriousness and, paradoxically, of whimsicality by parting his hair impeccably down the middle. Thanks to his business sense, he had been the lucky charm, the savior, of the Disney brothers, their Jiminy Cricket.

Kamen gained his business sense through experience. His first big commercial deal had been merchandising products derived from a successful series of short films from the 1920s, Hal Roach’s Our Gang , or The Little Rascals . The story revolved around a gang of poor children, with Spanky, the fat kid, as their leader. His followers included the wire-thin Alfalfa; pretty Darla; Porky, the youngest; his sidekick, Buckwheat; and their pit bull terrier, Pete. The series had the great virtue of showing children in their natural state and avoiding the stereotypes of the time. Kay Kamen used Our Gang to develop the basic strategy that would reach its zenith a few years later with the merchandizing of Disney characters and was able to turn the success of these short films into profit. The many derivative products included figurines of the characters, lunch boxes, pencil cases, school bags, comic strips, magazines, even candies — there was a Spanky candy bar and Little Rascals chewing gum. The fact that so many children in America identified with Roach’s scoundrelly kids made them a great moneymaker.