The town of Carroll held a reception last night commemorating the 50th anniversary of the “Miracle Cornfield Landing.” The old Minneapolis Lakers were on a plane returning from their game in St. Louis when the plane lost all electrical power in the middle of a bad snowstorm and circled Carroll several times.
Carroll Chamber of Commerce executive director Jim Gossett says people heard the low-flying plane and started turning on their lights and helped the pilots guide the aircraft into a snow-covered cornfield. “The landing while I’m sure very tense until the plane was put down apparently was fairly uneventful. A cornfield, nothing else getting in the way, and a good snow cover apparently helped aid for a soft landing,” Gossett says.
Gossett says, “Apparently, the first person on the scene was Joe Twitt, a local undertaker. And, was tromping through the snow and trying to climb over the fences to get to the DC-3 and all these great big tall basketball players started walking out and walking across the snow and reportedly Joe Twitt said, ‘I thought I was going to get me some business tonight, boys.'”
Luckily, they all survived and the local folks helped get the team out of harm’s way and back to a local hotel. Three days later a bulldozer plowed down to the dirt and the pilots got the repaired airplane into the air and back to Minneapolis.
Thanks to Mike Grimm, Minnesota News Network