C-47A Gremlin Special crash

The Gremlin Special was a Douglas C-47 Skytrain that crashed during a sightseeing flight over the Baliem Valley (also known as Shangri-La Valley) in New Guinea in the eastern part of the Netherlands Indies in 1945. The recovery of the three survivors from an isolated valley surrounded by mountains, enemy troops, and native inhabitants made worldwide news at the time and is the subject of the 2011 book Lost in Shangri-La by author Mitchell Zuckoff.

Accident

On Sunday, May 13, 1945, Col. Peter J. Prossen, maintenance chief of the USAAF’s Far East Air Service Command in Hollandia (now Jayapura, Papua, New Guinea) arranged a sightseeing flight southward over the New Guinea interior for a group of personnel.

The Gremlin Special flew into the side of a mountain. Five passengers survived the initial wreck with two, Sergeant Laura Besley and Private Eleanor Hanna, succumbing to injuries the next day. The survivors were Corporal Margaret Hastings, Sergeant Kenneth Decker and Lieutenant John McCollom.

The Baliem Valley was previously explored in 1938 by Richard Archbold, flying in a PBY-2. Although the press believed the survivors of the Gremlin Special crash to be the first outsiders to encounter the Yali and Dani who inhabited the area, Archbold had sent two exploration teams into the valley in 1938.