Svanfjell accident
United States Air Force Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules · Misunderstood altitude clearance
From Base aérienne 105 Évreux-Fauville to Bardufoss Airport (BDU)
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- Event fatalities
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- Unknown
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Military
Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules
- Aircraft type
- Lockheed Martin C-130
- Category
- Airplane · from aircraft type
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- 3677
- Operator
- United States Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- 7
- Route
- From Base aérienne 105 Évreux-FauvilleTo Bardufoss Airport (BDU)
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
The Svanfjell accident was an air accident that happened during the night of 20 March 1966, when an American Hercules aircraft crashed in the Svanfjell area in Tranøy Municipality on Senja. The entire crew of 7 were killed.
The aircraft, a C-130B Hercules, was built in 1961 and belonged to the US Air Force's 313th Tactical Carrier Wing at Forbes Air Force Base in Kansas. It came from Évreux in France and, after an intermediate landing at Gardermoen, was on its way to Bardufoss to pick up Italian soldiers who had taken part in the exercise "Winter Express 66". During the descent to Bardufoss the crew of the aircraft misunderstood the altitude clearance from the control tower at Bardufoss, and the aircraft crashed near the summit of the 807-metre-high Første Svanfjell at around 01.30. When the accident happened, it was around 0 °C with snow showers in the area.
Ski patrols and helicopters were used in the search for the aircraft. Bad weather meant that the aircraft was only found by a helicopter search at 05.45 the day after the crash, after 28 hours of searching. The leader of the rescue operation was the then Lieutenant William Engseth, later a politician and sports federation president. The tail of the aircraft was found just below the summit of Første Svanfjell, while the cockpit and other wreckage were found on the slope down towards a small lake on the other side of the mountain.
The dead had to be dug out of the snow on the mountain. Five officers and two enlisted men were killed in the accident, all American citizens. The largest pieces of wreckage were removed a few years after the accident, but many smaller parts still remain (as of 2012) on the mountain. In 2009 an information board about the accident was put up on the summit of Første Svanfjell.
The air crash at Svanfjell has many similarities with the air accident on Kebnekaise in March 2012.
Translated into English with AI assistance from the Norwegian Wikipedia article “Svanfjell-ulykken” (revision 23892892, retrieved 2026-09-19) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out; the translation may contain errors, and long articles were cut to their first 700 words. Read the article
Sources
Norwegian Wikipedia article: Svanfjell-ulykken
- Article
- Svanfjell-ulykken
- Translation
- Into English with AI assistance; names of linked operators and aircraft types from Wikidata. It may contain errors.
- Revision
- 23892892 · 2023-10-14 · retrieved 2026-09-19
- Wikidata
- Q19391217
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
Where each value comes from
- Record
- no Wikipedia article "Svanfjell-ulykken" (page 1072165, revision 23892892), translated into English with AI assistance
- Date
- Wikipedia infobox: date
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site
- Map position
- Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- operator named as an armed force or military unit in the infobox
- Fatalities
- Wikipedia infobox: aircraft fatalities
- Ground fatalities
- not stated in the Wikipedia infobox
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (1)
- Wikipedia · Facts from the Norwegian Wikipedia article's infobox, translated into English with AI assistance, not checked against an investigation report. Independent review pending.