50 years later Hall brothers recall bringing Piper Commanche out of north woods

Plane crash resulted in deaths of two Dartmouth doctors

An Associated Press story published in The Daily Sun on February 21 observed the 50th anniversary of the north woods plane crash that ultimately resulted in the deaths of two Dartmouth Medical School professors, Ralph Miller and Robert Quinn. The physicians' family members returned to Hanover to remember the tragic event, the massive search effort and the difficulties the two endured during the several extremely cold days and nights before their deaths. Their deteriorating condition was chronicled in notes the doctors left behind for family members.

While the memorial part of the tragedy is the most important part of the story — certainly from the standpoint of the family and colleagues of the two doctors — it did not end there. The rest of the story has a definite local connection in Laconia goldsmith Keith Hall.

As the snow in the high country was melting, 13-year old Keith’s father, Samuel, saw a newspaper ad seeking someone with the right kind of equipment to go to the crash site to salvage what was left of the downed Piper Comanche.

The elder Hall went out and put a down payment on the first Bombardier J5 tractor (similar to the ones used by the City of Laconia to plow sidewalks) to be sold in New Hampshire. He advised Keith’s 19-year old brother that he was the owner of the rig and he needed to spend the weekend learning how to operate it. The J5 was equipped with a trailer, and the father advised the man with the salvage rights — one Barney O’Keefe — that the Hall family could do the job.

Steve Hall recalls today that the two doctors must have been deliberately following the right of way of the East Branch & Lincoln Railroad, since they appear to have intentionally put the plane down in that road bed. The location certainly made the recovery less complicated. Nevertheless, the extraction job was not easy. Rock and dirt slides had covered the rail bed in several locations, and streams had to be forded at all four water crossings where trestles had collapsed or been removed.

Ultimately, Steve Hall towed the salvaged fuselage and wings out of the woods to the Kancamagus Highway. There the pieces were loaded onto a 1954 Chevy logging truck owned by Madison “Smokey” Sears. Steve Hall has a photo of the logging truck with the plane aboard parked in the Plymouth Square where he stopped for coffee on his way to the Hall’s home to deliver the wreckage.

The story ends with Keith Hall and his mother Bernice hauling the wreckage to the salvage yard in Hackensack, New Jersey, later in the summer of 1959. The pieces of the Piper Comanche were tied to the bed of a U-Haul trailer with nylon straps. Keith recalls today, just a few months shy of 50 years later, that the sharp metal edges of the plane started to cut the nylon straps. His mother pulled off the road. Keith cut pieces of carpet from the floor of the fuselage, and used them to protect the straps. The two continued on to New Jersey and the salvage yard without further incident.

Steve Hall speculates today that the plane was repaired and flew again. However, the plane’s tail number, N5324P, does not appear in any registry.

And that, according to one of the most famous lines in journalism, is the rest of the story.