The fatal plane crash in 1951 at Sioux Gateway Airport

SIOUX CITY (KTIV) – The crash of United Flight 232 in Sioux City in 1989 attracted worldwide attention.

But 38 years earlier, another airliner crashed in Sioux City, killing more than a dozen people.

In this “Hometown Story” we look back to that day in 1951 and the many connections that the ill-fated Flight 16 had to Sioux City.

High above the floor of the Sioux City Public Museum hangs a rare Kari Keen airplane built in Sioux City in the 1920s.

You could say that the man behind the plane, Arthur Hanford Junior, used “butter money” to build it.

His father owned the largest butter factory in the world in Sioux City.

Arthur Junior's fascination with butter turned to flying when Charles Lindbergh made his historic flight across the Atlantic in 1927.

After Hanford learned to fly, he first established an airport in Leeds, north of Sioux City.

Then in 1928 he bought Tri-State Airlines, based in North Sioux City.

The airline experienced ups and downs over the years. In 1938, the name was changed to Mid-Continent Airlines to better reflect the Midwestern area it served.

Mid-Continent had an enviable safety record until 1951, when a plane crashed on takeoff from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Miraculously, all 34 people on board were unharmed. But just three days later, an 18-year record with no fatalities ended in Sioux City.

“The plane landed in Sioux City essentially at the same spot where 232 crashed,” said George Lindblade.

A Mid-Continent DC-3 crashed while attempting to land in a snowstorm.

“This happened in sleet and very bad weather, and of course we didn't have the state-of-the-art weather equipment that we have today. This was the first crash of a commercial airliner in the state of Iowa, and there were 25 people on board. Sixteen of them died,” Lindblade said.

Investigators concluded that the pilot had attempted to change his approach from one runway to another and that the plane had then entered a spin.

Lindblade says that years later he happened upon a box of photos of crashes that the public had never seen before.

“Are you going to throw these away? He said, 'Yes.' I asked if I could have them. He said, yes, get them out of here,” Lindblade said.

In August 1952, Mid-Continent, the airline based in Sioux City, ceased to exist when its shareholders agreed to sell it to Braniff International Airways.

“And Mid-Continent became Braniff, which eventually became Ozark. So it was another Sioux City company that took off and disappeared,” Lindblade laments.

Ironically, the man who founded what would later become Mid-Continent Airlines, Arthur Hanford Junior, died in a single-engine plane crash in 1935.

Ozark Flight 982

Another commercial aircraft also crashed in Sioux City.

In December 1968, an Ozark plane crashed at Sioux Gateway Airport. This crash also occurred in bad weather.

Investigators concluded that icing on the wings contributed to the accident.

Ozark Flight 982 took off and crashed in a wooded area about half a mile north of the airport.

35 of the 64 passengers and four crew members were injured.

Most of these injuries were minor.

Nobody was killed.

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