16 Jul 1948, "Miss Macao" airplane crash | Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

16 Jul 1948, "Miss Macao" airplane crash

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Submitted by Admin on Thu, 2012-11-15 17:21
Book / Document: 
Airplane crashes in and around Hong Kong
Date(s) of events described: 
Fri, 16 Jul 1948

Henry Ching writes:

There have been a number of postings recently on the crash of the CPA plane on Mount Butler in 1949 and air hostess Olive Batley who lost her life in that crash.  There was another and perhaps more dramatic crash involving a plane owned by CPA which occurred in 1948 which may be of interest. The plane was a Catalina and was on its way to Macau from HK. It crashed into the Pearl River estuary about ten miles from Macau as the result of an unsuccessful hijacking attempt.  25 of the 26 people on board lost their lives – the survivor was one of the hijackers. He spent some years in prison awaiting trial, but he was never convicted as there was apparently some doubt as to jurisdiction.  The air hostess was 21 year old Delca de Costa. Not much seems to be known about her, but probably a member of the local Portuguese community or from Macau. Her body was never recovered.

Wikipedia has additional information about this incident.

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Comments

Submitted by David on Mon, 2013-08-12 05:34.

Here's a site with lots more information about it: http://www.chingchic.com/the-miss-macao-affair.html

Thanks to Gary for the link,

Regards, David

Submitted by gweilo8888 on Thu, 2015-04-23 15:51.

Getty Images have a picture of Captain Dale Cramer and an unidentified crew, standing aboard the ill-fated the ill-fated Miss Macao, VR-HDT. I've attached a copy from when these images were freely available through Google's Life image library, but the original on Getty can be licensed below:


http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/pilot-dale-cramer-with-his-crew-standing-on-wing-of-their-news-photo/50773738

It's worth noting that Getty list this as being dated June 01, 1948. If that's accurate, the picture was taken just 46 days before the deaths of Captain Cramer, his crew and passengers, not to mention the destruction of Miss Macao.

Submitted by Geminifox74 on Fri, 2016-08-12 10:31.
This picture is great. Captain Dale Cramer would have been my great-uncle. He was my grandfather's brother. Captain Cramer was actually born a twin but his twin brother died very young of smallpox.