What a wonderful way I had to begin the 63^rd anniversary of the crash of Flying Tiger 923!  Fellow survivor Paul Stewart, of Plano, Texas, rang my phone at noon on the anniversary date, Tuesday, September 23, 2025. It certainly set me back with joy!

Paul was one of the 20 or so brother combat paratroopers on board, all headed for Frankfurt, Germany. He is the single survivor I have spoken to in recent years. Probably the youngest of the active duty soldiers on the Flying Tiger at the time of the disaster, Paul says his family is all doing well, are grown and living nearby.  He and his wife have moved into a comfortable senior living center where they can maintain an active retired lifestyle and be close to family.

Paul spent most of his working career as a lineman for the local electric system. A young 17 year old on 9/23/62, he is now 81. I was 21 at the time I am now 84. We are both happy to be here to celebrate another memorial year. We remember with love and high regards all of those on that fatal flight and those involved in so many ways.

The crash of Flying Tiger 923 in that stormy, frigid North Atlantic is far from forgotten by the remaining 48 survivors and their families and friends as well as:

. . . the dozens of crew members and hundreds of their colleagues of the rescue ship, Swiss registered MS Celerina, a freighter loaded with wheat headed from Canada to Antwerp, Belgium, who provided food, clothing and shelter for the three storm-tossed days at sea to the survivors, all pulled from the lone, overturned life raft;

. . .  and the crew and all of their support personnel of the US Airforce plane that intercepted the SOS calls from the failing Tiger and diverted its course from Scotland to New York to find, track and identify its location from above for the benefit of the rescue ship;

. . . and the hundreds, if not thousands of Canadian sailors of the aircraft carrier Bonaventure and four escort destroyers that were diverted to meet the rescue scene to provide medical and material assistance wherever possible;

. . . and the many hundreds of emergency rescue workers mobilized in the Republic of Ireland at the Cork and Shannon Airports, and the light keepers of the Galley Head lighthouse that served as point of coordination for rescue helicopters that took the most seriously injured from the Celerina to the Cork City airport and Mercy Hospital.  By then, the Celerina was only some eight miles from the Irish coast and could not get any closer due to the unreliable outcropping of rocks in the shallower waters;

. . . and the lists of those involved goes on and on.

Unfortunately, there was no memorial update last year. As the author and editor of this Memorial Site, I must confess that I have not lost interest in the project . I have done very little to update these pages in recent years and none whatever in the past year. My latent case of PTSD rose up and slowed me down with deep feelings of sadness, which has made it difficult to write or talk about it. I am happy I was able to put so much into this memorial as I have, nearly 140 articles in total. I plan to make some significant updates, no matter how few readers may share memories of this event.

This is truly a memorial site for an event that was minimally publicized in the autumn of 1962. This was likely due to the heightening tensions over the threatening “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Do you remember that one? The Russians were sending missiles, some of which were believed to be carrying war-heads, some nuclear war-heads, to the island nation of Cuba. They were planned to be aimed at its closest neighbor, the USA.

I was unaware of this event until long later because I was preoccupied with being a combat parachute trooper dedicated to learning how to defend his nation and went for months as many others did with not paying attention to the news. The bottom line for us involved in the crash, is that most of the news was suppressed. Active combat troopers were not to be transported on the military transport system, even though there were only about 20 aboard, because it might reveal that strike force troops had been reduced during the quieter years following the Berlin Wall Crisis. The result was there was never a memorial created at the time for this event.

The demise of Flying Tiger 923 was a tragedy of tremendous proportions, especially to those directly involved, but not nearly so much as the tragedies of the Vietnam War that followed.

We are honored that you should be reading this and any of the 114 stories linked to the drop-down menu immediately below the picture of our very own tiger above. God bless everyone during this historic 63^rd Anniversary Year. Thank you.

And following is a contribution by our friend, Garry Ahern, of Dublin, Ireland, who was there as a member of the first Emergency Fire and Rescue Team of the then-recently opened Cork Airport. He first penned this poem as part of an adult education night school program:

Ode to Big Bird (Flying Tiger 923)

A Memorial Poem for the “Big Bird” Flying Tiger Flight 923

by Garret Ahern, Dublin, Ireland

“Big Bird”

Out from New jersey,

Big Bird spreading wings,

Trundling east-ward, in

War-cold nineteen-sixty-two.

Three-score and ten-

And more aboard,

Service by the

Rhine in mind.

Far beneath lies rolling

Equinoctial ocean,

Unfriendly to the stricken

Super-Constellation.

Big Bird descending,

Inevitable ditching,

Frantic prayers implore –

Then impact, devastation.

Plucked from the inverted,

Overcrowded, life-raft,

The lucky greet new

Friends and shipmates.

In time, diverted,

The good ship “Celerina”

Nears its rendezvous.

Green fields plain to see.

By Galley Head, the

Helicopter’s chatter

Stampedes a flock of sheep.

Away west, wave-battered

Big Bird settles,

Low in the briny deep.

© 2012, Garry Ahern

Our Anniversary #58 is dedicated to 

Captain John D. Murray, our pilot, a true hero .  .  .

Captain John Murray held 78 lives in the palms of his hands. The weather was horrible. It was dark and the winds were nearly gale force. His Flying Tiger was limping on only one engine. The other three were dead,

It had to be a “white knuckle” flight. He held tight to the controls as he searched the darkness for a suitable stretch of sea to lay the big bird down at its final resting place.

Captain John Murray with head wound upon crash

 

The controls were shaking violently. He grasped all the more tightly. No stretch of water seemed safe enough. Even with almost no power left in its single remaining engine, the heavy aircraft was moving too fast to skip to a soft landing. The ocean troughs and valleys were getting shorter but steeper and more violent. He concentrated and prayed for an inspiration. There had to be a place where he could put down without disintegrating into a twist of metal and human bodies.

He was determined to find it. Read his challenge:

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *    

(Ed. Note: This article was previously published on November 11, 2011, soon after the launching of our memorial blog. Since then we have had 104,053 public views from around the world. Early readers may have forgotten details of Captain Murray’s story. New readers may have missed it completely. He is the man who held our lives, and his own life, in his hands. Had it not been for Captain Murray, it is unlikely you would be reading this story today.)

Captain John D. Murray, 44, of Oyster Bay, Long Island, knew 76 lives were at stake as he slowly brought down the Super Constellation in preparation for ditching in the howling winds and raging waves of the cold north Atlantic.

He faced a dilemma as he searched his way through the darkness: he could follow the recommended ditching strategy of putting the plane down between the troughs, or take advantage of the 50-knot winds at sea level, which would cut his landing speed in half. His challenge was to get the plane down, either way, in the dark, in a gale, with 20 foot waves and with no power left for a second attempt if he didn’t get it right the first time.

The photo on the cover of the book to the left depicts the ideal water landing. Reports of the ditching say the aircraft sank somewhere between two minutes and ten minutes after the splash down, probably closer to the ten minute side.

Captain Murray hit his head on the control panel and was bleeding to the extent that he could hardly see. He made his way out after retrieving a flashlight from the cockpit. He was most likely the last man out and was very late getting to the raft that was filled far beyond capacity. He was pulled in and he sat on the lap of a serviceman.

Evidently the crew was aware of a possible rescue ship, but thought it might be 12 hours off. An aircraft had been following the Flying Tiger right up to its contact with the waves. That aircraft, a US Air Force plane on its way from Prescott, Scotland to Nova Scotia, had diverted in response to the SOS. Because it had been following so close, it knew the position of the raft and soon began dropping flares to mark the location.

The lone life raft that was to hold all survivors had accidently inflated upside-down. That caused the emergency lights along the upper rim of the raft to glow deep into the black waters, making them totally useless. The emergency kit that contained first aid materials and a badly needed flashlight was out of reach as well. Those items were zipped in the raft’s emergency pouch which was now facing down into the water.

The raft drifted at a rapid clip for nearly six hours, covering about 22 miles in that time. Waves that seemed to glow in the dark splashed over the passengers, delivering a frigid chill every time.

Finally a rescue ship came into sight, the Celerina, a Swiss freighter. Due to the size of the waves, the recovery had to be handled with care. Rope ladders were thrown out to the raft and people began to cling to them. The crew pulled the ladders up with passengers clinging to them, taking them into safety. Captain Murray was again one of the last to get off the raft. When he had nearly reached the top, the ship pitched and he fell off, sinking into the dark waters alongside of the raft. A trooper grabbed his life vest and pulled him back into the raft. He made it into the ship on his second try.

There have been a number of news stories about Captain Murray’s role in the recovery. Some questioned his method of ditching. Ultimately, his choice resulted in the survival of 48.

The Saturday Evening Post ran a photo feature that included a sketching of the jam-packed raft being tossed among the waves. Fortunately for the survivors, Captain Murray was a flying pro! Had he not been, the outcome might have been far more disastrous.

According the Civil Aeronautics Board report adopted September 10, 1963, Captain Murray had a total of 17,500 flying hours, of which 4,300 were in the L-1049 type aircraft. His last FAA first class physical examination was passed on June 16, 1962 (limitation – reading glasses). He had flown 247.4 hours (172.9 in L-1049s) in the last 90 days; 72.6 hours (41.2 in L-1049s) in the past 30 days; and had 33 hours of rest prior to the flight. He knew flying and he knew the L-1049.

Months after the crash, Captain Murray relocated his family from the states to Shannon, Ireland, where he continued to work for the Flying Tiger Line. Tragically, he died some six years later in a scuba diving accident off the coast of Australia.

Captain Murray is our hero.

Air Force Journalist and Ditching Survivor Peter Foley did a lot of writing about the horrors of the ditching and joys of survival. One of  his stories with perhaps the most impact appeared in the Saturday Evening Post magazine in October of 1962. Included with that story was an artist rendition of the single, flooded and overcrowded life raft. The picture tells the story quite accurately. (Packed like sardines.)

 

Chartered for an education and orientation tour.

Photo above is the actual Flying Tiger Flight 923 aircraft that was ditched in the North Atlantic on September 23, 1962. The photo was taken in June of 1961 by Ragnar Domstadt, who was junior in engineering at the Chalmers Technical University at Gothenberg, Sweden. The Super Constellation with the registration number N6923C was sitting on the tarmac of the old Gothenberg Torslanda airport. Ragnar had arranged for the chartering of the aircraft to fly his engineering class to and from the US for an education and orientation tour. He was surprised to see the aircraft involved in a deadly crash at sea within 15 months of the trip he had arranged.

It was a sunny day at Bromore Cliffs at Ballybunion, Ireland. This is the site of one of the two known memorials for the crash of the Flying Tiger 923, which occurred some 500 west of that point, on September 23, 1962. It was at night, during a vicious North Atlantic storm. Seventy six men, women and children were on board. Approximately 20 of the passengers were newly graduated combat paratroopers headed for their first assignments at bases in western Germany. Forty eight persons survived disaster. Twenty eight died in the ravages of the sea.

Local Bromore Cliffs community leader Mike Flahive created the memorial, totally on his own and on his own property where his cattle graze at the steep edges of the cliffs. The memorial garden is open to the public and attracts dozens of visitors daily, many of whom come from around the world to play golf at the famous Ballybunion golf course.

Views from the Cliffs

 

Flahive was inspired to dig into the details of the crash when at the age of 11, he looked out his bedroom window at the edge of the cliffs to see the giant Canadian aircraft carrier, Bonaventure, stopped no more than a football field distance away at the mouth of the Shannon River estuary. The ship was bringing in some of the dead and injured from the crash. The crash was widely publicized in Ireland and England while being virtually unnoticed by the United States news media.

Seen shaking hands are at left, Fred Caruso, one of the survivors who was evacuated by helicopter at Galley Head to Mercy Hospital in Cork City, Ireland, To the right is monument creator and memorial garden benefactor, Mike Flahive. The two were featured in a TV documentary entitled “Wild Atlantic Way” produced by well-known and popular RTE broadcaster, John Creedon.

Three visitors shown in the photo are Cowboy Hugh Broadus a cattle rancher from Colstrip, Montana; Fred Caruso of Eagle, Colorado and Glengarriff, County Cork, Ireland, and Margaret Ellen Caruso, his wife and sister of the Cowboy. The three were treated to a night in the cozy family cottage on the cliffs, from which Flahive saw the Canadian Aircraft Carrier on September 25, 1962. The Bromore Memorial site commemorates several shipwrecks and air crashes along the “Wild Atlantic Way” and features an original World War II observation sentry post. The site is open to the public daily.