The most famous plane wreck
When I'm in Iceland, I'm always drawn to the most famous plane wreck - a transport plane that has been lying just west of Vik for 50 years. Month after month, the weather and bargain hunters decimate the remains. From time to time friends ask me what this wreck is all about. If you are interested in the history of this machine, you will find further information in the picture galleries at the end of this page .
The silver hull on the black lava sand is predestined for a hard black and white implementation. I edited the images in Lightroom to reflect the somewhat surreal atmosphere of the location. I photographed the wreck three times - in July 2023, January 2019 and July 2014, on our first trip to Iceland. As you can see, bargain hunters have dismantled a significant portion of the aircraft into small parts over these nine years and taken them home.
July 2023
January 2019
July 2014
History
This plane wreck has been lying on the beach of Solheimsandur since 1973. It is not, as is often assumed, a DC3, but a converted Douglas C-117 that American soldiers used to transport their supplies.
Iceland has some of the most unstable weather in the world. Navigational aids were relatively primitive at the time, which led to more U.S. military aircraft crashing on the tiny island the size of Kentucky than almost anywhere else in the world. According to public Air Force and Navy military documents, there were no fewer than 385 accidents involving U.S. military aircraft in Iceland between 1941 and 1973. That's roughly one accident every 31 days for 33 consecutive years.
"You have to understand that the weather in Iceland is a very powerful force. It probably changes faster than anywhere else in the world except the poles, and that's why we don't normally fly over the poles." - said Lieutenant Gregory Fletcher, the 26-year-old co-pilot in training, after the accident.
Let's turn the wheel of time back around 50 years:
Dramatic moments on board
It's November 21, 1973, the day before Thanksgiving. Captain James Wicke's C-117 is on a transport flight from Keflavik to the military base near Höfn. During the flight the weather worsens. The temperature drops rapidly to -10°C and wind gusts increase to almost 100 km/h. The carburettor begins to ice up. As the weather worsens, the battle against the elements is lost. Both engines freeze and stop,
Flight captain Wicke sends out an emergency signal and tries to start the engines again. The distress signal is picked up by another Air Force aircraft, and three planes and two helicopters are immediately in the air. All ships passing the Icelandic south coast are being alerted because it is not known exactly where the plane will land after co-pilot Lt. Gregory Fletcher, a 26-year-old trainee pilot with only 21 hours of flying experience on the C- 117, made a daring decision:
Fletcher takes over the helm from James Wicke for reasons still unknown to me. He knows that if he continued his flight inland it would crash into a mountain - which would mean certain death for him, the pilot and the five passengers. That's why he decides on the better of two bad options: he wants to try to land on the ocean to give them at least a small chance of survival.
The plane loses more and more altitude and breaks through the clouds. Fletcher sees a coastline in front of him - "a damn thing that looked like the moon," as he later says. He brings the plane down and slides 27 meters over the sand dune. During the emergency landing, the propellers bend, the hood is crushed and the tanks burst. The C-117 remains six meters from the waterline. Fletcher saves the lives of all seven inmates.
"That was the smoothest landing I've ever experienced," Howard Rowley, Air Force master sergeant and passenger on board, would later say.
The rescue
A farmer near the crash site hears the noise of the emergency landing. He rushes to his tractor with his wife and fights his way through the snowstorm to the beach, not knowing what awaits him there. Other farmers in the area do the same, and the nearest search and rescue team (SAR), stationed in Vik, also sets out. From the radio data about the plane's speed and altitude, they had already calculated that the plane would land on Sólheimasandur, somewhere between Mýrdalssandur and the Atlantic. At 2 p.m., just an hour after the emergency landing, the rescue team from Vík arrived at the aircraft - just as the survivors were being transported away by an Air Force search helicopter. At the military base in Keflavík it turns out that the people survived the crash uninjured, even without a scratch - which cannot be said about the aircraft.
The disassembly of the aircraft
Dismantling of the aircraft began immediately. The SAR was handed over the 800 liters of fuel that the C-117 still had on board. That was enough to keep the snowmobiles and rescue vehicles running for years to come. The wings were sawn off, the cockpit was dismantled and the engines were removed. Everything that was still salvageable from the C-117 was recovered from the aircraft. Two days after the crash, the fuselage lay like a skeleton in the black, apocalyptic desert. The US military simply left the 10,000-pound hull on the beach and ran away.
Why is the C-117 still on Sólheimasandur?
According to Friðþór Eydal, who was in charge of public relations for the Icelandic armed forces under U.S. command from 1983 to 2006, as part of the deployment agreement between the two nations, it was agreed that if a U.S. aircraft crashed in Iceland, the U.S. would pay 85 percent of the aircraft would cover salvage costs, but the Icelandic government would be responsible for removing the wreckage.
“This scenario would only occur if a landowner filed a claim to remove the wreck,” says Eydal. "And that has almost never happened in a place like Iceland."
And why? According to Eydal, there are two reasons for this: First, the island is 80 percent uninhabited and more than 60 percent of the land is covered by glaciers. Second, Iceland has to import almost everything because of its harsh climate and limited natural resources. Therefore, Icelanders tend not to waste recyclables and to creatively repurpose what little they have. When planes crashed, resourceful Icelanders turned the planes' remains into roofs, fences, and other household items. The military was fine with that - a kind of win-win situation...
Image: Þórir Kjartansson
A rare photo
A member of the Icelandic rescue team at the time, Þórir Kjartansson, took a photo of the plane the day after the emergency landing - still with the engines and wings. As you can see in the picture, the plane was positioned slightly differently back then. The current situation arose from the dismantling of the engines and wings.
And she's still there
Today, almost exactly 50 years later, the C-117 still stands on the lonely beach of Solheimansandur, although it has been decimated by bargain hunters who would like to take a souvenir home with them.
We can only imagine the emotional roller coaster the seven people experienced on November 21, 1973. The great fear on board when they realized that the plane could no longer be controlled. Screams? Urgent prayers? We don't know. But we can imagine the silence after the emergency landing: Gregory managed to land the plane. Everyone is unharmed. Deep breath. Gratitude. Maybe a prayer of thanks.
We should think about all of this when we visit the world's most famous plane wreck on the south coast of Iceland.
