It was a day like any other until parts fell from the sky

FOUNTAIN CITY, WIS. - The deadliest day in area history started out like any August Sunday. The country was baking in a heat wave. Highs had been in the 90s all week, just the thing for county fairs and drying corn in the field.

As the day wore on, a storm brewed.

In Chicago on that Aug. 29, Northwest Airlines flight 421 took off at 3:50 p.m. with 34 passengers headed to Minneapolis.

At 4:55 p.m., cruising at 8,000 feet, Flight 421 passed over La Crosse. On a clear day, co-pilot David Brenner could have looked down on his parents' home on Cass Street.

As they passed over the city, the crew pointed the plane to the northwest and were cleared to begin their descent to Minneapolis.

Four minutes later, they radioed to report passing through 7,000 feet. They gave no indication of trouble.

It was the last transmission from the flight.

People on the ground in Winona, Minn., watched as the storm grew and the plane flew into the building bank of clouds.

Then things began falling from the sky.

Aluminum parts. A blue blanket. A pillow. A wallet belonging to J. W. Tinkers of Philadelphia. C.A. Carlson's hat.

Winona patrolman Ed Hittner was in his squad car at the corner of 3rd and Main when his radio crackled with a call about a downed plane.

Along with Detective Tony Kamla and a rookie officer, Hittner headed over the bridge into Wisconsin. A mile or so north on Hwy. 35, near Lock and Dam 5A, they saw a wing in the marsh. Hittner, a pilot himself, waded into the waist-deep water.

The fuselage was on a steep slope about 50 yards down the ravine on John and Merton Sutter's farm. The tail came down near the top of another ridge. Other parts of the plane were strewn over a debris field nearly 2 miles long.

Priest's body found unscathed

It was soon clear there were no survivors, although many recount the discovery Monday morning of a priest, still strapped in his seat and apparently unscratched. Some even speculated he had lived through the night.

The rescuers had formed a chain, passing stretchers up the hillside. A neighboring farmer had a Dodge Power Wagon with a winch they used to pull some of the wreckage apart.

As the bodies were hauled out, they were placed on trucks and taken to the Fountain City auditorium, which served as a makeshift morgue, where relatives soon assembled to help identify and claim the victims.

Rumors spread of looting, but there were no arrests. Most, it seemed, just wanted a glimpse of something extraordinary.

The death toll doesn't come close to that of modern jumbo jet crashes, but at the time, Flight 421 was the worst disaster in Northwest's 22-year history, and the first on its Chicago-Twin Cities route.

Many at the time speculated the plane had been struck by lightning. They wouldn't learn what had happened until the following summer, when the Civil Aeronautics Board released its accident investigation report.

The cause was a design flaw.

After the plane entered the storm, the left wing tip, weakened by a hairline crack, snapped under the force of the wind. As it broke free, the wing clipped the rear stabilizer, tearing off the tail section. The plane, now uncontrollable, continued on its northeast trajectory, breaking apart in the air.

Memories of the event

Mary Aus and her husband, Michael, now live in a new house on the former Sutter farm. Neither was born when the plane crashed, but the event has infused their memories.

Mary, Merton Sutter's daughter, remembers playing on the plane's stairs as a young girl.

Michael sometimes explores the ravine, where he has found pieces of the plane -- a red cockpit warning light, bits of Plexiglass windows, the shard of a plastic plate stamped with the Northwest logo -- and luggage.

A few years ago, he was hunting in the ravine when he found a jagged chunk of aluminum, about a foot square. He donated it to the Fountain City Area Historical Society, where it sits in a glass display case.