One Mistake That Ended 16 Lives | 1967 Lake Erie skydiving disaster

This Mistake Cost 16 Skydivers Their Lives (Lake Erie Disaster)
How One Mistake Cost 16 Skydivers their Lives | Disaster in Ohio
One Mistake That Ended 16 Lives

On August 27, 1967, eighteen skydivers jumped from a civilian North American B-25 Mitchell some 20,000 feet (6,100 m) above Lake Erie, four or five nautical miles (7.5–9.3 km) from Huron, Ohio, after an error by air traffic control led the pilot to believe he was over Ortner Airport, which was in fact twelve to thirteen miles (19–21 km) away. The jump was executed over heavy cloud cover, in violation of Federal Aviation Administration rules, and the skydivers were unaware that they were over water until they punched through the clouds at 4,000 feet (1,200 m). Sixteen drowned; two were rescued by a civilian pleasure boat.
The disaster was at the time the deadliest in the history of recreational skydivingand led to congressional scrutiny into regulation of skydiving. A report by the National Transportation Safety Board faulted the pilot, and to a lesser extent the parachutists, for executing a jump through clouds, and faulted the controller for misidentifying the plane's position after confusing it with a Cessna 180 Skywagon there to photograph the jump. The United States was subsequently held liable for the controller's error; the legal case, Freeman v. United States (1975), is notable for its holding that the skydivers did not have contributory negligence because the regulations they violated were not about their own safety.

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