Andrea Doria

[D.J.J. Ring, Jr.]

Andrea Doria Live: July 26th, 1956, 7:30 AM - Shortly before seven this morning, with the arrival of helicopters sent to evacuate the injured from Stockholm’s infirmary expected imminently, the ship’s hospital staff carries Norma di Sandro and four critically wounded crewmen by stretcher up to the liner’s stern. The approaching aircraft are first noticed as a dull but steady roar mingling with the whining sounds of the small planes already circling above the scene, and soon, the silhouettes of two helicopters and an escorting HU-16 Albatross appear over the horizon from the northeast. On arriving, all three of the aircraft first circle the listing Andrea Doria once before making their way over to Stockholm, still tethered by her broken anchor chains to the sea floor some two miles away to the south.

The first helicopter, a Sikorsky H-19 “Chickasaw” from the Coast Guard Air Station in Salem, Massachusetts piloted by Chief Petty Officer James Keiffer, makes the first attempt at landing on Stockholm’s stern, but with winds gusting to nearly twenty miles an hour, the maneuver proves impossible. Second to try is the larger Piasecki H-21 “Flying Banana,” piloted by Lieutenant Claude Hess from Otis Air Force Base on Cape Cod, but this attempt also proves impossible. With doctors aboard both aircraft having been picked up along the way on Nantucket, the decision is made for the pilots to instead lower their stretcher baskets onto Stockholm’s fantail.

Three-year-old Norma di Sandro is the first of the injured to be lifted into CPO Keiffer’s awaiting Chickasaw. Having been brought by lifeboat to Stockholm without either of her parents, the unconscious girl’s identity is completely unknown at this time, and the ship’s doctor has attached a tag to her nightgown reading, “Italian child born - is recommended treatment at nearest surgical clinic - consequence of fractured cranium.” Aside from this note, the only other clue to Norma’s identity is a miniature gold bracelet in the shape of a ram’s horn that she still wears on her wrist.

Next into the same helicopter is Alf Johannson, a Stockholm crewman who suffered a fractured skull and multiple compound fractures in the collision. He had stoically joked with the attending doctors in the ship’s hospital before the arrival of the aircraft, saying that he might not “die after all.” By the time he is lifted into the stretcher basket, however, he has slipped into a coma, and will die on Nantucket before the other injured victims there can be transferred to a second Coast Guard plane.

Lieutenant Hess then positions his larger Air Force helicopter over the fantail, where Stockholm crewmen Wilhelm Gustavsson, who has lost his left eye and suffered a broken collarbone; Arne Smedberg, with a concussion and broken tibia; and Lars Falk, with a broken neck and cranial fractures, are each loaded into the basket and hoisted aboard. The entire procedure is over by 8:30, at which time both aircraft turn northwest and head for the island of Nantucket. There, the victims will be transferred once more to an aircraft bound for Boston, and ultimately to the city’s Brighton Marine Hospital.

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Air Force “Flying Banana” at Stockholm’s fantail - July 26th, 1956

Photograph via the archives of the United States Coast Guard