Word: ganders
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ever. Headed home for the holidays to Fort Campbell, Ky., after six months of multinational peacekeeping duties in the hot winds of the Sinai Peninsula, the troopers died in the bleak brush and deep chill of Newfoundland when their chartered DC-8 jet failed to sustain its takeoff from Gander International Airport. The blue- and-white plane rose less than 1,000 ft., then smashed, tail first, into a small hill, disintegrating in flames about a half-mile from the end of the runway...
Even before the Gander crash, 1985 ranked as the worst year for aviation fatalities. The total (excluding the Soviet Union, which does not report its air accidents): 1,948, far beyond the previous 1974 record of 1,299. The disaster was also the second to strike American troops assigned to peacekeeping roles in the fractious Middle East. On Oct. 23, 1983, a terrorist's suicidal truck-bomb attack on a Marine headquarters in Beirut killed 241 servicemen. Though a Lebanon-based terror group, Islamic Jihad, claimed it had caused the latest crash with a bomb, Canadian officials quickly discouraged speculation...
...Canada's Aviation Safety Board, who rushed to oversee what may be a lengthy probe, were weighing several factors that might have played a role in the crash. Some U.S. air-safety experts, who had no firsthand information, pointed to the weather: ice had formed on other planes at Gander that night, and some pilots had taken deicing precautions. Captain John Griffin of the doomed aircraft had not. Other experts noted that the 90-ton aircraft, packed to capacity and loaded with more than 60 tons of fuel, may have been approaching its maximum load for a safe takeoff...
...await this week's rotation home. His buddies departed on a 1,900- mile flight to Cologne, West Germany, where the DC-8 landed for a 90-minute refueling stop. Security there was described as tight. After a 2,700-mile Atlantic crossing, the plane touched down at Gander to refuel again for the final, 1,700-mile leg to Kentucky...
...face of all these riotous acts and raucous collisions, Cornelisen raises her eyebrows more often than her voice. She propels the reader through an elaborate wild-gander chase with confident speed but with deftness enough to deal with its various flat tires and accidents. By the end, indeed, she has succeeded in driving her point home without losing her balance. -By Pico Iyer...