The Gremlin Special was a Douglas C-47 Skytrain that crashed during a sightseeing flight over the "Shangri-La" valley in New Guinea in 1945. The recovery of the three survivors from an isolated valley surrounded by mountains, enemy troops, and native inhabitants made world-wide news at the time and is the subject of the 2011 book Lost in Shangri-La

Lost in Shangri-La

Lost in Shangri-La is a story about an American airplane called "The Gremlin Special", which crashed on May 13, 1945 in New Guinea, and the subsequent rescue of the survivors...

by author Mitchell Zuckoff

Mitchell Zuckoff

Mitchell Zuckoff is a professor of journalism at Boston University. He is the author of Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, published in April 2011 by HarperCollins...

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Accident

The Gremlin Special flew into the side of a mountain on May 13, 1945. Four passengers survived the intial wreck with one succumbing to injuries the next day. The survivors were Corporal

Corporal

Corporal is a rank in use in some form by most militaries and by some police forces or other uniformed organizations. It is usually equivalent to NATO Rank Code OR-4....

 Margaret Hastings, Sergeant Kenneth Decker and Lieutenant John McCollom.

The Baliem Valley was previously explored in 1938 by Richard Archbold

Richard Archbold

Richard Archbold was an American zoologist and philanthropist. He was independently wealthy, being the grandson of the capitalist John Dustin Archbold. He was educated at private schools and later attended classes at Columbia University though he never graduated...

, flying in a PBY-2. The survivors of the Gremlin Special crash and the press believed they were the first outsiders to encounter the Dani people

Dani People

The Dani people, also spelled Ndani, and sometimes conflated with the Lani group to the west, are a people from the central highlands of western New Guinea ....

 who inhabited the area.

Rescue

Search aircraft were dispatched when the Gremlin Special did not return. Three survivors were spotted on the ground during an air search on 17 May. Two medical paratroopers were deployed to the site, followed by 10 other support troops. A journalist, Alexander Cann was dropped into the site to document the rescue attempt, and the interactions with the native people.

The high-altitude rescue was performed using Waco CG-4

Waco CG-4

The Waco CG-4 was the most widely used United States troop/cargo military glider of World War II. It was designated the CG-4 by the United States Army Air Forces, and named Hadrian in British military service....

 gliders towed by a Douglas C-47 Skytrain. Three separate rescues were performed by towing a glider with single pilot into the valley. The glider was then loaded and configured for a live capture by the towplane which recovered the survivors, towing them back to a base in Hollandia

Jayapura

Jayapura City is the capital of Papua province, Indonesia, on the island of New Guinea. It is situated on Yos Sudarso Bay . Its approximate population in 2002 was 200,000....

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Aircraft

• The "Gremlin Special" was a Douglas C-47 Skytrain
• A Waco CG-4 was used in the rescue attempt. The first glider sustained damage from low flight over trees and a whipping parachute that was snagged on takeoff. A second CG-4 was used for the remaining two rescues.