Lost in Shangri-La is a story about an American airplane called "The Gremlin Special", which crashed on May 13, 1945 in New Guinea

New Guinea

New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...

, and the subsequent rescue

1945 New Guinea Gremlin Special rescue

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...

 of the survivors. The story was described in the November 1945 issue of Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest

Reader's Digest is a general interest family magazine, published ten times annually. Formerly based in Chappaqua, New York, its headquarters is now in New York City. It was founded in 1922, by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace...

, and later made into a book by 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...

 in 2011

2011 in literature

The year 2011 will involve some significant events and new books.-Events:*Tomas Tranströmer wins the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature.*Jennifer Egan wins the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.-Literature:*T.C...

.

The airplane started from 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....

 in Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

 as a pleasure flight

General aviation

General aviation is one of the two categories of civil aviation. It refers to all flights other than military and scheduled airline and regular cargo flights, both private and commercial. General aviation flights range from gliders and powered parachutes to large, non-scheduled cargo jet flights...

 over a remote valley in New Guinea with 24 passengers, but only 3 people survived the crash: WAC

Women's Army Corps

The Women's Army Corps was the women's branch of the US Army. It was created as an auxiliary unit, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps on 15 May 1942 by Public Law 554, and converted to full status as the WAC in 1943...

 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. They were later rescued

1945 New Guinea Gremlin Special rescue

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...

 by glider plane.

The name "Shangri-La" was given by the press, lifted from the 1933 novel Lost Horizon. The "Gremlin" in the plane's name was borrowed from the myth of Gremlins, which are often associated to mishaps and mechanical troubles of airplanes.