The Night Lakers’ Plane Went Down in Iowa Cornfield

In the early hours of Jan. 18, 1960, the roar of an airplane flying very low overhead awakened Joe Twit.

It sounded like a big plane, and big planes don’t buzz Carroll, Iowa. Not at 1:30 in the morning, especially not in the middle of a hellacious snowstorm. Something was wrong, and when something went wrong in Carroll, Joe Twit was needed.

He and his wife lived upstairs at the Twit Funeral Home, and Joe drove the town’s ambulance, which doubled as a coroner’s wagon.

He was already starting to dress when the phone rang. It was the sheriff’s office.

“Joe, we’ve got an airplane down in a cornfield out on the Steffes farm,” the dispatcher told Twit.

“I’ll be there in five minutes,” Joe said.

Four hours earlier, Vern Ullman, the pilot of the Minneapolis Lakers’ plane, received takeoff clearance from the tower at Lambert Field in St. Louis.

The Lakers were glad to be getting out of town. They had been crunched by the hated Hawks the day before, and had endured a three-hour delay at the airport, waiting for plane repairs and storm clearance.

Ullman, a retired Marine pilot, taxied the old DC-3 down the runway and lifted it off into a white sheet of night sky. He had to take the plane out low, under the air traffic stacked up in the sky over St. Louis because of the storm.

The flight was bumpy from the start, no surprise to the players. The DC-3 is a sturdy and reliable aircraft, but short on comfort. Being a prop plane, it flew through the weather, not over it.

In the front of the narrow cabin, the only part of the plane ever warmed much by the heating system, the team’s card players quickly set up shop.

Hot Rod Hundley, Elgin Baylor, Dick Garmaker, Frank (Pops) Selvy, Bob (Slick) Leonard, Jim (Boomer) Krebs and Larry (Desert Head) Foust--he was bald--leaned over their custom-made card table, wedged into the aisle. No Laker flight ever took off without the card table in place and the game already in progress, usually poker, dealer’s choice, $2 limit.

Krebs, whose Ouija board had recently foretold a team plane crash, cheated on the first hand and, as usual, was caught.

Less than 10 minutes into the flight, the cabin lights flickered, dimmed and finally died. The card players scrambled for flashlights, but this flight was unusually rough, and the heater had gone out when the lights died. It took a lot to discourage these players, but this card game was called on account of cold, darkness and bumpiness.

The players weren’t yet aware that the plane’s two generators had blown shortly after takeoff, and the crew was now flying with no radio, no heat, no defroster and no cockpit lights. Within 15 minutes of takeoff, the storm had closed off visual contact with the ground. With no radio, and with heavy traffic over the St. Louis airport, Ullman couldn’t risk returning.

He pointed the plane toward Minneapolis, using the compass, but soon it began to gyrate wildly. The boys in the cockpit didn’t know where they were or where they were going.

The passengers--nine players, Coach Jim Pollard, six other adults and four children--were calm and quiet. There was nothing to do but sit back and ride out another storm. That was something the Lakers were experienced at, in the air and on the ground.

This was a team floundering, going nowhere. Some games, barely a thousand fans showed up at the Minneapolis Armory. Team owner Bob Short, a dynamic, young Minneapolis lawyer and trucking magnate, was running short of cash. He was selling players, and even exploring the idea of moving the team, soon, maybe even to Los Angeles. But the league’s other owners probably wouldn’t allow it.

This was a shoestring league, and the cost of trips to California would be too high. The NBA in 1960 had a look that present-day fans would barely recognize. It was much simpler, tougher, whiter and cheaper. And there were no jet planes for the players.

In the cockpit, Ullman pulled back on the stick and tried to climb over the storm, get high enough to see stars and get a celestial direction reading. As the plane climbed, the cabin temperature dropped and the passengers huddled in blankets. With no pressurization, the air in the cabin became thinner, and many of the passengers became short of breath.

Baylor, who hated and feared flying under the best of conditions, would have given a year’s salary for a parachute. The man nicknamed Motormouth didn’t say a word. He pulled his blanket tighter and fought back waves of nausea.

The scheduled two-hour flight was already three hours old and still there was no word from the cockpit. The storm outside was louder than the noise of the twin prop engines. Visibility was nearly zero. Tommy Hawkins, the rookie from Notre Dame, was sitting in the back row, taking stock of the situation. He noticed ice accumulating on the wings and on the cabin window glass, and even on the cabin floor. And now, one of the engines seemed to be sputtering and coughing.

Finally, nearly four hours into the flight, co-pilot Howard Gifford opened the cockpit door, stepped into the passenger cabin and gave a quick status report.

“We have no lights, no generator, no radio, and we’re lost,” he told the Lakers. “We have no idea where we are, not even which state we’re over, and we’re running low on fuel. We came down to about 500 feet to get below the storm and we can see some lights below, so it must be a town.

“The captain’s been shining a flashlight out the window, hoping to get someone down there to turn on the airport lights, if there is an airport, but no luck. He spotted what looks like a cornfield. We can see the dark corn stalks against the snow. The captain thinks that’s our best shot, to try the cornfield.”

Hot Rod Hundley said: “Let’s go for it.”

Baylor got out of his seat and lay down in the aisle, wrapping himself tighter in his blanket.

“Just put it down anywhere,” he moaned. “I don’t care.”

Down below, in the dark, cars were arriving from town. It was obvious the plane was buzzing the cornfield, and would likely attempt a landing there, so the cars lined up on the road alongside the field.

If the plane landed, the passengers would need a ride into town. If it crashed, well, the townsfolk would do what they could.

Finally, there was a slight clearing, enough visibility to attempt a landing. Ullman cut the engines, and the Minneapolis Lakers floated down toward Elmer Steffes’ field of standing corn. The DC-3 plopped into the corn and bounced softly three or four times. After plowing a neat furrow 100 yards long through the corn, the plane came to a gentle and noiseless stop.

Inside the cabin, there was complete silence for several seconds. “Are we dead?” Baylor wondered. Then, as if on cue, the players erupted in whoops and shouts of joy and relief.

The year 1960 was a big one for new beginnings. John F. Kennedy was elected the 35th President, the United States sent a chimpanzee into space, and the Soviet Union one-upped us by putting a man into orbit.

And Bob Short, his Lakers clinging to life as a franchise, decided to move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles after the 1959-60 season. The Lakers had no way of knowing what to expect in L.A., whether they would be embraced or rejected, accepted or swallowed up in the vast, sprawling sea of freeways and suburbs.