On this date in 1900, Clarence Bates was born in Albany, New York. Bates enlisted in the Navy during World War I and served as a wireless radio operator. In the 1920s, Clarence decided to learn to fly and took pilot training at Hamilton Airport in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. After Bates got his pilot’s license, he got a job flying the mail route to Chicago, Fargo, and Winnipeg, with a plane equipped with skis during the winter.
In 1933, Clarence joined Northwest Airlines and became the operations manager at Fargo’s Hector Field Airport. During the winter of 1934–35, noted woman flyer Amelia Earhart was stranded in Fargo due to a snowstorm. Clarence invited Amelia to stay with his family until the weather cleared. During supper that night, Earhart regaled the Bates family with her flying stories.
In November 1935, Bates became a captain and piloted a Northwest Airlines route between Chicago, Minneapolis, Fargo, and Billings, Montana.
On October 30, 1941, Bates was flying his regular route from Minneapolis to Fargo. The plane he was flying was a Northwest twin-engine DC-3. On its landing approach to Hector Field, weather conditions caused a massive buildup of ice on the wings. The plane crashed several miles short of the runway and burst into flames.
Twelve passengers and three crew members perished. Bates was thrown clear of the crash and was the only survivor. He was found wandering around the crash site by the rescue crew. This crash is listed as the worst airline disaster in North Dakota, even though the actual crash site was across the Red River in Moorhead, Minnesota.
After he recovered, Bates took time off from Northwest Airlines and contributed to the World War II effort by test-flying military aircraft. Just over one year after he survived the Fargo crash, on October 31, 1942, Clarence was test-flying a massive four-engine Army B-24 bomber from the St. Paul airport in Minnesota. Soon after takeoff, a mechanical failure caused the large plane to crash, killing Bates and three crew members.
Clarence Bates was survived by his wife and two children.
Dakota Datebook by Scott Nelson
Sources:
- Findagrave – Clarence Frederick Bates
- The New York Times – Nov 4 1941 – Pilot Tells Story of Airliner Crash
- Wikipedia – Northwest Airlines Flight 5)(Accident Archives – Oct 31 1942- St Paul
- MN-B-24
