When Marblehead lobsterman Ray Bates saw the news about last week’s mid-air collision over the Potomac River that killed 67 people, it was an all-too-familiar story.
“The same thing happened to my grandfather, George Bates, in 1949,” Ray Bates told the Current. “It shook our family to the core.”
George Bates was elected to Congress for the Massachusetts 6th District in 1936 and served on several powerful committees.
On Nov. 1, 1949, he was home in Salem when he was called to Washington, D.C., to attend a meeting of the Armed Services Committee. His Eastern Airlines flight collided over the Potomac with a fighter plane on a test flight by the Bolivian government.
All 55 people on board Bates’ plane died. The Bolivian pilot survived with serious injuries. At that time, it was the deadliest airliner accident in history.
“My grandfather’s plane landed almost exactly in the same place” as last week’s crash, Bates said.
“This should not have happened a second time. It was horrific,” he added.
George Bates’ son, William, ran for his father’s Congressional seat, which he won and kept until 1969.
