The aircraft, registered N1678M, had begun its life in 1945 as a military cargo hauler -- a Curtiss C-46F-1-CU Commando powered by twin Pratt & Whitney R-2800 Double Wasp engines. By 1951, it had been converted for commercial passenger service and had logged 4,138 flight hours. The conversion of surplus military transports into civilian airliners was common practice in the postwar years, as airlines scrambled to meet surging demand with affordable aircraft. Miami Airlines was operating a non-scheduled, non-stop passenger flight from Newark to Tampa that December afternoon, with 52 passengers and 4 crew aboard, including Captain C.A. Lyons of Miami.

Trouble announced itself early. The right engine was sluggish to start, and witnesses on the ground noticed smoke streaming from it continuously during taxi. When the C-46 lifted off around 3:03 PM EST, Newark tower personnel spotted a trail of white smoke from the right side of the aircraft. The tower controller triggered the crash alarm immediately. On the ground, a Miami Airlines captain who had been observing the takeoff reached his own conclusion -- the smoke suggested an overheated right brake -- and phoned the tower to warn the crew to keep its landing gear extended, or lower it again if already retracted. The tower relayed the message. The crew acknowledged and began lowering the gear. But the warning, correct though it was, arrived too late to change what happened next.

The C-46 crashed into the residential city of Elizabeth, just south of the airport. All 56 people on board perished. Among the passengers was Doris Ruby, a nightclub entertainer from New York City -- one of the many ordinary people whose lives ended in a neighborhood that had no reason to expect a plane falling from the sky. The crash site was barely a mile from the airport boundary, a grim reminder of how little margin existed between the runways of a major metropolitan airport and the homes beneath its flight paths. Elizabeth's residents had already lived with the noise and proximity of Newark Airport for years. Now they had experienced its worst possible consequence.

The 1951 crash was devastating on its own, but it was not isolated. Within a span of just 58 days, Elizabeth suffered three separate plane crashes originating from Newark Airport. A second disaster struck on January 22, 1952, and a third on February 11, 1952. The cumulative toll was staggering, and the public outcry that followed forced a national conversation about airport safety, flight paths over populated areas, and the regulation of non-scheduled airlines operating aging converted military aircraft. Newark Airport was temporarily closed after the third crash. The tragedies over Elizabeth became a catalyst for stricter federal aviation oversight and helped shape the safety framework that would eventually govern American commercial aviation for decades to come. Author Judy Blume, who grew up in Elizabeth, later drew on these events for her 2015 novel "In the Unlikely Event."