Flight of Gold

Book excerpt: On March 12, 1948, Northwest Airlines Flight 4422, a DC-4 with a crew of six, carrying twenty-four merchant marines from Shanghai to New York, crashed high up on Alaska's Mt. Sanford. Air reconnaissance flights spotted the remains of the plane, but the site was too remote for recovery teams. Rumors that the plane had been transporting gold and diamonds enticed treasure hunters to the mountain, but life threatening conditions kept them from reaching "Alaska's Legendary Gold Wreck." Flight of Gold is the first-person account of commercial airline pilot and mountain climber Kevin McGregor, who with pilot Marc Millican, attempted to solve the mystery of the reputed treasure. After four years of near-obsessive efforts, they made two startling discoveries: One led them into leading-edge forensics and the other gave substance to the treasure rumor.