The crew of four took off from Plattsburgh in inclement weather and got lost on the return trip from Watertown. The weather had left the navigation systems unusable and the plane veered 20 miles of course and on a disastrous fate with Wright Peak. The plane last made contact at 2:00 am before going silent, resulting in a wide potential of a search area. Phone calls were coming in from all over the northeast with possible whereabouts and tips of the crash, before a wing section and four parachutes were found in between Wright Peak and Algonquin Mt, by an Air Force search plane.
It was later determined that the plane had clipped the top of Wright Peak, mere feet from clearing the summit. Although, if it had continued on its course, it would have been short of clearing Mt. Marcy by some 900 feet.
From the morning of January 16th and the following several days saw about 50 military personnel and volunteers brave extreme and harsh weather performing a search for the missing crew members. Initially, because there were parachutes found, there was hope of finding someone alive. However, after the first couple of nights in temperatures that reached -20 degrees and snow up to 20 feet, little hope remained. After four days the bodies of three men were recovered and the search would be discontinued after about a week, and the fourth body was never recovered.
Today, there still remains visible pieces of the wreckage near the summit of Wright Peak and along the slopes between the mountains. There is also a remembrance near the peak dedicated to the four lost crewmen, "In Memory of: Aircraft Commander, 1st Lt. Rodney D. Bloomgren, Co-pilot, 1st Lt. Melvin Spencer, Navigator, 1st Lt. Albert W. Kandetski, Observer, Kenneth R. Jensen. A Strategic Air Command B-47 Crew, Killed here 16 January 1962 while on a mission preserving the peace of our nation."
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