In our design's we draw inspiration from classic watches and history connected to Iceland. So when we decided to design and introduce a new Pilot watch to our collection of watches we did a thorough research of Icelandic aviation history and it wasn't hard to choose a worthy and dramatic story to be inspired by, the worlds most famous DC-3 Dakota wreck sitting on top of its grave in a post-apocalyptic surrounding of vast black sand (Sólheimasandur) on the southern coast of Iceland.

On 21 of November 1973, the day before thanks giving, the Navy plane Douglas Dakota C-117, serial number 17171 was flown by Captain James Wicke on a routine mission to the east part of Iceland when the weather turned to the worse and temperature plunged to -10°C. The wind gust increased and the carburettor started sucking in ice. As the weather force increased, the fight with heavy turbulence was lost and both engines stopped spinning. Wrapped in heavy fog, the five passengers had no clue as to where they where as they could not even see the tip of the wings when they looked out the window, fearing the worst, that they where going to crash into a mountain and die.

As the plane was falling over Vatnajökull glacier, Captain Wicke put out a mayday and tried to restart the engines. The mayday signal was picked up by another airforce plane and immediately 3 Phantom air jets where airborne and 2 helicopters. All ships sailing on the south coast of Iceland where notified as it was not known exactly where the plane would land once a daring decision had been made by Lieutenant Gregory Fletcher, a 26-year-old pilot in training who had only flown 21 hours in a C-117.

Fletcher knowing that a crash into the mountains would kill him and his passengers opted for the better of few bad choices. He was going to try his luck and land on the ocean, giving them a slight better chance to survive as one might possibly live for more than 15 seconds in the cold Atlantic ocean even though the hypothermia would set in so fast. Crashing into the ice cap of the largest glacier in Europe was a certain death. As the plane kept loosing altitude, reaching the coast line Flecher came to realise that they where gliding over “some goddam thing that looked like the moon” He managed to get the plane parallel to the shore line and used the frozen black sand beach as a bumpy runway. He skidded some 27m (90 feet) over the sand dune bending the propellers, crushing the engine cover and rupturing the tanks, but 6 meters (20 feet) from the ocean where the plane stopped, Fletcher had saved everyones life. “Smoothest landing I’ve ever been a part of,” said Howard Rowley, an Air Force Master Sergeant.

The survivors were airlifted away by the Air Force search helicopter, just an hour after the crash. Later on, back at the Keflavík military base those involved where found to have survived without any injury, actually with out a scratch. The same could not be said about the plane it self, the US Navy dismantled the most important parts and left the rest to its fate and two days after the crash the fuselage was like a skeleton in the black apocalyptic desert. That was over 40 years ago now.

For a long time, the Dakota crash site was considered an hidden secret among photo nerds and lay largely unnoticed in the sand. The documentary film “Heima” by the Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós in 2007 raised public awareness and then later when Justin Bieber skateboarded on the roof in his music video for “I’ll Show You” (2015), the plane wreck became known far beyond the country’s borders.