FOG SHROUDS WOODLAND IN SEARCH FOR CRASH VICTIMS.
By Ed Overholser
Buffalo, Tex. (AP) -- Federal and state authorities joined residents of this East Texas town today in searching the rolling, wreckage-scarred woodland for victims of last night's Braniff Airways plane crash.
Fog and the blackjack and post oak trees which cover the red earth in this section hampered the search for the bits of bodies, cargo and metal that mark the spot where the four-engined turbo-prop craft plunged to earth with 28 passengers and a crew of six.
But scarce as the soupy light was, it was better than the night's blackness, broken only by the lights of television camera crews and flashlights of Texas Rangers, highway patrolmen and newsmen.
Airline officials and a growing number of newsmen plodded through the underbrush, seeking clues to the cause of the explosion which witnesses said ripped the big airliner and sent it crashing to earth from 15,000 feet up.
Men walked among a scene made grotesque by the litter that sifted down through the trees after the explosion which was seen 40 miles away as it turned the sky red.
Letters, clothing and one of the large black aircraft tires -- all soaked with blood -- were scattered through the disaster area.
A pair of blue pants hung in the branches of a tree; part of the torso of a man lay below.
The whole area was soaked with the kerosene used as fuel by the turbo-prop engines.
Lawmen piled the remains in heaps, covering them with anything at hand as they waited for ambulances to creep down the five-mile dirt road from U.S. 79 to the crash scene.
The only recognizable portion of the plane still intact was the tail section. The rest of the 75-passenger craft was literally shredded before it struck the earth.
What appeared to be the cargo compartment section of the fuselage and part of an engine came down in the potato patch of R. E. WHITE, about 100 yards behind the white frame house where the elderly farmer and his wife live.
WHITE said he and his wife were sitting on the porch watching television when the plane exploded. He said he ran into the yard and stood staring at the sky for at least five minutes before the rain of wreckage stopped.
"I was scared. I had a funny feeling. I didn't know what it was," he said.
He said after he realized a plane had crashed, he drove into Buffalo, about five miles away, to call the Highway Patrol.
"My wife thought it was lightning. It lit up the whole area and turned the skies red. It was pretty high in the air," WHITE said.
"I thought at first it might have been a jet breaking the sound barrier. It made the most God-Awful noise you ever heard of."

VICTIMS OF CRASH LISTED. PASSENGERS:
HARRY M. DAHL, 48, Dallas representative for Baker Laboratories.