Kanawha Airport Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Pot Plane Crash Became Stuff Of Legend

A DC-6 airplane, like this one, crashed after overshooting the runway at Kanawha Airport. The plane was filled with marijuana.

A little after midnight on June 6, 1979, a Douglas DC 6 cargo plane crashed in Charleston, West Virginia while attempting to land at the old Kanawha airport, what is now Yeager Airport.

The plane was carrying approximately 20,000 pounds of marijuana and the crew was made up of drug smugglers from South America. They had never flown into Charleston before, but decided to come to West Virginia believing security would be lighter, according to Stan Bumgardner, a West Virginia historian, and the editor of Goldenseal Magazine.

The plane was too big for the airport at that time and it was overloaded. Unable to stop in time, the plane crashed over the hillside at the end of the runway.

This story from a recent episode of Inside Appalachia includes a slightly different version of the story in the form of a tall tale from storyteller Bil Lepp. His telling is featured on his CD called “Fire Fire! Pants on Liar!” He told this tall tale back in 2008 at the public library in St. Albans, West Virginia.

Lepp is an award-winning storyteller and five-time winner of the West Virginia Liar’s contest. His brother Paul actually wrote the story.

Bumgardner said one of the biggest challenges for the authorities was what to do with the pot after the crash.

Kanawha County deputies unload bails of marijuana from the pot plane crash.

“With 20,000 pounds of marijuana, it was too much for an evidence room. The feds came in and decided they would burn it,” Bumgardner explained. “The newspaper interviewed Anna Marie Smith and she just talked about how there was an awful smell and it was just burning all the time. And then they asked her about how things had been on the street. And she just said, ‘Well, all of a sudden everybody’s really calm, and they were laughing and talking.’ And it said they started calling her road ‘happy holler.’”

Bumgardner says he’s also heard rumors that seeds from the pot grew up the hillside beside the airport. Authorities tried to kill the plants with diesel fuel, but some locals say the plants didn’t die off and some residents foraged the wild marijuana growing there.

The reason the smugglers were bringing the marijuana into the United States was another issue. Leon Gast was waiting on the ground in a rental truck to collect the goods. The story came out later that he was smuggling the pot to help finance a film about the “Rumble in the Jungle” fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire in 1974.

Gast was convicted on drug smuggling charges, but once he got out of prison, he did actually make the movie, called “When We Were Kings,” and it won an Academy Award in 1996.

June 4, 1971: Glenn Elmo Riggs Hijacks Plane At Kanawha Airport

On June 4, 1971, West Virginia’s only documented plane hijacking occurred in Charleston. Glenn Elmo Riggs, a 58-year-old retired coal miner from Boone County, hijacked a United Airlines flight that had stopped over at Kanawha Airport—now known as Yeager Airport.

He boarded the flight with a .32-caliber pistol and a box of bullets. Shortly after takeoff, he hijacked the 737 and demanded that the pilots fly him to Israel so he could help build a new temple.

When the plane landed at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, Riggs released the passengers and the flight attendant but continued to hold the pilots and flight engineer at gunpoint for hours while waiting on a DC-8 to take him to Israel.

The flight engineer eventually grabbed Riggs’s .32 when the hijacker went to get some water. The police soon charged the plane and arrested Riggs.

After being taken into custody, Riggs told reporters, “I don’t even know how I got on the plane,” and “you know about as much as I do.” He was convicted of air piracy and sentenced to two 20-year sentences in prison.

June 6, 1979: Cargo Plane Carrying 12 Tons of Marijuana Crashes at Yeager Airport

Just after midnight on June 6, 1979, an old Douglas DC-6 cargo plane carrying 12 tons of marijuana attempted to land at Charleston’s Kanawha Airport—now Yeager Airport.

Two Ryder rental trucks were waiting at the airport to haul away the illegal cargo, but the scheme went awry when the plane plummeted off the edge of the runway. Hundreds of bales of marijuana spewed from the plane before it caught fire.

From there, the story gets even more bizarre. While police seized most of the contraband, local residents began scavenging the area for additional marijuana, and pot plants began sprouting on the hillside.

Among those convicted in what would be remembered as the Charleston “pot plane crash” was filmmaker Leon Gast, who’d been waiting in one of the Ryder trucks.

Gast—who’d made films about The Grateful Dead and B. B. King—was trying to finance a new documentary about the 1974 Muhammad Ali-George Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle” fight in Zaire. Seventeen years later—after serving a prison sentence—Gast finally released his film, When We Were Kings, earning him the 1997 Academy Award for best documentary.

November 3, 1947: Dedication of Kanawha Airport

On November 3, 1947, Kanawha Airport was dedicated on Coonskin Ridge near Charleston. World War I ace Captain Eddie Rickenbacker was among those present. The massive earth-moving and mountain-leveling project had taken three years to complete.

The airport’s terminal building was finished in 1950, and an addition was built in 1970. A runway-extension project was completed a year later, allowing the airport to accommodate jet airliners. Other renovations have occurred periodically over the years.

In the 1970s, the airport was the site of two strange aviation incidents. In 1971, a former Boone County coal miner hijacked a plane from Kanawha and demanded to be taken to Israel. He was later apprehended at Dulles Airport near Washington. Eight years later, a cargo plane carrying 12 tons of marijuana plunged over the airport’s hillside. Looters made off with much of the marijuana before law enforcement could secure the area.

Kanawha Airport is now named Yeager Airport in honor of Brigadier General Chuck Yeager, a native of Lincoln County and the first aviator to break the sound barrier. The terminal is named for former U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller.