TV RELEASES

EPISODE 1

Heinrich Klein: The Grandfather

KARL KLEIN travels from Germany to Colombia to meet his brother WILLHELM and show him the
logbook of his grandfather, engineer HEINRICH KLEIN, which he found in an old trunk of his belongings.
In this logbook he recounts unknown facts about the rescue mission of the SCADTA plane “Von Krohn” in 1934. The two brothers undertake a trip that begins in Barranquilla, the original headquarters of the SCADTA, to investigate the context of what happened, interviewing each other and historians to round out the story.

It all began on March 10, 1934, when the “Von Krohn” biplane of the SCADTA airline that covered the
Quibdó-Cartago route with 5 people on board lost control due to bad weather conditions and collapsed in the middle of the jungle in border area between Chocó and Valle del Cauca. Among the passengers was NEWTON MARSHALL, an American who was the general manager of the Chocó Pacific Mining Company. He was a a high society figure very close to the Colombian Government.

In Bogotá, engineer Heinrich Klein of SCADTA was informed of the situation with the missing plane. Klein followed the events by radio and telephone, trying to find the accident site from the air, but it was like finding a needle in a haystack. He dealt with pressure from relatives of the passengers on the Von Krohn, and from members of the government who demanded that Marshall be found, preferably alive.

In the middle of the jungle, the badly injured crew members of the “Von Krohn” who survived the impact tried to find help, but one after another they succumbed to the inclemency of the jungle.

EPISODE 2

The Green Hell

After Barranquilla, the Klein brothers arrive in the department of Chocó, to learn where the story of the crashed SCADTA flight C46 originates. Following their grandfather’s story, they visit Quibdó, Istmina and Andagoya, places that the Sikorsky biplane visited prior it went down before reaching Cartago.

April 1934: In the vicinity of the Chocoan jungle, a group of hardened gold diggers went on an expedition to search for an indigenous cemetery where they hope to find a good haul of gold that will change their lives. It was they who, coincidentally, found the body of one of the plane’s crew members covered in fire ants. They heard something in the distance: screams carried away by the wind. Frightened, the “guaqueros” associate the screams with spirits of the dead. Finding the courage, they went up the river and further up they found Marshall, in the brink of death.

Three of the “guaqueros” carried Marhsall and headed back to civilization. Finally the group arrived at the town of Bolívar, where they treated the American. Engineer Klein was commissioned by SCADTA and the Colombian government to go rescue what was left on the plane: mail, documents, gold and platinum. Even though it was a near-suicidal mission, Klein was forced to accept.

EPISODE 3

One more pioneering work

The Klein brothers take the road to Bolívar Valle del Cauca, the town to which NC Marshall was taken in April 1934. They locate the lodge where he was taken. They continue following the logbook, identifying the places to which the engineer was referring, while speaking with people in the region who remember their ancestors talking about the accident. The Klein brothers, together with the guides, analyze how to continue reaching the place where the plane crash occurred, taking into account that today they will have to face the same natural obstacles such as the difficult terrain, bad weather and snakes and poisonous spiders. In addition, the area is nowadays controlled by illegal armed groups that use it as a route for drug trafficking. An alternative will be to carry out an overflight in a small plane to repeat the route that the Von Krohn took and the place it came down.

April 1934: Together with a couple of police officers, Klein began a new expedition towards the heart of the Chocó jungle. Although they carried enough supplies, matches and fuel, Klein suspected they might fall short if the trip lengthened.

After many adventures, the expeditionists managed to reach the site where the remains of the Von Krohn were. Klein managed to recover the with gold, platinum from the Chocoan mines, which totaled close to 33 thousand pesos, a fortune at the time.

On the way back, tempers were running high and supplies were about to run out. There was great
discontent product of fatigue and hunger. The following nights, Klein and the policeman had to stand guard and sleep on top of the backpacks with the precious metals. They finally managed to return to civilization. The “guaqueros” received a reward “on behalf of the Chocó Pacific Mining Company: 3,000 pesos in gold.

Back in Bogotá, Klein return to the passengers’ families the remains of their loved ones as well as their possessions. Thanks to his collaboration with the “guaqueros”, Klein accomplished the mission of rescuing the remains of the “Von Krohn”.