Alternate Source: www.MarksFriggin.com

DOC: October 20, 1977

Howard began by asking Artimus about the band's crash and how that all went down. Artimus said they were just playing PONG and hanging out in the plane, which was a chartered 1947 model Convair 240, N55VM, that they bought to transport the band and their equipment from gig to gig. On this fateful day, the band was travelling between shows from Greenville, South Carolina to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The gauges on the old plane weren’t very reliable so the pilots would usually check the fuel levels manually with a stick. Apparently the pilots did not do their due diligence on this day because they were flying over a forest in McComb, Mississippi when they realized they were running out of fuel. “It's cool when this happens in a tour bus, but not in an airplane.” Artimus was actually in the cockpit jump seat when they were trying to switch the fuel tanks.

They only had 60 miles to make it to their destination but the pilots decided to attempt an emergency landing in a field just past the tree line ahead. They began to descend out of the clouds only to realize the plane was much lower than expected and already right on top of the trees. “Trees are bad because they don't move.”

Everyone inside the cabin was very quiet and just praying. Artimus and Ronnie Van Zandt gave each other the hippie handshake while Ronnie flashed a big smile as if to say he accepted that his fate was sealed. Ronnie once told Artemis that he thought he would never live to see the age of 30 and, unfortunately on this day, he was right.

Artimus said he didn't have his life flash before his eyes or anything like that. He remembers how he was playing stewardess and telling the guys to conserve as much energy as possible as they were going down. He went back to the cockpit and sat in the navigator seat but the pilot told him to go to the back and strap himself in. The pilots made the mistake of putting down the landing gear too early which created drag and "sucked them into the trees". If not for that mistake, Artimus believed they would have been able to get over the trees to the nearby field. Artimus never lost consciousness during the crash.

There were 26 on board and 6 were killed on impact. After the crash, Artimus was wadded up in a little piece of wreckage like a metal eggshell. He had to use all of his strength to pry it open, and when he did, he was reborn into a new, strange and chaotic world.

Artimus said the cartilage in his chest was torn plus he had some broken ribs but he could walk. He went to help out a friend that was calling his name and that is when he saw that the pilot and co-pilot were decapitated. His band mates Steve Gaines and his sister Cassie Gaines (who was a female backup vocalist) were already dead as well. Ronnie Van Zandt's head was smashed in, killed by a heavy piece of music equipment that wasn't secured properly....irony in its finest.

Artimus was forced to go find help and headed toward the field where the pilots were trying to land. As he walked across it, he felt how soft ground was at his feet and couldn’t help thinking how it would have made for a much better landing.

Night was falling and he kept moving. He came to a swamp and started trudging neck deep through the black water. There were deadly moccasins slithering past him but Artemis was filled with too much rage and adrenaline to care. The snakes must have felt his strong presence, he remembered yelling at one snake “don’t fuck with me” and they parted like the Red Sea in front of him.  

After he got back to dry land, he finally reached a farm house that was surrounded by barbed wire fence. He knew there were people in the farm house because there were cows staring at him from behind the fence. He had never been so happy to see a cow before. He looked for an easy way to get past the barbed wire but he was too tired and weak to search long. Desperate without any other means to get in, he was forced to roll his body over the razor sharp fence.

You can imagine what he must have looked like at this point: battered from the plane crash, dirty from the swamp, and bloody from the razor wire. He walked an extra mile to the remote farm house and started banging on the door, babbling incoherently. A 19 year old kid appeared and pulled out a gun on who he thought was a vagrant. Artimus heard the gun go off and saw the coat he was wearing puff up as he was spun around. The sting in his shoulder finally registered…he had been shot! He yelled out “PLANE CRASH” and luckily the farm boy had heard about the plane going down on the radio just hours before. The farm boy realized his mistake and called for help.

Artimus said that kid later told the story and stated that he shot over Artimus’s head. He didn't want to be known in Mississippi as the guy who shot Lynyrd Skynyrd.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's legend is grounded in a plane crash that occurred on October 20, 1977, three days after the release of Street Survivors. Allen Collins suffered two cracked vertebrae in his neck, and both Collins and Leon Wilkeson nearly had arms amputated as a result of crash injuries. Wilkeson suffered severe internal injuries, including a punctured lung, and had most of his teeth knocked out. Gary Rossington broke both his arms and both his legs in the crash, and took many months to recuperate. Leslie Hawkins sustained a concussion, broke her neck in three places and had severe facial lacerations. Mysteriously, security manager Gene Odom was seriously burned on his arm and face in the crash, which involved no explosion or fire since the plane was out of fuel. Victims were taken to the hospital in McComb, Mississippi, by ambulances or any available vehicles. Road crew member Steve Lawler, who suffered severe contusions and facial lacerations, was taken to the hospital in a pickup with a camper top.

Pianist Billy Powell was relatively unhurt, but his nose was nearly torn off and he suffered severe facial lacerations. He later caused a controversy by giving a lurid account of Cassie Gaines' final moments on a VH1 Behind The Music special about the band, claiming that the backing singer's throat was cut from ear to ear and that she bled to death in his arms. 

Notably, the third member of The Honkettes (the female backup vocalists), JoJo Billingsley, was not on the plane and in fact was home tending to a family member's illness. She was planning to join the tour in Little Rock on October 23, three days after the crash. According to an interview in the book Freebirds, Billingsley had dreamed of the plane crash and begged Allen Collins by telephone not to continue using the Convair. On hearing of the accident, Billingsley was so shaken that some of her hair fell out.

The Convair 240 itself had been inspected by members of Aerosmith's flight crew for possible use in the early summer of 1977, but was rejected because it was felt that neither the plane nor the crew were up to standards. In an interview in the book Walk This Way, Aerosmith's assistant chief of flight operations Zunk Buker tells of seeing pilots McCreary and Gray trading a bottle of Jack Daniels back and forth while Buker and his father were inspecting the plane. When Aerosmith's crew heard of Skynyrd's misfortune, they were shocked, but not necessarily surprised. Aerosmith's touring family was also relieved because the band, specifically Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, had been trying to pressure their management into renting that specific plane.

The official NTSB accident report reads, "The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the probable cause of this accident was fuel exhaustion and total loss of power from both engines due to crew inattention to fuel supply. Contributing to the fuel exhaustion were inadequate flight planning and an engine malfunction of undetermined nature in the right engine which resulted in higher-than-normal fuel consumption." It was known that the right engine's magneto - a small power generator that provides spark and timing for the engine - had been malfunctioning (Powell, among others, spoke of seeing flames shooting out of the right engine on a trip just prior to the accident), and that pilots McCreary and Gray had intended to repair the damaged part when the travelling party arrived in Baton Rouge. It is possible that the damaged magneto fooled the pilots into creating an exceptionally rich fuel mixture, causing the Convair to literally run out of fuel. It was suggested on the VH-1 Behind The Music profile on Skynyrd that this was the case, or that the pilots, panicking when the right engine failed, accidentally dumped the remaining fuel. Pyle maintains in the Howard Stern interview that the fuel gauge in the older model plane malfunctioned and the pilots had failed to manually check the tanks before taking off.

Street Survivors became the band's second platinum album, and was the #5 top selling album on the U.S. album chart. The single "What's Your Name" reached #13 on the single airplay charts in January of 1978. Lynyrd Skynyrd disbanded after the airplane tragedy. On the original pressing of the cover of Street Survivors was a photograph of the band engulfed in flames. MCA Records, out of courtesy, withdrew the sleeve and replaced it with a cover of the band striking a similar pose against a plain black background.