CHARLES Lindbergh carved out his hallowed highland in aviation history by becoming the first to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

Captain Chesley B. Sullenberger awed mankind on Jan. 15 by belly-flopping U.S. Airways Flight 1549 onto the Hudson River, saving all 155 people on board.

Forty-nine years before, almost to the day, retired Lt. Col. Vernon Ullman, who saw action in World War II and Korea, and co-pilot Howard Gifford set down a twin-engine DC-3 in heavy snow in a Carroll, Iowa, cornfield.

Who?

The pilots lacked a radio, defroster and lights and had almost no visibility. Ten Minneapolis Lakers, nine others in their traveling party (including four children, one of whom was the coach’s 11-year-old son, Jack) and three crew members scurried from the utterly undamaged aircraft completely unscathed.

Say, what?

In late December, I was in Los Angeles interviewing Elgin Baylor about his extraordinary playing career when suddenly he swerved into an astonishing account of his team’s near fatal landing during his second NBA season.

A few weeks later, Sullenberger makes the save of the century.

Hold on; not so fast.

No disrespect, but compared to what Ullman and Gifford accomplished and the five-hour-plus ordeal their human cargo was subjected to, the US Airways’ matter-of-minutes West Side miracle was for the birds.

On Sunday afternoon, Jan. 17, 1960, despite Baylor’s 43 points, the 13-20 Lakers lost, 135-119, to the Hawks in St. Louis.

“We were a picture of instability,” recalled Tom Hawkins, a rookie on that Lakers team.

They were the franchise’s step-children, having inherited the unenviable legacy of the league’s first dynasty – George Mikan, Slater Martin, Vern Mikkelsen, Whitey Skoog, Jim Pollard – that won five titles from 1948-54.

“We had some good names (Baylor, Hot Rod Hundley, Frank Selvy, Slick Leonard, Rudy LaRusso, Dick Garmaker, Larry Foust, Jim Krebs, Boo Ellis) and some good reps,” Hawkins said. “But people weren’t buying this interim unit. Everything was in upheaval.”

Lakers owner Bob Short, former undersecretary of the Navy and president of Admiral Transit, a trucking firm, was in dire financial straits. At the time, the furthest west the eight-team NBA had expanded was St. Louis; Short was angling to move to Los Angeles. He did so the very next season and was drawing capacity crowds (14,505) in no time flat.

On Jan. 2, 1960, Lakers coach John Castellani, who coached Baylor in college at Seattle, resigned. The previous season, he had replaced John Kundla, the brains behind the empire. Shaking off a 33-39 mark to reach the playoffs, the Lakers upset the Hawks in six in the Western Division finals, only to get swept by the Celtics in the championship round.

“We drove to Game 4 in cars packed with our belongings in order to get a head start to where we lived during the offseason,” Slick Leonard said, giving a pragmatic shrug.

Jim Pollard took over as coach of the 1959-60 Lakers when they were 11-15. His coaching column read 2-5 when the Lakers – minus Waylon Jennings, er, Rudy LaRusso, home with an ulcer – arrived at St. Louis airport. Due to a light snow and icy conditions, departure was delayed several hours.

Jim Krebs, a good guy but swathed in doom and gloom, told teammates from time to time he wouldn’t live beyond 33, Dick Garmaker said. Baylor and Hawkins can’t remember Krebs without an Ouija board. In the terminal dining area, the board predicted the Lakers would have a plane accident. “He kept telling us we should not fly that day,” they concurred.

At 8:30 p.m., Short’s DC-3-owned craft – cheaper to fly than commercial – left St. Louis in light snowfall bound for Minneapolis. About five minutes after takeoff, the specially-rigged card table that accommodated eight players was erected in the front aisle.

“We thought someone was fooling around because the lights began flashing from bright to dim, and then went off altogether,” Baylor said. They were in the dark. Both generators had shut down from overuse while grounded. Everything electrical was lost.

“The only sound was the whir of two spinning props,” Hawkins remembered.

Devoid of verbal direction from the control tower, it was impossible to return to the heavily trafficked, jet-busy airport. So the plane climbed to 8,000 feet to escape the snow and headed for home. After 15 minutes, the rapidly intensifying storm overtook and encircled the plane. All visual contact vanished.

Flying by a manual compass, the aircraft ascended higher and higher in an effort to rise above the blizzard. Then even that instrument failed; the wind and weather caused the compass to gyrate madly. Taking a bearing on the North Star, Ullman and Gifford were obliged to rely exclusively on celestial navigation. Judging by the twists and turns, the pilots apparently were disoriented.

Because a DC-3 is non-pressurized, it should never go beyond 15,000 feet. Exceeding that altitude numerous times resulted in gasping for breath and the children becoming ill. The floor began to freeze. Thin blankets and winter coats provided ineffective warmth.

“It was horrible!” Hawkins said. “The cold and the fear and the lack of oxygen triggered uncontrollable twitching and constriction in the throat. Yet, amazingly, nobody panicked, not even the kids.”

Hawkins and Leonard were recoiled in the last two seats. “I’m a rookie and scared as hell,” Hawkins said, “thinking to myself, ‘This is what I wanted my whole life, to play pro basketball, and here I am flying blind to who knows where.’

“I asked Slick if he thought we were going to make it. He said, ‘Don’t worry, man, we’ll come out of this OK.’ He was very reassuring. He was my mentor and was like that, very positive. Meanwhile, we were bobbing and weaving. I don’t think I believed him.”

That probably was because Hawkins saw the pilots don goggles and stick their heads out the small side panels in order to see. Ice encased the front windows. It was 12:30 a.m. on Jan. 18, or thereabouts. They’d been airborne four hours and one engine began missing. The pilots decided to come down, but could find no bottom to the storm clouds. According to an altimeter they read by flashlight, they had dropped to 200 feet.

Ullman, his face and hands frostbitten, came out of the cockpit and told them there was roughly 30 minutes of fuel remaining. He had to take the plane down lower still and look for a place to land. The lights of a town below abruptly lit up the sky. The Carroll police had phoned residents, the team later learned, and asked them to turn on their lights in the hope the pilots would see the airport. They never knew one existed. They had no idea where they were.

At least once, maybe more, according to various descriptions of consequent close encounters with catastrophe, the plane unexpectedly veered upward to avoid a blacktopped road, a grove of trees, hot wires and an oncoming 18-wheeler.

“Finally,” Ullman was quoted in the Carroll Daily Times Herald, “we spotted this corn field and decided to set down there because the standing corn showed up dark against the snow background, and that gave us visual reference.”

Both pilots had farming backgrounds. Knowing there were no ditches or rocks and that the field was in neat rows, they felt this was the best place to land. After circling twice, Ullman rolled the flaps out and throttled down to an airspeed of 70 knots, toward a slight incline in the standing corn.

Frank Selvy had a 4 1/2 month-old girl, Leslie, and a wife, Barbara. “I was thinking this is a helluva way to go,” he said.

“I was petrified, but I was afraid to show it because the kids were so calm,” Garmaker admitted.

“I don’t think everyone was as scared as you’d think,” Boo Ellis said. “We still had a chance. The plane was not out of control. Our biggest concerns were low fuel and not being able to see.”

Baylor left his seat and positioned himself on the floor in the rear, hooking his arms and legs around seat bottoms on both sides. “I’d read the back was the safest place to be,” he said. “By then my fear of dying was gone. If I was going to go, then let it be. But I really felt we were going to be fine.”

The emergency landing, on a farm owned by Elmer Steffes, occurred around 1:40 a.m.

“We practically pancaked in and the plane rolled about 100 yards after we touched down.” Gifford told Stew Thornley, author of “Basketball’s Original Dynasty: The History of the Lakers.”

Inadvertently, the tail wheel had hooked on the top strand of a barbed wire fence, helping the plane to stop. “It was like landing on an aircraft carrier,” Gifford said.

For more than a few seconds there was total silence.

“When we realized we were safe we erupted in cheers,” Hundley said. “We jumped out the back and were like little kids. We threw snowballs at each other and the pilots.”

Upon landing, Garmaker said, Hundley jumped up and shouted, “I live to love again!”

Hundley claimed Garmaker, an offseason insurance agent, sold teammates polices during the flight.

“I wish I were that clever,” Garmaker said, laughing long and loud. “It’s not true. But, please, leave it in; don’t take that part out.”

One of the first people the Lakers stumbled upon when their feet hit the knee-deep snow was the town undertaker. “I’m not shucking you,” said Hawkins. “The guy remarked, ‘Thought I had some business tonight, boys.’Ñ”

Fire engines, police cars, trucks, and autos lined the field. The 22 passengers and crew were transported to the Burke Motor Inn, owned and managed by Robert A. Wright. Last to leave the site, Pollard rode up front and upright in the hearse.

On the coffee shop placemat was a map and a picture of an ear peeled back. In bold letters it proclaimed Iowa the Tall Corn State. Hundley boasts two placemats (now laminated) signed by team members and the two pilots. Hawkins has one, but isn’t sure where it might be.

There were no telephones in the rooms, so Pollard and his players lined up in front of three pay booths outside the office. Loved ones needed to be notified what had happened and that everything was copasetic.

Dubbed “Desert Head” by Hundley because he was balding, Larry Foust was known for imbibing a few after games and telling cockamamie tales to his wife, Joanie.

In the adjacent booth, Hawkins overheard Foust say, “We just had a forced landing in an Iowa cornfield.”

On the other end, Joanie reportedly grumbled: “I don’t think that’s the least bit funny. Call me back when you’re sober.” Then she hung up.

Foust turned to Hawkins and said, “Ahh, would you mind asking Doris to call Joanie and tell her we really did land in an Iowa cornfield.”

Foust was traded the year of the crash to St. Louis. He played a dozen seasons, averaging 13.7 points and 9.8 rebounds. Drinking and smoking took its toll; he died in 1984 of a heart attack at age 56.

Pollard was 71 when he passed on Jan. 22, 1993. He played eight years (13.2, 5.7) and coached the Chicago Packers (18-62) after being short-circuited (14-25) by the Lakers.

LaRusso played 10 seasons (15.6, 9.4) and was 67 when he died on July 9, 2004, from Parkinson’s disease.

Krebs retired (averaging 8.9 and 6.2 for seven seasons) after the 1963-64 campaign. He died May 6, 1965, three years younger than his self-fulfilling prophecy. Asked by a neighbor to help with a half-fallen tree, they cut it and leaned it against the house. As Krebs walked away a gust of wind blew it down, crushing his chest and skull.

Ellis (who had been a freshman at Niagara when Hubie Brown was a senior) played two seasons (5.1, 5.2) for Minneapolis. He continued to compete in organized tournaments (winning senior Olympic, national, state and sectional titles) until almost 70, when he moved in with his daughter three years ago in Indianapolis.

Selvy hung tough (10.8, 3.7 and 2.8 assists) for 11 seasons. He fathered three bonus babies after Leslie, has nine grandchildren and is raising the 13-year-old in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Leonard played seven seasons (9.9, 2.9, 3.3) and coached the ABA Pacers to three titles. In his 24th year as the team’s radio color commentator, he’s committed to one last full schedule.

Hundley’s six seasons with the Lakers (8.4, 3.3, 3.4) were topped by a Hall of Fame broadcasting career, five with New Orleans and 35 with Utah. With nothing left to accomplish, he’s retiring to Arizona at season’s end.

Hawkins played 10 seasons (8.7, 6.0) before becoming an NBC announcer, both nationally and locally in Los Angeles. His jazz show is rated No. 1 in the country and No. 1 for its time slot. He serves on boards, consults and does speaking engagements. “If it moves, I talk to it,” he said.

Baylor was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1977 after averaging 27.4, 13.5 and 4.3 over 14 seasons. Enough said.

Garmaker (13.3, 4.2, 3.2 in seven seasons) lives in Tulsa, Okla. Ten days after the landing, he was traded to the Knicks for $25,000 and Ray Felix, allowing Short to make payroll that month. Some 20 years later, Garmaker’s real estate company was buying apartments in St. Paul, Minn. Nearing the weekend, the guy who needed to close the deal left the city for home.

Told by a secretary her boss would arrive there in 45 minutes and to call him then, Garmaker inquired, where would he be calling? “Carroll, Iowa,” she replied.

When the two men finished their business Garmaker asked: “By the way, do you remember hearing about a plane that went down 20 years ago in your area?”

“I sure do! Jeepers, you landed in my cornfield!” Steffes blurted.

No one’s quite sure exactly when, but the Lakers honored the hero pilot whose wife, Eva Olofson, was the plane’s lone stewardess, at a subsequent home game. Short presented him with a plaque that cost about $15. Its inscription: “To Colonel Vernon Ullman: May You Have Eternal Safe Landings.”

For their part, the players contributed $50 apiece, in those days, the price of a gift of life.

I’m unsure what’s more mind-blowing, Ullman’s achievement or the FAA suspending his license following its investigation. Prior to landing, the two pilots argued over whether the wheels should be up or down.

Regulations stipulate a belly flop in such a situation, which might have precluded the wheels from hitting the wire, thus flipping the plane and affecting certain death.

Ullman ordered wheels down instead to avert skidding into a potential highway or other unknown complications. The next day, the team bus to Minneapolis passed the cornfield. Around 75 yards in front of the unflawed plane was a steep ditch to disaster.

Less than a week later, several hundred people watched as a bulldozer cleared the cornfield to stubble. The FAA had commissioned another pilot to fly the DC-3 back home. Ullman fought that command decision. Again he prevailed against all odds.

“I put it in there,” he sad. “I’m going to take it out.”

Ullman died of a brain tumor in March 1965.

peter.vecsey@nypost.com