BY GERARDO REYES, ALFONSO CHARDY AND MICHAEL SALLAH

When Osiris Martinez broke to the surface of Nipe Bay that night five decades ago, he began to scream for his wife and three children.

There was no answer.

He and his family were among the 20 passengers aboard the Cubana Viscount turboprop that crashed into the water after hijackers seized the plane following takeoff from Miami on a flight to Varadero on Nov. 1, 1958.

He was one of the survivors. Fourteen people died, including his wife and three children, ages 2, 4 and 5.

He heard boat paddles splashing in the water. A man approaching in a canoe asked Martinez to climb aboard, but Martinez couldn't muster the strength. Several of his ribs were broken.

Eventually, Martinez climbed inside, but started convulsing. Suddenly, the boat was in danger of capsizing.

' `We are going to turn over, we are going to turn over,' the man said while I shook out of control and he shined his flashlight on my face,'' Martinez recalled.

The man managed to keep the canoe afloat and eventually reached shore, where two other passengers, Omara Gonzalez, 16, and her 9-year-old cousin Luis Sosa, were resting.

VISIT TO MORGUE

Two days later, with his wounds sutured and his ribs wrapped in bandages, Martinez had to go inside a hospital morgue room and identify his wife's body.

Around the ankle of a severed leg he saw a small chain bearing her name: Betty.

''I recognized her because I had given her a little chain with her name on it,'' he recalled.

Martinez, then 31, said he has lived with the pain of losing his family and regret for not heeding his wife's plea not to move the family to Cuba.

His 25-year-old wife developed an aversion to the island after one of the children nearly died from dysentery contracted during a prior family visit.

But Martinez was able to land a good job in Cuba as an inspector at a paper plant in Cardenas, near Varadero.

He was offered $615 a month -- three times his salary at the paper company where he was working in Tennessee.

NEW START

Though born in Cuba, Martinez said he was unfamiliar with Varadero, a resort town on the island's northern coast. He rented a house and planned to start a new life.

''I called my wife and told her sell or give away our house and bring the children,'' Martinez recalled.

His wife reluctantly agreed, and told him to meet her and the children in Miami. She didn't want to travel to Cuba without her husband.

The children also were not pleased about the move. Martinez said his wife's parents had to drag the screaming children to the plane.

Martinez said the family almost didn't board the Cubana Airlines turboprop at Miami. He said airline employees claimed his immigration papers were not in order. Martinez now suspects airline workers knew of the conspiracy.

''They knew they would endanger an American family and they didn't want children aboard,'' Martinez said.

While there's nothing in the records to prove the claim, U.S. embassy officials in Havana suspected someone from the crew -- possibly a flight attendant -- helped load the plane with the canvas bags of weapons and ammo, records state.

''It is evident that all of this material must have been loaded on plane sometime before departure,'' said a U.S. State Department report.

But the investigation of the crash was suspended in February, 1959, with the suspicions never resolved.

Martinez said in the months after the crash, he struggled to keep his emotions in check.

''I would talk to the pictures of my children,'' he said. ``It was very difficult.''

He remembers his wife's final request as she was boarding the plane.

``She said that if something happened and the plane crashed, she didn't want to be buried in Cuba. She wanted her body to be brought to the United States.''

But in the end, Martinez was unable to grant her wish: The lack of refrigeration and the conditions of the bodies prevented shipment to Miami, records stated.

They were buried in Cuba.