Posted by Peter on Monday, September 27, 2004 at 10:04AM :
In Reply to: Re: OT- went to a plane crash site today posted by Paul(in NY) on Saturday, September 25, 2004 at 7:14PM :
as seen on the web:
Sidebar:Airplane Crash
On a moonless night in October, 1944, a B-24J Liberator bomber from Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts on a routine training mission crashed into the eastern side of Camel’s Hump. The collision killed nine crewmembers and left one survivor, who spent two nights on the mountain before rescuers could get him down. PFC James W. Wilson, then a 19-year-old Army Air Corps gunner from Florida, lost both hands and feet to frostbite. He survived and later established a successful law practice in Denver, Colorado.
No one knows why the plane was traveling at 4,000 feet instead of the standard 8,000 feet—some speculate the crew was just trying to stay warm in the cool of the late fall. There had been an early snowfall. Whatever the cause, the plane struck just 100 feet below the summit cone, cartwheeled south, and scattered men and 36,000 pounds of debris all over the snow-covered peak.
Rescuers carried out the bodies of the men who were killed. Souvenir hunters and scrap metal dealers have mostly removed the debris, but more than 50 years after the crash, an untarnished aluminum wing section on the Alpine Trail remains as a telling memorial. A plaque commemorating the lost airmen was dedicated at the base of the Monroe hiking trail 45 years after the crash, on October 16, 1989.
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