Memorial Day

[Armybrat 41,001]

RIP Cousin Gary.

Semper Fi Steve

Good young men, gone way too soon in the service of their country.

RIP all their fallen comrades in arms.

 

[Guest]

Always a melancholy day for me.

Celebrate freedom, as the payoff of their sacrifice. That's why they did what they did.  Then I also feel such a loss for the families and friends of those who are gone.  See also: surviving veterans who were in the shit and whose comrades in arms didn't make the trip home.  It's gut wrenching.

[phdhorn 6,224]

Posted pa's pics before.  At noon I'll go out and wail some Taps on the sax, and raise the flag to full staff, as is the Memorial Day custom after having it at half staff in the morning (plus after having it 1/2 staff after Uvalde the past 3 days).

RIP those who died so that we might live.

Edited May 30, 2022 by phdhorn

[Scheiss Meister 8,419]

I never met my mother's father.  He died in 1942 from the effects of being gassed and wounded by artillery fire in 1918.  He was not able to support his family after about 1932, and toward the end he had several heart attacks and strokes.  Not everyone who dies of their wounds does so quickly, and we should remember those, too.  RIP, Grandad Robert.

[South Austin 52,696]

My dad still carries a lot of guilt from losing men in his company during Vietnam. I’ve never been able to get him to talk about it, and I’m pretty sure he’ll carry it to his grave.

Semper Fi to all who’ve given their lives.

[morehornsepower 887]

Fuck you cancer.  Fuck you Agent Orange.  RIP Dad, love and miss you still.

 

Thank you to all who made the ultimate sacrifice.  :salute:

[Wally Pryor 5,311]

 

[Bigbend1812 12,960]

[UTCzech III 2,907]

In honor of all those who gave their lives for our freedom, thank you.  This is the story of my great-uncle Billy, who I never had the pleasure of meeting.

 

[BillyGoatHill 4,332]

I've written about him before, but I think it bears repeating...

The day after the flag raising on Iwo Jima, my dad's youngest Uncle, Jasper, better known as "Bunch" ( a nickname given to him by my great-grandmother) was a part of the attack to take Motiyama Airfield #2 in the middle of the island.  (pic below with my great aunt Jean and my grandmother to the far right, Bunch is to the left and was still in high school in this pic. My grandmother was the oldest, 15 yrs his senior, with Bunch the youngest sibling).

Bunch served as a BAR man, and had previously seen combat on Guam with K Co. 21st Marines, 3rd Marine Division. The pics of his watch are with the band made from aluminum from a downed Japanese Zero while on Guam. The jungle destroyed leather wristbands, and most made metal bands for their watches because of this. The palm trees were punched by him with a nail. 

Bunch didn't need to serve, as both his older brothers, Giuseppe (Pep) and George were already in the Pacific. Pep as a SeaBee building airstrips on captured islands, and George as a Marine Sergeant in the 1st Marine Division. Bunch had also accidentally shot himself with a .22 in the foot when he was a younger teenager while hunting frogs. This made him a 4F designee but he still wanted to serve. Twice turned down by the Army and once by the Marines he was finally accepted into the Marine Reserves on his 4th try. 

The 21st Marines weren't to be used on Iwo, initially to be held in reserve but casualties were so high in the 4th and 5th Divisions, that they were sent in late on the first and following days. 

The morning of the 24th, K Co would be the attacking company in the center of the airfield. According to the letter that was sent to my great-grandmother (one that I have been able to read), Bunch was out front of the company giving covering fire and halfway across the airfield when he was hit by deadly and accurate mortar fire, killing him. My great uncle had just reached his 19th birthday earlier that February. Though I never met her, I was told my great-grandmother never got over his death. 

Like over 6000 other Marines, Bunch was initially interred in the 3rd Marine Division Cemetary on Iwo Jima.

After the war, my- great grandmother had him brought home to South Texas where he is buried in his hometown of Crystal City. 

RIP Uncle Bunch

 

edit: The watch and other affects were passed down to one of my Dad's cousins ( I wish had them but at least they are in good keeping). The watch keeps perfect time and is wound by him every year on this day, Memorial Day.

 

[Gil Bang 26,100]

some of my old internet friends here will remember when 5 of my kid's platoon mates were killed in Afghanistan.  My son was in the Stryker behind theirs.

The victims were 1st Lt. Brandon J. Landrum of Lawton, Okla.; Staff Sgt. Francis G. Phillips IV of Meridian, N.Y.; Spc. Kevin Cardoza of Mercedes, Texas; Spc. Thomas P. Murach of Meridian, Idaho; and Spc. Brandon J. Prescott of Bend, Ore.

All were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 36th Infantry, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division at Fort Bliss.

[Etexhorn13 3,054]

My namesake, my mom’s uncle. The only male of the 8 children of Ukrainian immigrants, he joined the Air Force on his 18th birthday, because his parents wouldn’t let him volunteer earlier. In Sept. 1945 his entire crew was lost when their B-29 crashed into high terrain over central Japan on a mission to resupply newly liberated POWs. 

[locodos 5,425]

This is a little remembrance and a slight rant...

This was my grand uncle...

I had always seen his portrait in my Great Grandparents house and when I asked as a kid all I got was a terse response and a pained look "he was killed in a training accident"  End of discussion.   The other day this crossed my mind and I went looking for some more information.  Turns out that story is correct.  He was in the 612th Bomb Squadron, 401st Bomb Group. His flight crew was assigned 42-6090 B-17F

From the 612th:

Quote

... Again on the morning of October 1st we lost another crew with the exception of their grounded navigator, Lt. Brandt. This was Lt. McIlwain's crew which was in an unfortunate crash on a routine training flight, again near Fort Benton. Their loss was keenly felt by all.

From the 401st:

Quote

On October 1st, the 612th Squadron lost a Flying Fortress with nine men aboard in an accident over the Big Sandy bombing range. The Fortress was piloted by 2nd Lt. John McIlwain. The plane was flying in formation as they approached the bombing range when observers in other Fortresses saw it go out of control and spin in. All the crew were killed.

Information about my great uncle's crash was pretty hard to find.  So after scrapping up bits of info from here and there I added it to the Wikipedia of B-17 accidents and incidents.  Previously there was no record of this accident.

Quote

1 October 1943

B-17F "42-6090" of the 612th Bomb Squadron, 401st Bomb Group "...on the morning of October 1st we lost another crew with the exception of their grounded navigator, Lt. Brandt. This was Lt. McIlwain's crew which was in an unfortunate crash on a routine training flight, again near Fort Benton. Their loss was keenly felt by all."^[49] "On October 1st, the 612th Squadron lost a Flying Fortress with nine men aboard in an accident over the Big Sandy bombing range. The Fortress was piloted by 2nd Lt. John McIlwain. The plane was flying in formation as they approached the bombing range when observers in other Fortresses saw it go out of control and spin in. All the crew were killed." ^[50] Crew: 2nd Lt. John W. McIlwain, 2nd Lt. William D. Ford, 2nd Lt. George W. Heaps, S/Sgt. John Cirone, S/Sgt. Edwin B. Young, Sgt. Carl A. Hilton, Sgt. George W Grimes, Sgt. Edward F. Tessier, Cpl. Ambrose E. Mesa ^[51][52]

And get your tinfoil hats ready boys...  it seems like the War Dept. wanted to keep all the crashes on the DL for nation security reasons.  (I mean it's war time, I get it) This is a news article that came up during the search...  First bold is a reference to the 42-6090 the flight my granduncle was on...  the second bold is kind of a jaw dropper.

Quote

Seventy-two years ago, 10 U.S. Airmen died in a fiery crash six miles outside Fort Benton.

The crew of Flight 42-5128 were all members of the 2nd Bombardment Command at Great Falls Army Air Base (later renamed Malmstrom Air Force Base), training to serve aboard B-17 Flying Fortresses to fight in the war against Nazi occupied Europe. Their sacrifice went almost unnoticed and was almost forgotten; a casualty of national secrecy during a time of war — until now.

On this Memorial Day a small group of researchers, citizens, retired veterans and a few family members will gather at Veterans Park in Fort Benton. There they will dedicate a small memorial to the men of Flight 42-5128 — paying the honor too long denied to men who gave the fullest measure of sacrifice to their country, even though they never saw a single battle over the skies of Europe.

"These 10 men are all from out of state," said Hank Armstrong, a Chouteau County historian who has spent the last seven months researching the story of Flight 42-5128 "One was from Los Angeles, one from New York and two from Michigan. In one case, (Paul Peterson) it was his day off and they needed one more man on the plane. He ran to get on the plane, and of course was killed. It was his day off."

The crash occurred shortly after midnight on Sept. 2, 1943, during a night bombing exercise out of the Great Falls Air Base. The crew was instructed to fly to a bombing target field outside of Big Sandy, but they never made it. For a still-undetermined reason, the B-17 exploded in mid-air, then plummeted to the ground just a few miles outside Fort Benton.

 

There were no recorded witnesses to the crash, and Army officials remained quiet about the incident for as long as they could. It more than a month later before any public report on the crash appeared in local newspapers. A vague acknowledgment of Flight 42-5128 was announced on Oct. 9, 1943, in the middle of a story focusing upon a second B-17 crash that occurred in full public view on the morning of Oct. 1, 1943, just two-miles outside Big Sandy.

"Base officials were out at the site within probably two hours," Armstrong said of the Fort Benton crash. "They cordoned off the area and took all the big stuff."

The Army's crash report was classified for decades. It's analysis of the incident was only recently uncovered by research volunteers investigating the crash of Flight 42-5128.

"When the accident occurred ... the airplane in question was apparently flying in a northeasterly direction six-miles east of Fort Benton at a fairly low altitude," the crash report states. "The pattern of the wreckage indicates the direction of flight, and several stop watches indicated the time of the accident. The dispersal of the wreckage and the absence of craters or furrows indicate the plane exploded before striking the ground; that the angle of contact was nearly vertical.

"Ten bodies were found dispersed around the wreckage," the crash report goes on to say. "The co-pilot was found in the wreckage, in the flight deck. All others were thrown clear. The co-pilot was burned with 3rd-degree burns all over, but still strapped in the flight deck. There are no eye-witnesses, and there is nothing to learn from examination of the wreckage that would lead to a determination of the immediate cause of the explosion. There was no apparent pilot error involved."

 

While the crash report was not precise in its analysis of a probable cause for the crash, the recommendations included within the report indicate the investigators believed the catastrophe had something to do with auxiliary fuel tanks that had been installed in the B-17's bomb bay area.

"1.) Inspect gasoline cells and lines more often and more carefully," the report recommendations state. "2.) If bomb bay tanks are installed, always keep them full. 3.) Prohibit smoking in airplane."

With no survivors and no eye-witnesses, it is unlikely that anyone will ever know with certainty what caused Flight 42-5128 to explode. What is certain, however, is that the men who died in training during WWII — and their families — was inconsistent with the degree of honor and respect given those men and women who died in battle.

An often overlooked statistic from WWII is the number of U.S. servicemen who died before they ever got to war. According to the "American Battle Casualties Final Report" published in the U.S. National Archives, more than 88,000 U.S. airmen lost there lives during World War II.

"Only the army ground forces suffered more battle deaths," the report states.

However, nearly 36,000 of those 88,000 Army Air Corps fatalities did not occur on the battlefield. They came as the result of nearly 26,000 aircraft accidents, "more than half of which occurred within the continental United States."

 

In short, for every 11 American airmen who died in combat during WWII, another three — roughly 14,000 men — died in training before they ever left the United States. The sacrifice of those men has gone largely unrecognized and unheralded. Concerns for war time secrecy prevented any lasting tributes.

"The men who were killed in the training crashes were definitely treated differently," Armstrong said. "A man who was killed in action may have had medals, he may have had a narrative of his actions in battle, and an officer would go in person to the family's home with his condolences and tell them what they wanted to know. All the families got in a training accident was a telegram saying their son was killed. Then the body was sent home, but the men accompanying the body either did not know or did not say anything about the crash, so the families got nothing."

"It's hard to believe they were treated that way," Armstrong added. "There was a paranoia, either real or imagined, that the west coast was going to be invaded by the Japanese. It was a standard procedure not to publicize it — don't let the enemy know that we're having trouble with our airplanes. For 72-years no one really knew what happened."

That oversight continues to this day. The researchers in Fort Benton asked for representatives from Malmstrom to attend today's memorial. Their requests for some recognition from military officials were responded to with little interest and no commitment.

"Diane Jones has been a great help in organizing this memorial," Armstrong said. "She contacted them (Malmstrom Air Force Base), and the one chaplain that was on-duty (out of four stationed at the base) had something at another service at 1 p.m. on Memorial Day and didn't want to come out at our ceremony earlier. She (Jones) asked, 'What about the other three?' and he said 'That's all their day off.'"

There will be no representative from Malmstrom Air Force Base at today's ceremony.

 

Recognition for the 10 men from Flight 42-5128 has come exclusively from the efforts of private citizens and historical research organizations. Those efforts began with Marshall Fisher, an Army Air Corps veteran who recorded 29 missions as a B-17 ball-turret gunner in WWII. For his service Fisher was award the Distinguished Flying Cross. After the war he settled in Chouteau County, were he worked for many years as a state livestock inspector.

Throughout his maintained a deep commitment to the memory of the men who had served in the Army Air Corps. Shortly before his death in June 2014, Fisher commissioned and paid for a marble headstone etched with the names of all 10 men who died aboard Flight 42-5128.

"He knew of this crash and wanted to do something," Armstrong said of Fisher. "He had that stone engraved and set at his own expense. He received no recognition whatsoever for what he did. It was never dedicated, it was never publicized. There wasn't much of a base for it (the marble headstone) and it kind of fell forward."

It was easy to overlook the cockeyed memorial standing across the street from the Fort Benton, until a local Chouteau County man, Ron Sevelle, took the time to reset the headstone. Then the River and Plains Society and the Overholser Historic Research Center became involved, aided by Missing Contrails Archeology, an aeronautic archeology research organization that surveys historical military crash sites across the United States.

Missing Contrails founder, Henry Franken, is an Air Force veteran with a life-long interest in military aircraft history. Franken was deeply involved in earlier research into the Oct. 1 crash of a B-17 bomber from Great Falls Army Air Base just outside Big Sandy. With help from volunteers from the River and Plains Society, the group set out to uncover as much as they could about Flight 42-5128.

On March 14 of this year, they conducted a detailed geographical survey of the crash site; roughly one-half mile off state highway 80 and a few miles southeast of Fort Benton.

"The main crash site had not been known before," Armstrong said. "Parts of it were scattered all over, but the main crash site was in cropland that had been farmed for all these years."

Despite decades of disturbance to the site, six-inches beneath the soil's surface researchers found a treasure trove of artifacts.

"We found close to 200 items," Armstrong said. "The big chunks were all gone. What we were finding were smaller parts that were broken up. We found 12 .50-caliber ammunition casings with the year (1942 or 1943) printed on the base. Each item was first flagged after they located it, then they went around and GPS'd each one (Global Positioning System). We found all kinds of engine parts, but we were a bit disappointed in not finding more personal items."

Only two artifacts believed to have belonged to the men of Flight 42-5128 were found at the crash site. One was a coat button from an Army Air Corps overcoat; the other, a small glob of melted silver.

Measured and weighed, the silver glob conformed to the dimensions of a U.S. silver half-dollar; common currency in the early 1940s. It was likely a piece of pocket change carried by one of the men who died that night aboard Flight 42-5128.

The items collected at the crash site were photographed and cataloged, and will be housed at the library of the Overholser Museum in Fort Benton.

Monday at 11:30 a.m., nearly 72-years since the tragic crash outside Fort Benton, the men of Flight 42-5128 will finally be honored.

Those who perished

Ten United States airmen lost there lives in a B-17 bomber crash outside Fort Benton on September 2, 1943. Their names are as follows:

•2nd Lt. Harold L. Wonders

•2nd Lt. Warren H. Maginn

•2nd Lt. Jack Y. Fish

•2nd Lt. Arnold J. Gardiner

•Sgt. Robert H. Hall

•Sgt. John T. Hough

•Sgt. Carl E. Lower

•Sgt. Chester W. Peko

•Sgt. Curio C. Thremonti

•Pfc. Paul M. Peterson

Their sacrifice will be honored at a memorial service at the Fort Benton Veterans Park at 11:30 a.m. on Monday.

At the risk of adding to a tl/dr post...  I ran across an forum post where a family member of 42-6090 organized a memorial service near the crash site and tried to get some participation for the military.  They couldn't make it or send a representative, according to the post one Champlin was too busy and the other three were on vacation...  cool cool

Anyways just wanted something out there with their names and info.  The crew of 42-6090 was two weeks from deploying to England.

Cool pic 

The military built Montana’s Cut Bank Army Airfield as a training base for B-17 bomber crews on land within the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. Here a Flying Fortress comes in low on a practice flight. (Courtesy of Airmen’s Memorial Museum)