Oroville Mercury Register
January 13 & 14, 1953
Headlines
“PLANE CRASH NEAR GRIDLEY”
“AIR FORCE PROBES CRASH FATAL TO 12”
By Floyd Tucker Mercury Staff Reporter
Gridley- Air Force investigators swarmed over a muddy field 13 miles
west of here today searching for a clue to the crash yesterday of
a B-50 Super fortress that carried 12 crewmen to their deaths. Other
crews probed the wreckage for eight bodies that were still unrecovered
this afternoon. The huge aircraft spun out of the clouds at 1:40
p.m. while engaged in a “routine navigational flight” from Castle
Air Force Base, Merced with three sister ships. The bomber was attached
to the 93rd Bombardment Wing of the Strategic Air Command.
Statements of witnesses indicated the plane lost power, although
Air Force sources declined comment on possible causes of the crash.
Those who saw the craft fall said the pilot “revved” his engines
several times in an effort to bring its nose up. A special investigations
team was dispatched early today from Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base, Dayton, O. Salvage, and additional recovery of bodies, waited
on the arrival of a 92 foot crane sent from McClellan Air Force
Base, Sacramento. Gridley residents said the doomed plane “barely
cleared treetops” while passing over the town seconds before the
crash, but regained altitude momentarily. Eyewitnesses to the actual
crash said the bomber came out of the clouds at 2,000 feet in a
spin. Many heard the pilot gunning his engines during the fall,
and the plane appeared to level out slightly just before the impact
half buried it in the mud of an open grain field on the Terrill
Sartain property, two miles west of the Butte-Colusa county line.
Shortly before the crash the flight of Four-multi-engine bombers
were seen in formation over Oroville.
WITNESSES TELL OF PILOT’S FIGHT TO SAVE AIRCRAFT
“I knew it would crash when it first came out of the overcast. They
never had a chance to get out.” Those were the words of John Cowan,
manager of Grey Lodge Waterfowl refuge, who watched with two companions
yesterday as an Air Force B-50 spun to its destruction in a field
13 miles west of Gridley, carrying 12 crewmen to their deaths. “When
we first saw the plane it was coming out of the clouds in a steep
spin at about 2,000 feet. The pilot gave it full power several times,
but he couldn’t pull it out. Just before they hit the ground, the
plane appeared to level out some, but it was too late. “They hit
the ground with a tremendous thudding sound.” Cowan, a flier himself,
and a pilot of Navy planes during the war, could offer no explanation
for the crash. “We could hear the pilot hit his engines before he
dropped out of the clouds,” Cowan said. With Cowan were Lloyd Chase
and Ken Parrish, Grey Lodge employees. “I said, ‘There he is,’ and
John said, ‘He’s going to crash,’: Parrish related. “The pilot never
gave up trying,” Chase said. “ The last time he gunned the motors
they were only about 400 feet up.” The first two men to arrive at
the wreckage were Roland Hanschu and Howard A. Thomas both of Colusa,
employees of the Terhel Farms, were the crash occurred. Both men
said the plane “twisted three or four times” after it appeared below
the clouds.
NAMES OF TWELVE WHO PERISHED IN CRASH LISTED
The Air Force today released the names of four men killed in the
crash of a B-50 near Gridley and identified eight others missing
and given up for dead. Bodies recovered and identifies include;
T. SGT. CURTIS F DUFFY, 27, husband of Ruth A. Duffy, Atwater, Calif.
T. SGT. BOBBY G. THEURET, 29, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry D. Theuret,
Box 413, Costa Mesa, Calif., and husband of Barbara L. Theuret,
Atwater. M. SGT. WILLIAM H. CLARKE, 32, husband, of Audrey W. Clark,
Merced. M. SGT. WALLACE N. SCHWART, 28, Maywood, Ill. Those missing
and presumed dead include; LT. COL. GERALD W. FALLON, 34, husband
of Elaine K. Fallon, Merced. MAJ. WILLIAM P. McMILLAN, 37, husband
of Greta A. McMilllan, Atwater. CAPT. WILLIAM S. RAKER, 27, husband
of Lorraine G. Raker, Atwater. M. SGT. JOE L. BRADSHAW, 37, husband
of Jessamine Bradshaw, Atwater. A.J. WILLIAM B. CRUTCHFIELD, 27,
husband of Della Ann Crutchfield, Atwater. AIRMAN FC CHARLES W.
HESSE, 21 Sauk Center, Minn. CAPT. EDWARD Y. WILLIAMS, 33, Spokane,
Wash. 1ST LT. GEORGE D. GRIFFITTS, 23, Hico, Tex.
‘NO SURVIVOR SIGNAL GIVEN TO SISTER SHIP’
The tangled wreckage of the B-50 lay in the mire of a rain-soaked
grain field, half buried by the impact of the crash. Overhead, a
sister ship circled low. On the ground, would-be rescuers followed
her flight and wondered that a machine as powerful could be so quickly
destroyed, and such sudden death in an obscure farm field visited
upon her crewmen. “Shall I give them the ‘no survivors’ signal,
Sir?” “Yes, Sergeant,” came the officer’s soft, reply. And the huge
bird of war circling overhead gained altitude and headed south towards
its base-reluctantly, it seemed, like a wild thing loath to leave
the side of its fallen mate.
Stu’s Notes: Bill Talbitzer and Joe Sheehan were two writers
that contributed to these stories. Those last words by an unknown
Author really got to me, “like a wild thing loath to leave the side
of it’s fallen mate”, yes that wild thing was full of young brave
men and they had just lost their friends. Let us here in Oroville
not forget these brave men.