Jump to content

locodos

Full Members
  • Posts

    1,436
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by locodos

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

    This was my grand uncle...

    Hilton-Carl-Abner.jpg

    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."

    Volunteers from the River and Plains Society and Missing Contrails survey the site of a B-17 crash northwest of Fort Benton.
     

    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.

    The memorial for the men of Flight 42-5128
     

    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 

    cut-bank-montana-military-base-airfield-

    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)

    • Hook 'Em 6
  2. 17 minutes ago, davidg said:

    Noticed a construction screw head melded into my truck tire Sunday night after coming back from the ranch.  Was hoping to get another 7-10k out of this set but just paid $1380 at Discount for 3 new KO2s and a new cert for the replacement. Paid $1302 for the last full set  in June ‘21.  Got 43k out of them so not too bad but was hoping for a few more miles before dropping the cash on a new set. 
     

    C3E1859F-C601-49D4-A582-45CB313C5599.thumb.jpeg.e5ea4c499501bdfffdd4da62ad943c02.jpeg

    why not get it patched?

    • Like 1
  3. 7 hours ago, Superhero said:

    Exactly how many guitars do own? 

    Maybe hold off on buying a few new guitar and a invest in a sprinkler system?

    😂

    As has already been discussed on this very thread, less grass makes your deck look bigger.

    • Haha 1
  4. On 3/17/2023 at 6:44 PM, DougO said:

    They should re-do the movie "It Might Get Loud" with three great guitar players instead of one.

     

    17 minutes ago, Deej said:

    I always felt bad for Jimmy Page having to get lumped in with those other two. 

    To be fair, the name is "It Might Get Loud" not "It might get Great"

    If nothing else U2 played loud.

    Also War was their best album with only a few good songs sprinkled throughout the next 3 or so albums.  Vertigo was the last song of theirs I can recall liking.

  5. From bbc...  not that bbc

    Quote

    We're now hearing for the first time from the Russian defence ministry on the incident.

    Moscow is insisting its aircraft did not use on-board weapons or come into contact with the drone.

    They say Russia airspace control systems detected a US MQ-9 unmanned drone flying over the Black Sea, near the Crimean Peninsula, in the direction of the border of the Russian Federation.

    They accused the US of violating the boundaries of its temporary airspace "established for the special military operation".

    Russia says it scrambled its aircraft to identify the intruder, but due to quick manoeuvring, the MQ-9 drone went into an "unguided flight with a loss of altitude and collided with the water surface".

     

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2
  6. 4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    About the same as an SU-27.

    We can make more Reapers.

    The russkies can't make more SU-27s these days.   That's a good deal in my book.

    It might also be a 2fer situation.  The article I read said there where 2 migs. It also stated that the migs were also dumping fuel in front of the drone.  May be to force it down maybe to interfere with cameras and sensors?  The US needs to support Ukraine and let Russia spill her blood and treasure there, because it seems apparent their ambitions extend well beyond Liev.

  7. 7 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

    Will blow me away until the day I die, how the thing people had the least to do with, is their biggest badge of honor.  

    "5th Generation Texan from Germany. dammit!"  

    What really blows me away is if they are 5th generation (very unlikely) then they're "5th Generation Mexicans from Germany. Dios mio!"

    • Haha 1
  8. 8 hours ago, dcbc said:

    1.  1979 is okay.  The rest I can ignore.

    9b3dca11-0d16-4b70-b779-36aadf4570fa_tex

    1979 blows... Melancholy was such a let down save Zero and Bullet with Butterfly Wings

     

    1a) Gish

    1b) Siamese Dreams

    After this it's just pop rock

    • Like 1
  9. 9 minutes ago, G650 said:

    Pretty much every sentient being I know is of the opinion the Doors suck but L.A. Woman is a cool song.

    That intro though....  Can't hear the song without seeing the opening sequence 

     

  10. 25 minutes ago, horn4life said:

    Well if you like Mojo he's hosting a day party at Continental Club next Saturday the 18th, starting at... 10 am...  MOjo and the Toad Liquors at 5 pm. https://continentalclub.com/austin#event=75929104;instance=20230318100000?popup=1

    I'm good...  Saw them back in the day.  He's getting perhaps to old to pull off "Vibrator Dependant"

    Lol...   found a version from '09

     

    Christ he looked old back then...

    • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
  11. You want to talk overrated?   Had some time to kill in Paris...  so I went to see the Communard's wall and figured I would stop at a few of the popular grave sites.  I expected Morrison's grave to have some tribute flowers, mourning hispters, and maybe a guy playing a few tunes on a guitar...   

    Nope just a shitty unkempt grave with a busted up crowd control fence.

    Also the Cimetière du Père Lachaise feels like a nice place to get mugged

    • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
  12. 42 minutes ago, Bookman said:

    Tom Petty is way overrated.

    Complies with thread title...

    I didn't care for Petty's music when I was younger, so I fully understand the sentiment.  The Limp Biscuit guy is on his own.   

    • Haha 1
  13. 1.

    14 hours ago, rage-a-holic said:

    Cheaper? A bunch of the hotels he stays at are 300-600 per night.

     

    2.

    14 hours ago, UnivTex34 said:

    Have you watched the Eugene Levy version? He stays in an Arizona hotel that is $10k a night.

     

    3.

    13 hours ago, rage-a-holic said:

    The only thing I'd pay $10k a night for in AZ  is a trio of ASU Pi Phis.

     4.  STD & Profit?

  14. On 3/7/2023 at 10:18 AM, Jerry Callo said:

    Eugene Levy's Reluctant Traveler is pretty good.  

    If you like this check out Richard Ayoade's Travelman...   it's a better cheaper version imho

    Slow Horses...  good so far

  15. 33 minutes ago, Doc Daneeka said:

    That’s 98% of the bands I could hit with a swinging dead cat, though. Maybe more. There are a lot of bands I “like” but maybe five I’d genuinely miss. 

    • Van Halen
    • Clash
    • Led Zeppelin
    • Doors
    • Johnny Lee Hooker
    • SRV
    • Muddy Waters
    • Tom Petty & Heartbreakers
    • Black Keys
    • Pink Floyd

    10 just off the top of my head

  16. 10 hours ago, G650 said:

    Black Flag and Minor Threat were bands that were hard, not Nirvana. The Germs, the Descendents, the Minutemen were real indie guys. Nirvanas main contribution was tearing down the polish of 80s radio for a raw sound, mainly because they had the pop sensibilities to break through. It was very poppy music even then. And as I mentioned Kurt Cobain was a huge pop music fan, especially shit from the 70s.

    Black Flag is a great brand not a good band...  Damaged was great, the rest was crap.  But you'd think they're the Beatles by how ubiquitous their symbol is....  I've seen rappers and tiny boppers with the black flag tat

     

    These are some indy mofos

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
  17. 5 minutes ago, The Dog said:

    OK you can say 'only 13 games' but Culpepper put up even better numbers EVERY YEAR and only played 11 games a year. 

    His production just doesn't compare.

    I didn't say that it does.  Believe me I'm intimately aware of Richardson's performance or lack thereof.  My point was that the kid has undeniable physical talent, but he needs more time to develop as a QB.  I think it's a smart move on his part to leave early, but man oh man, I would have loved see him stick for around for another year and see what he could do behind an improved oline and with better quality receivers.

  18. Just now, The Dog said:

    the guys he's being compared to athletically are Hurts, Newton, and Culpepper. All three put up video game numbers their senior years. Richardson did not.

    counter point Richardson only started 13 games... and is leaving for the league asap.  Kid is crazy physically gifted, I'm rooting for him, but he made some plays that'll make you think at a minimum he needs more practice/PT.  4.44 40 @ the combine

    Also there are some plays where trucks a db then out runs the others ...  Bigger than Cam, and faster than Cam, less felonious than Cam, and with a cannon for an arm.

  19. 36 minutes ago, TKthunder2 said:

    Rarely outside of big games but they average 45k attendance around 70% of capacity of the off campus facility. Again Miami only has 12k undergrads so they do pretty well if you compare them to private schools:

    I'm calling BS on that.  Perhaps they have sold an average of 45k tickets, but average attendance is nowhere near that number.  I seem to recall years that single game tickets cost more than a 3 game ticket pack (or something like that).  So those big games had fans from other teams buying multigame tickets because it was cheaper.

    counter point, don't know, don't care

     

    • Hook 'Em 1
×
×
  • Create New...