Quote:
Originally Posted by Diver1111
"...As I understand it one was flown by an American, the other a Brit..."
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I searched Google in vain as well; however, the FAA has a long history of crashes since 1926, so the searching goes there next.
The story
is plausible—aircraft losses in training and navigation failures were fairly common. My WWII Dad
lost patrol-bomber colleagues due to flying into mountains—
on Pacific islands!
WWII footage of "Fighter Pilot Operating Instructions" can be viewed today on DVD. (
Zeno's is a popular source for those DVDs, who cheerfully answered my questions via email). I purchased some of those DVDs for my Dad, whose narrations of every little feature of WWII fighter aircraft was very much appreciated. Aircraft of that era had
many inherent problems—usually due to poor ± horsepower matchup.
Even without my Dad's narrations, those DVDs showed aircraft of the WWII era to be very "fiddly" to operate—and some were downright dangerous. (The latter, we gave to truly-desperate allies or stored by the hundreds on huge desert airfields to be later reclaimed for scrap metal and engines).
It wasn't all hyper-technical narration: One comment he made followed WWII views of a mosquito-plagued island base in the South Pacific. He'd been stationed there, and his comment in astonishment was: "They've put doors on the barracks!"
Oops...returning to the subject:
You might find the
previous thread on WWII aircraft in the Lakes Region interesting.
During those war years, you could have driven up to a busy Maine location and read a sign reading, "His Majesty's Naval Air Station"!
ETA:
Found a few sites...
This site has a rough chronology of USAAF missions and accidents:
http://www.accident-report.com/PUBS/chrono42.html
Wikipedia is far more comprehensive:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...raft_(pre-1950)
Only one crash site in New Hampshire was noted.
En route to Massachusetts, a B-18A bomber (a converted DC-3 commercial aircraft) crashed into Mount Waternomee in the White Mountains. The site has been protected as a memorial, and an easy hiking trail will lead you to it:
http://www.viewsfromthetop.com/forum...ad.php?t=23410
Another item of interest, also involving the same aircraft reknowned for reliable service:
Quote:
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12 December - Major General Herbert A. Dargue, en route to Hawaii to assume command of the Hawaiian Department from Lieutenant General Walter Short, is killed when his B-18 Bolo, 36-306, of the 31st ABG,[86] crashes in the Sierra Mountains, S of Bishop, California, in worsening weather conditions. Wreckage not found until March 1942. (Joe Baugher cites discovery date of 5 July 1942.) Besides the general, seven are KWF including his staff, and crew chiefs, critically needed in the Pacific.[171]
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My Dad tells me that
Major Dargue would visit his son at Wolfeboro's Camp Wyanoke by landing a floatplane off the Camp's dock. He was unaware of Major General Dargue's fatal crash until I located this Wikipedia item.
This is a modern photo of a B-18 crash site during WW2, but not of any of the above!
(Still searching for that mid-air!!!)
