Recovering Wreckage From a WWII B-17 Crash Site (B-17 Crash Part 2) | History Traveler Episode 172

[Music] [Music] in the last episode of history traveler we were in sheridan arkansas at the grant county museum where among other things we learned about the tragic crash of a b-17 bomber nearby during world war ii in this episode we're actually going to the very site of this b-17 crash where we're going to be linking up with brandon from the channel digging on faith to see if we can excavate any of the remaining wreckage from this tragic crash [Music] [Music] [Music] all right well uh we just got out here to the crash site where nine members of b17 that was in transit from kansas to florida crashed and were killed and this place has now been turned into a memorial park and dang [Music] this is really nice [Music] what we're looking at right here is a marker that was the original memorial that was here just outside of sheridan arkansas where the crash took place lists the names of all of the men who died and it says at this place 9 us army flyers from smokey hill army airfield salina kansas while in performance of their duty to the country went down with their flying fortress and were killed at 4 pm march 12 1943 and then in more recent years well there was a huge effort to build this memorial park right here at the crash site so they put together kind of a model of a b-17 and there's another memorial there behind that that we'll go look at here in a little while now as i've already mentioned i i don't know as much about this story as others might but there's a gentleman local from here in the area by the name of nelson who is largely responsible for the planning and construction of this memorial park he's had contact with the families of the the crewmen of the b-17 that crashed here and and knows in detail a lot of things about those men and about the crash so he's been kind enough to join me out here and is is going to help fill in some of the gaps with with what happened here in march of 1942 [Music] march 12 1943 a crew of nine on on the b-17 bomber that's here they modeled it here at the park they left celina kansas about 1 30 in the afternoon they had orders to go directly to west palm beach florida to join their squadron of 28 other b-17s and on their orders were to fly directly from salina kansas to west palm beach florida which would take them over memphis over the memphis area and their orders were to fly at ten thousand feet on a direct path well what happened there was a major thunderstorm that blew up in in missouri and the thunderstorm line was all the way to louisiana so pilot george davis turned his aircraft to the south and flew parallel to the thunderstorm that brought him 100 miles off course and the event once the plane they got past little rock they started having engine outboard engine trouble on the starboard side and the plane the engine was so bad the plane was shaking and losing altitude it had caught on fire and it the plane circled shared him two times looking for a place to land when george davis was on the radio with adam's field he said my plane is is vibrating it's breaking apart and the radio went dead and at that at that point the 21 foot section of the uh wing was blown off when the the fire from the outboard engine had gotten into the fuel bladder in the in the wing and it blew the wing that portion of the wing completely off and it was thrown it went in the air almost a mile west west of here and it was found a couple weeks later but while the plane was circling sheridan we know that the crew members knew of the peril they were in and peter ivanovic was the radio operator and he had taken a red army air corps handkerchief and he put one of his dog tags in he took his rosary off and he took his little miniature deck of playing cards it was in a leather pouch and he had bundled those up and he was yelling out of the window the waist gunner's side window uh get these in my mom his mom was glad this ivanovich lives in bisbee arizona and a week or so later that that package was delivered to to his mom and so we know that the crew knew they were in peril and they knew their their plane was more than likely going to crash land and they might not survive that so uh it was about three little after three o'clock when they flew over sheridan and uh there was a uh young boy school has just it was just about to let out and uh is he he's an elderly gentleman now up in his 90s uh but his mr tombs and he said that he heard the plane rumbling and making the noises and and he told his teacher he had to go the bathroom well back then it was out houses and he was telling his teacher how bad he had to go and she let him go out and he ran out on the playground and was jumping up and down and waving at the plane and he said that the pi the plane was banking uh making a turn to come to the north and the the plane was banking as as it came over the school ground and he said he looked up and he saw the pilot looking straight down at him and the pilot waved one time at him with his hand and he could clearly see the pilot it was low enough he could clearly see wow yeah and and it was just a matter of six or eight minutes later the plane crashed here [Music] the plane when when the wing fell off it basically somersaulted over and over and it did a belly flop just parallel to where we're standing the nose of the plane would have been toward that pine tree and and uh the fuselage would have come over this way and a lot of the debris including the the big turbo off the engine was found pretty much over where the star of this plane is now and the crew members were in uh of course pilot co-pilot and uh would have been strapped in the front seats the most of the crew members their crew position was near the radio room where they would be sitting on the floor near the bulkhead and after the plane broke apart and crashed some of the uh civilians that were able to look in the plane saw them in in that position with the fuel just burning in and they were killed instantly they they were they were killed upon impact and throughout the the night the fuel from the plane kept leaking out and it would go down into that creek that's about a hundred yards down the road and it would feed into the creek and the uh brother and sister that lived lived over here on the hill they said that throughout the night they they'd get up and look out the window and they could see that the the flames in the creek from the fuel still burning wow and that they could the the shells just kept going off through the night [Music] now one of the things that i really really like that nelson is doing is uh brings school groups out here to to teach them about this story and about the sacrifices of the men in world war ii and here are a few of the items that he brings out so here's obviously an illustration of a b-17 and it also has on it all of the crew that passed away in the crash so the pilot george davis robert turchett dolan peter ivanovic so all of these guys had their final moments right here where we are standing and also just to make it a little bit more personal i'm going to move this well the families have donated different items here is the foot locker of arthur nelson potter and over here whenever they were building the memorial they did some metal detecting and excavation here are a few of the pieces of wreckage that were found and really what is most impactful to me is nelson told the story of ivanovic who wrapped the rosary in a handkerchief and threw it out the window with instructions to give it to his mother look here here is peter ivanovic here are his two young daughters and here is the handkerchief the rosary and the dog tag that he put in it that he threw out the window also included in there was a deck of cards and i guess his wife called him the king of hearts and in the deck the one card that was missing was the king of hearts and it's thought that he may have had it you know in in his hat or in his pocket or something like that but man that uh that is something else the families of the crew members i've been in touch with they they really want this story told to school children they want the memory of their their loved ones that were lost here to be told and so like this is a box i got from george davis's family he george his nickname was bashful george and he was the pilot and so they send all all of their graduation all their different certificates that they got through the military and letters that were written to and from family members and one of the things of interest here nearly nearly everything in the plane was totally destroyed the fire was so intense that that the military only found less than two dollars of pocket change and it was basically melted and fused together but one thing that did survive was was the first lieutenant pilot wing and the military couldn't determine if that came from the uh george davis of pilot or robert turchett the co-pilot and so this is a letter that was sent to uh george davis's parents saying that since george was the senior senior official on the plane this is the the highest ranking officer that they wanted the davis family to have the wings what what do you have around your neck there oh the yeah the family members like the the tag that's in the the best shape here is george davis's one of george davis's tags that he had with him when he died the other one is at the at the museum and then arthur nelson potter this one was found just uh on the on the other side of the road in in the woods that was on it was found about 30 years after the crash and the family uh gave this to me uh when they came down in 2015 both families gave these and wanted me to show the school children and tell the stories of their other boys that's awesome yeah [Music] [Music] all right so i'm now moving up here to the the back end of the memorial and man this is pretty amazing what they've done here but if you go up they have a spot memorializing each one of the men who died in this crash something else that i really like is that they also have a phone number that you can call and then you punch in a number so in this case for arthur potter now you dial that number and then punch in 24 and it'll tell you a little bit of his story okay so for leo dolan you would call that number so again you can kind of see that for yourself and maybe call and learn about these men punch in 23 you can learn about leo dolan and the numbers go let's say i started backwards but for the crew members starts at 16 and then goes to 24. i i love what they've done here here's another part of this whole story that is just really really neat to me at one point this memorial was nothing but this stone sitting in the middle of a swamp really i've seen pictures and it was just uh this stone in the middle of a bunch of water and swampland well this guy right here jerry glenn jackson was in the the scouts he was looking to become an eagle scout his parents brought him out here and he was so moved by the place that he decided to do something so he took it upon himself as an eagle scout project to come out here clean the area up plant flowers and really honor the the men who died here and tragically as you can see he died in a car accident a short time later but they've memorialized him as well so i know it's kind of easy to pick on you know the the younger generations and say that they don't appreciate history or they don't know history well they just need somebody to take them out and and show them and then they can make an impact too okay uh i've just moved across the road from the memorial park and one of the advantages to coming out here with a guy who has his own metal detecting youtube channel is that he is likely to bring a metal detector with him so while i've been talking to nelson uh brandon's been out here kind of on the perimeter of the crash site doing a little bit of metal detecting so i'm going to come out here and see if we've uh found anything [Music] yeah more than it has been damaged as deep as this is i would assume that it's probably a piece of the plane hmm i do believe this uh there are some pieces um in that little tray uh in the museum that have the same um kind of a i don't know the same patina on it so i do believe that this is in fact a piece of the plane wow like the skin of the plane was made out of aluminum and so aluminum a lot of times will get off a high tone which that's what i hear here [Music] yeah definitely a melted piece of uh i guess when the plane broke up and exploded that's definitely a piece wow [Music] another little yeah what's this what's what the heck is that i don't know it almost has like a silver finish to it but yeah i'm not sure what that is about to get it cleaned up but i'm 99 sure that this something come to planes okay so this is giving a more solid [Music] signal a steadier tone with more even numbers oh yeah there you go oh man yeah so definitely a skin of the plain you can see the the gray just painted on the outside and then it's uh it's just raw aluminum on the inside there so wow so uh right now it's uh the the beginning of august here in arkansas and brandon and i have worked out a pretty good unspoken arrangement where uh i hold the camera and uh he he does all of the work you can tell by my shirt that i'm soaking wet and jd's dries a bone you're doing a good job what is that that's definitely it i'm not sure what this is but this is definitely because of the the items that i found have all been right here this has to be part of the plane not really sure what it is it's got the same sort of you know erosion on the metal we'll have to get it cleaned up and and take a look at it wow so we dug this piece right here we just pulled up this it's either brass or copper some sort of of hose um it's 100 an artifact from the plane so do a little research on this and see if we can figure out what it is wow hard to believe that's been in the ground what 75 80 years yeah something like that it's incredible yeah very unfortunate but at least we can't you know we have the opportunity to save it so yeah all right well that's uh pretty amazing to be out here where this crash occurred and uh to be able to pull some of these these relics out of the ground we're gonna take those pieces and and donate them to the museum so they can put them in their display and and kind of add to what they already have to educate the public about what happened here um yeah pretty amazing to be in this place have one more thing here at the memorial park that i want to show [Music] so i i have to say um i was not expecting this this is a pretty moving place to be here where all of these men died and uh to see what the locals have done here to memorialize this place so that these nine men can be remembered is pretty impactful something else that's very impactful is whenever they were creating this memorial and they were doing the excavation work uh you know here at the crash site and doing metal detecting and finding things they actually found bones of some of these crew members well those bones are embedded inside of this memorial so part of them will forever remain at rest here at the spot where they died i'm so glad that we came out here today i'm so glad that people like nelson exist who are willing to do the work to remember these people and pass on that memory and and educate others but if you're ever coming through uh the area south of of little rock around sheridan definitely come to this museum or come to this crash site go to the grant county museum it is certainly worth your time glad that we came here today [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The History Underground

Views: 143,916

Keywords: history, history traveler, history underground, travel, arkansas, grant county museum, wwii, ww2, world war II, bombers, b-17, b-17 crash, b-17 crash site, civil war, jenkin's ferry, battle of jenkin's ferry, diggin' on faith, metal detecting, crash site

Id: VMtPBX_v3Kg

Length: 27min 1sec (1621 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 17 2021