Try this Dutchy.
Westover fatal air crash marks 50-year anniversary
Monday, June 23, 2008By JEANETTE
DeFORGEjdeforge@repub.com
CHICOPEE - Now and then Kasmir S. Machowski still finds mangled pieces of metal, some as small as a penny, in the fields behind his home. On a rare day he says he can pick up the scent of jet fuel.
Fifty years ago this week, on June 27, 1958, a military jet carrying the commander of Westover Air Force Base, a team of newsmen, two officials for the National Aeronautic Association and a crew of six crashed and exploded in those fields off Fuller Road.
The aircraft was on takeoff for what was hoped would be a record-setting trans-Atlantic flight. All 15 on board were killed.
It was one of the deadliest crashes in Westover history, second only to a 1946 accident when a B-17 Flying Fortress, returning to Chicopee from Europe after World War II, crashed into Mount Tom and killed 25 servicemen.
Machowski was 13 in 1958. He lived with his parents and three siblings on the farm where he now grows Christmas trees. He still remembers the excitement leading to the flight.
\"I was going to stay up and watch the planes take off. I don't remember why we didn't,\" he said recently.
The feat was to be remarkable for its time.
Four KC-135 Stratotanker jets - produced by Boeing and similar in design to its 707 passenger jet - were to take off minutes apart and fly from Westover to New York and then on to London to break a record flight time of 7 hours, 29 minutes, according to Andrew S. Biscoe, of Chicopee, who has compiled a history of Westover on his Web site,
www.westoveryesterday.com.
\"It was very big,\" said Biscoe, who is a Reservist withthe 439th Airlift Wing at what is today Westover Air Reserve Base. \"Based on Sputnik in 1957 we wanted to show the Russians what our new Air Force tanker jet could do, how far it could fly, let alone how much fuel it could carry.\"
Westover was a different place then. It was an active-duty Air Force base, home to the 99th Bombardment Wing of the Strategic Air Command and its B-52 Stratofortress bombers, with about 20,000 military personnel, their families and civilian employees.
Scores of the sprawling B-52 bombers, which could carry 70,000 pounds of munitions, including nuclear weapons, flew constantly in round-the-clock operations. In the midst of the Cold War, flight crews were always on alert to respond to a potential invasion from the Soviet Union, said Stephen R. Jendrysik, Chicopee historian.
The KC-135, first used in 1956, was designed to refuel B-52s in the air. It was fast - 530 mph at 30,000 feet, and military officials were eager to show its power, he said.
Shortly after midnight June 27, the first two KC-135s - \"Alpha\" and \"Bravo\" - took flight.
The third aircraft, with a call sign \"Cocoa,\" took off at 12:30 a.m. and, according to news reports in the Springfield Daily News and the Springfield Union, was in the air for about 45 seconds before it hit high tension wires a mile and a half beyond the runway, skidded across the Massachusetts Turnpike and exploded in the Machowski family's field.
\"I jumped up and looked out and the back window of the house and the whole field was on fire,\" Machowski said.
A headline in the Springfield Union just hours later that morning would read \"Residents Terrified As Disaster Strikes; Kazimirez Machowski (his father) Sends Alarm as Fiery Tanker Lands.\"
Reports stated that dozens of ambulances, fire trucks and police cruisers responded to the scene, and thousands of onlookers flocked to the area. The Air Force extinguished the fire, cordoned off the field and collected portions of the wreck.
Machowski remembers sheets covering bodies of those who died. Investigators left behind stakes that served as markers. Machowski recalls three labeled \"Sgt. Hutter's left leg,\" \"Sgt. Hutter's right leg,\" and \"Sgt. Hutter's body.\" Tech. Sgt. Joseph C. Hutter, 27, was the flight crew chief.
\"You try not to dwell on it,\" Machowski said. \"It did bother us. The fact that 15 people died here, it was a sad occurrence.\"
His family didn't talk much about the crash. For a time there were patches among the field where nothing would grow and the smell of jet fuel was prominent. To this day, on some humid mornings, Machowski believes he can smell the remnants of the fuel.
\"I'm sure it's mostly psychological,\" he said.
Since he purchased the house from his parents, Machowski and his wife moved it back 40 feet from the busy road. The house sits now on a spot where he remembers the flaming landing gear fell.
\"We were lucky, a tenth of a mile difference and it would have hit the house,\" he said.
George D. Wood, of Wilbraham, had luck on his side that day, too. As a spokesman for the Air Force Cambridge Center, a research and development facility for aircraft systems at Hanscom Force Base in Bedford, he had been invited to escort press on the third plane.
\"It was to show (the KC-135's) efficiency and speed,\" Wood said. \"It was to make the Air Force look good.\" It was a spectacular feat, the jets were to fly to London, refuel, and return in 12 hours, he said.
Then, on June 26, eight hours before the flight, Wood recalled, his commander removed him from the mission so he could handle another project.
\"I found out the next morning,\" about the crash, he said.
Wood, now 90, said he was shocked and remembers co-workers saying they were happy he wasn't killed.
\"I don't look back,\" he said. \"It was part luck, part fate.\"
He knew one of the reporters who died, Robert B. Sibley, 57, the aviation editor of the Boston Herald Traveler. \"Bob Sibley I knew very well. He covered aviation, and I worked with him a lot,\" he said.
A half-century later there are still questions.
Wood, Jendrysik and Biscoe said they don't know what caused the crash. The three are unsure of the name of the fourth plane, which wound up being grounded. They say it was likely Delta, per traditional military flight lingo.
Reports in the Springfield newspapers were that a joint Air Force-aircraft industry board investigated the crash, but no records show a cause having been reported.
A lawsuit filed by Maureen A. Montellier, the widow of Norman J. Montellier, 37, a United Press International foreign affairs reporter, claimed the crash was caused by negligence of the pilot, who took off with wing flaps in the improper position. Montellier won a $168,000 judgment in 1963.
A July 11, 1958 Springfield Daily News story reported an Air Force general suspected the crash was due to pilot error also, but Col. J.C. Bailey, investigative board president, denied that.
\"My impression was it stalled on takeoff,\" and was caused by electrical failures, Wood said.
Two weeks after the crash Brig. Gen. Perry M. Hoisington was named head of the 57th Air Division, replacing Saunders. Saunders, a 1938 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was a World War II pilot who had taken command at Westover in the fall of 1956.
By the time reports of the crash were reaching the street with the morning edition newspapers, the first two KC-135 jets departing Chicopee, \"Alpha\" and \"Bravo,\" completed their mission. They shattered the world speed record by more than two hours. \"Alpha\" landed in London in 5 hours, 27 minutes and 42 seconds and \"Bravo\" arrived two minutes later.
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