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Pages of History
Lt. Charles A. Van Pelt of Dayton, Ohio, was the only survivor of the 18 men on the two B-17 bombers that crashed near Laurel Aug. 5, 1944.
When questioned by investigators from the Sioux City airbase, he told them he had turned the controls over to his copilot, Lt. George M. Nelson, and asked him to pull the throttle back.
When he did, the plane immediately dropped down behind one of the other planes in the lead squadron where it was caught in the turbulence (prop wash) from the propeller blades of the lead plane. This caused Van Pelt’s plane to veer into another plane flown by Lt. Joseph Mead.
The impact caused both planes to spiral out of control and fall from an altitude of about 9,000 feet. Van Pelt’s plane exploded and broke apart in mid air. He was thrown from the plane but managed to deploy his parachute and escape with only minor injuries.
The other eight members of his crew were killed. Nine-year-old Gene Twiford, who was helping his father shock oats, remembered seeing bodies, parts of bodies, and wreckage scattered over a large area.
Mead’s plane dropped almost straight down and hit the ground with such force that all four engines were completely buried. The fuel tanks exploded on impact sending flames and a plume of smoke high into the air.
The Laurel Volunteer Fire Department immediately responded. Fire trucks from Coleridge, Concord and Wayne also rushed to assist.
With no fire hydrants near the crash site, the water supply was soon exhausted. Clyde Shively and Clifford Guinn hooked a tractor to a farm wagon and hauled water in barrels to help extinguish the flames. Members of the Laurel American Legion and Civil Air Patrol and Cadets helped protect the site from the crowd of sightseers and souvenir hunters that soon began to gather. (As a child I remember my mother having a ring and a star that had been carved from a piece of plexiglass from the crash. I do not know what became of them).
Once the flames were extinguished, the recovery process began. The burned and mangled bodies of eight of the nine crew members from Mead’s plane were found near the crash site. The body of the tailgunner was found inside a gun turret that landed several hundred yards northeast of the main site.
None of the crash victims were from Nebraska. The closest was Van Pelt’s copilot, Lt. George M. Nelson, of Goldfield, Iowa.
An especially poignant story was that of Cpl. Walter Jacques of Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Jacques, one of the four gunners on Van Pelt‘s plane, was to be married that evening in Sioux City.
Miss Jean Nixon, the bride to be, and Jacques’ mother had arrived from Pawtucket and were staying in the Warrior Hotel. Arrangements had been made for the wedding ceremony to take place that evening.
The grief-stricken bride and his mother returned to Pawtucket the next day. She never married. Her gravestone reads “Jean H. Nixon.“ Army personnel and equipment from the Sioux City airbase began arriving about 1 PM. Recovery and salvage operations continued all day Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday.
Investigators pinned most of the responsibility for the crash on Lt. Van Pelt. The report concluded that he had been careless in formation flying, was inattentive, and had flown his bomber closer to the other planes than he should have.
Charles A. Van Pelt was the son of Irving J. and Maud T. Van Pelt of Northridge, a small community near Dayton, Ohio. Following his graduation from Northridge high school, Van Pelt enlisted in the Army Air Corps. He completed basic aviation training in January 1944 and advanced flight training in March. He was then commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to the Sioux City airbase.
Despite receiving most of the blame for the bomber crashes near Laurel, Van Pelt continued flying B-17s until the end of the war. Assigned to the 384th Bombardment Group based in England, he made 36 successful bombing runs over Germany between December 1944 and April 1945.
During these missions he piloted sixteen different B-17s. Each one had a name painted on the cockpit. The bombers he flew included The Lead Banana, Trembling Gremlin, Little Kenny, Worry Bird, Big Dog, Pleasure Bent, Nevada Avenger, Hot Nuts, Satan’s Playmate, De Rumble-izer, Ruth, and Danny. Considered obsolete in the coming jet age, all were scrapped after the war.
In February 1945, Van Pelt was awarded the Air Medal. His last bombing run was on April 19. He was promoted to the rank of 1st Lieutenant on April 30, 1945 – the same day Adolf Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered on May 8. Van Pelt presumably was discharged later that year, but no record of it has been found in the Dayton newspaper.
