Eniwetok, site of The Navy’s Worst Ever Aircraft Accident

[daveT]

There were many tragic accidents with great loss of life and aircraft during World War Two. One accident in particular stands out from the rest due to the greatest number of aircraft destroyed and damaged due to one accident. Eniwetok Island was the site of the Navy's worst ever aircraft accident. Read enclosed pdf file to learn the full story of this tragic event. This accident has been researched using the official Navy accident report. I welcome your comments.
V/R
DaveT

[syscom3]

Excellent find!!!!!!

Thanks very much for this.

[comiso90]

very interesting

[Gnomey]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing.

[timshatz]

Good read.

[B-17engineer]

Thanks Really enjoyed the article.

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Great find daveT. Very interesting. Thanks.

[evangilder]

Excellent read and a well done story. With your permission, I would like to forward this to the newsletter editor for the CAF SoCal wing. I am sure he would be interested in the story.

[RabidAlien]

Great find!

[daveT]

Thanks for all the comments.You have my permission to forward this to the newsletter editor for the CAF SoCal wing. I like to research the aircraft accidents and write stories about them as a type of memorial to the crews so they will not be forgotten. I'll post more. I've visited over 50 crash sites and written stories about many of them. I'm looking for a magazine somewhere to publish them.
DaveT

[evangilder]

Send me a PM with your e-mail address. I will get you in touch with our newsletter editor. He loves stories to put into the newsletter. Unfortunately, there's no money in it, but the newsletter is published to the web, so the exposure is excellent. I will forward your PDF on.

[R Leonard]

used to be one of my favorite trivia questions:

Which aircraft destroyed the most USN aircraft, and how many, in a single mission?

[daveT]

Well I guess I answered that trivia question. We will never know for sure why he aborted his takeoff. I believe the old PB4y-1 was just too heavy.

[R Leonard]

Indeed. I first ran across this years ago when looking at Joe Baugher's bu no index and started running across all these "destroyed on ground by crashing PB4Y-1 38766 Aug 9, 1944, Eniwetok" notations. I believe he's pretty much identified all those destroyed. Once made a list . . . as most around here know I have a tendency to make lists . . . of all of them, but, as with a great many of my lists, not sure where it is.

Rich

[Wildcat]

Good read Dave, thanks for posting mate. This incident reminded me of a USAAF B-24 crash in New Guinea that killed 59 and wounded 90 odd Australian soldiers who were waiting in their trucks to board C-47's. Truely terrible stuff.