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Richard Jernigan -> RE: DC plane/helicopter crash (Jan. 31 2025 19:53:04)
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We lived on Bolling AFB within the city limits of Washington DC during 1951-55. One of the girls I dated in high school lived in Fort Washington, MD. Another lived on a couple hundred acres on the Maryland shore of the Potomac across from Mount Vernon--it's now part of Piscataway Park. On the 4th of July we would go out on the river on one of Bolling's 42-foot boats to watch the fireworks on the Mall. So I'm familiar with the area.
In those days there were three sets of active runways in a small area along the Potomac: Bolling, Anacostia Naval Air Station and Washington National. Not as crowded as it is now with only Ronald Reagan Airport (Washington National), but still a busy airspace for the 1950s.
While we ate dinner one evening the phone rang. Dad was called to answer it. He almost never swore in the presence of Mom, my brother or me, but we heard him say as he signed off, "Good, I won't have to kill the son-of-a-bitch myself."
Someone flying a WW II P-38 had collided with a Lockheed Constellation airliner, cutting off the Connie's tail. Bolling had responsibility for crash rescue on the Potomac, so it came under Dad's command.
Shortly after the end of WW II the military sold vast quantities of "war surplus." Among the stuff bought by Dad and "Uncle Bob" Weller, his former partner in the San Antonio Piper aircraft dealership, were dozens of aircraft engines, useful to the airlines, a diesel-electric railroad locomotive, a couple of P-51 fighters, and a couple of P-38s--all dirt cheap at auctions.
They sold one of the P-38s to a rich South American, who gave it to his son for his birthday. The son fancied himself as a hot-shoe pilot. He was flying the P-38 when he chopped the tail off the Constellation. The South American was killed. The airliner ditched on the river. Prompt action by Bolling Crash Rescue in their three 42-foot crash boats saved all the passengers and crew.
The passengers in the recent crash weren't so lucky.
Dad was head of the Air Force Accident Investigation Board for the Military District of Washington. I went with him to look at a couple of non-fatal military crashes in the Washington DC area, out of those he had to investigate, both non-fatal and fatal.
A B-25 twin-engine light bomber tried an emergency landing in a large forest clearing in northern Virginia. They plowed into the woods at the edge of the clearing. The pilot and co-pilot lucked out. When we arrived to look over the wreckage a good sized tree still stood between their seats.
It occurs to me now that growing up in the Air Force, I probably heard about more plane wrecks than the average person.
RNJ
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