Futile Search for 1945 Helldiver Crash Site

NOTE TO READER: The post below is old.  I did finally find the crash site!  To read that article, along with directions for finding the site, go HERE.

It was the longest hike I've taken in a while.  12.4 miles out-and-back on a remote section of the Laurel Highlands Hiking Trail--which is to say 6.2 miles each way.  Averaging about 2.2 miles an hour, I got it done between 10:30am and 4:30pm.  But in that time, I did take a few breaks.  Six hours with very little weight on my back.  It might be another story when I come back to do a thru-hike in July, when I've got one 13-mile day planned and one 14-mile day.

One really nice thing about the Laurel Highlands Trail is that there are markers every mile, so it's easy to gauge your progress and to say where something is located.  "Oh, yeah, there's a stream between such mile and such mile."  On Facebook I read recently that between mile markers 51 and 52 there's an unmarked path that leads 1.2 miles to a spot in the forest where a "helldiver" military jet crashed in 1945, killing both men on board.  The closest you can get to the area by car is the parking lot at mile marker 57--which means that the site is remote and a long hike in both directions.

In March, you get a sense for the long views that are mostly obscured by all the tree trunks and bare branches.  The great distances are suggested, but not plainly seen.  When I come back in the summer, there will be nothing at all to see here but green leaves.  

It was a little rash to think I could just hike six miles into the late winter woods to find an unmarked trail to the site of a plane crash that occurred almost 80 years ago.  But someone had been out there recently, and he put the photos of the crash site on Facebook--a memorial plaque with the names of the two airmen and their hometowns.  The plane engine was left behind, too, partly sunken into the earth.  Someone goes out there every now and again to replace the two little American flags on either side of the plaque.

It's hard to tell from this photo, but these rocks are enormous, and the trail passes down through the cracks between them.  But back to the plane crash.  On October 9, 1945, a squadron of 21 helldivers was flying back to their base in Michigan from a World War II victory celebration in D.C.  There was fog over the Laurel Highlands, and one of them lost its way and crashed into the side of Sugar Camp Hill, a place I explored and wrote about back in January.  There was a pilot and a radio operator.  It's believed that the radio operator tried unsuccessfully to save himself by scrambling out onto the wing of the plane and jumping into the treetops.  An observer--surely a child at the time--from the nearby village of Waterford claims to have seen a man on the wing.  I mean, it makes sense that folks would be watching if 21 fighter jets came flying overhead.  But if they were lost in the fog, how did anyone see someone out on the wing?  The radio operator's body was found 50 feet from the crash.  The pilot probably died on impact, but the plane also exploded.  Photos of the old engine show melted metal.

I went as far as mile marker 51--shown here--looking for an unmarked path and found nothing.  It was a great hike in itself, and it scored me another peak on my peak-bagger's website, "Irwin Hill" at 2,800 some feet of elevation.  The trail passes largely through state game lands and Laurel Hill State Park.

It is sad that these two poor fellows would see combat in World War II and survive, only to crash their plane into a mountainside on the way home from a victory parade.  Their mothers must have been so thrilled when the war ended and their sons were still alive...then this.  The pilot was Frank Z. Campbell of Valdosta, Georgia, and the radioman was George Cohlmia of Watonga, Oklahoma.  Members of Cohlmia's family have made the long hike back to visit the site.