How do you find details of a plane crash from 1950's in Little Rock Arkansas involving two jet planes?

Answer 1

This incident involved the crash on March 12, 1960, of a B-47 bomber from Little Rock Air Force Base on an early morning training mission. According to an online posting of historic Arkansas Gazette accounts, the plane exploded shortly after takeoff, raining debris across a wide area. But much of the wreckage -- and the crew -- fell on two neighborhoods not far from the State Capitol building.

According to the newspaper accounts, three of the crew of four died in the accident, as did two people in houses. The nose of the plane landed in Allsopp Park, and the plane's engines were scattered as if dropped like bombs. Fiery wreckage landed on and destroyed the residence of a woman named Grove or Groves. She escaped the inferno almost unhurt, but her tenant, a young man who lived in the attic, perished. One dead crewman lay on a driveway, and another on a school playground. One injured crewman survived thanks to his partly open parachute by landing in a tree.

One story goes that a crowd gathered in the street to look at the hellish scene. Someone mentioned that a nuclear weapon might have fallen with the wreckage of the aircraft (which was not the case). Just to be safe, the onlookers took a few steps back.

This writer lived as a child in the country several miles outside the city. The morning of the explosion and crash, a small roll of very thin tin foil showed up in our front yard. Trees in other parts of the city were full of this foil. It reportedly was radar-jamming material dispersed during the explosion. According to one of the Gazette stories, some witnesses were confused about whether one or two planes were involved because of the aerial disintegration of the bomber during the explosion.

Some of this account is from memory, but most detail was found after a search today in the extensive historic newspaper accounts posted on the following Web site: http://www.arkansasties.com/Pulaski/Structures6/PlaneCrash1960.htm

The names of the crew, the addresses and locations where debris fell, etc., can be found in the text posted there. Answer: I was a KC-97 pilot on that date, and the a/c in question was scheduled to be our receiver that day. The co-pilot of the B-47 was a neighbor of mine. We had just started engines when I saw the explosion; at first, I thought someone had fired a flare, but then saw the big pieces coming out of the explosion. An inbound LogAir C-46 saw the explosion above him, and described where various pieces where hitting, in relation to the capitol building. We could see the huge smoke plume from the base. Needless to say, we did not launch that day. The reason that a mid-air was suspected was that the external fuel tanks were built by the Beechcraft Company, and someone saw the i.d. on the piece of tank. There were NO nuclear weapons involved. It was a normal training flight. Don Sproule donsprl@aol.com