TIMELINE OF INVESTIGATION INTO CRASH OF B24-D

by

MARCIA SHEALEY

Introduction

• Full Name:  Marcia Leslie Bernstein Shealey
• Date of Birth: September 6, 1952
• Daughter of Maurice H. Bernstein and Bernice Rudich Bernstein.
• Bernice Rudich Bernstein (7/23/26-6/26/07) was the sister of Sgt. Michael Rudich who was killed in this crash when he was 19 years of age. (His date of birth was June 16, 1924.)
• I was named for my uncle and knew that he had been killed during W.W.II in a training mission over the Mojave Desert. My mother had the original newspaper article that indicated 10 crew members were killed but only 8 bodies had been recovered at the time of the crash. My mother received the phone call from the Department of the Army on Easter Sunday 1944 telling her that her brother had died. I don't know why an Army representative didn't make an official call and left it up to a young girl to deliver such devastating news. She had to go across the street to the family's grocery store to inform her mother and father of the death of their son.

When the body of my uncle arrived, it was in a sealed casket and was accompanied by a military representative. Many years later once all of this began to unravel, my mother told me that her mother's hair turned white overnight when Michael Rudich’s coffin arrived. (In the tradition of our Jewish family, the coffin was in the dining room for friends and family to visit and would not have been opened at any time. Therefore, no one ever looked inside to see what the casket included, and no on knew that my uncle had actually been beheaded as a result of the impact of the crash into the desert.) Also, I found out that the family’s pet collie howled all night long, ran away the next day, and never returned again.

Chronological Narrative

• My husband Sid Shealey and I were watching a show on the History Channel on  Thursday, July 28, 2005. For some reason, I commented to him, “I wonder if there is anything on the internet about the plane crash in which my uncle died.”
• I Googled “Sgt. Michael Rudich died April 9, 1944” and found a match! There was an article that a wreck chaser by the name of Don Jordan had put on the internet, and the article listed the names of the 10 crew members who died in this crash in the Mojave Desert.
• I couldn’t read the article fast enough and wondered what else Don Jordan knew about the crash. I clicked on the link at the bottom of the page that said “Contact Don Jordan” and began to send him an e-mail asking about this particular crash. I couldn’t type the questions fast enough since as soon as I sent him one e-mail, I thought of many other questions that I wanted answered. So I asked him for his phone number and if I could call him. When I called Don Jordan, I told him that Sgt. Michael Rudich was my uncle and that the family knew only that he had died on a training mission shortly before he was to have been sent overseas. Jordan informed me that he had found the site a few years before and that it had remained in the desert for all those years because the location had been misidentified on a military map at the time of the crash.  I told Jordan that I would love to have some sand from the crash site in the desert to sprinkle on my uncle’s grave, and he asked if I wanted anything else. I asked him what he could be talking about since there certainly wasn’t anything left of the crash which had occurred 61 years earlier. To my amazement, he told me that some debris from the entire plane  was still in the desert along with many personal items. Once I got control of my emotions, I told him that my uncle was the radio operator and that I would love to have anything that he might have been in contact with right before he died.  Of course, all I expected to receive was a bag of sand and maybe one or two other small items that were scattered around the wreckage of the plane.
• After speaking with Don Jordan, I started searching on the internet for anything related to this site. I stumbled on the site of an aviation archaeologist and author named G. Pat Macha. Pat told me that he had a news article, the official accident report, and photos. He graciously offered to send copies of these items to me.
• Coincidentally, on the very next date (July 29, 2005) when I picked up our local newspaper, there was an article titled “B-24 Bomber Crew Part of Stamp Set.” It turns out that the U. S Postal Service was issuing a set of stamps that included the B-24 D. If I had not spoken with Don Jordan just the day before and found out the type of plane which my uncle was on when he died, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to the article.  The stamps were to be issued the next day, so early on the morning of Saturday, July 30, 2005, I went to the post office to buy the first day of issue of these stamps. Another coincidence occurred since the postmaster just happened to be putting the sheet of stamps on display as I entered the building. It certainly seemed to me that these were several signs that I couldn’t quit asking questions until all questions had been answered satisfactorily!
• When Don Jordan went to the crash site to get the sand and anything related to my uncle’s position as a radio operator, a few bones and personal items were observed lying on top of the ground.

He sent a microphone connector jack, an earphone jack, ½ of an earphone set, 2 dial plates used to tune a radio of some sort, a parachute harness connector and snap, and some assorted antenna insulators from outside the plane. Since my uncle would have had a direct connection to these items, I felt a strong connection to my uncle and knew that he probably touched these same items shortly before he died in the tragic crash.

•  The Kern County coroner office was then notified; since this was a military crash, officials from that office subsequently contacted the Army who decided there was much more to this newly discovered area than anyone had thought. It was decided that JPAC (Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command) needed to be involved. “The mission of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) is to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all Americans missing as a result of the nation's past conflicts.”
• According to Don’s report, “On May 5, 2006, the recovery team, led by Dr. William Belcher, PhD., arrived in Mojave and began to set up their equipment in preparation for the recovery operation….Each member of the team has a specific task within his own individual branch of service.”  Several boxes full of airplane parts as well as personal items belonging to the crew members (rings, two dog tags, jewelry, and coins) were recovered and taken by JPAC to Hawaii to be tested, catalogued, identified, and returned to the crew members’ next-of-kin.
• At this time, my mother the late Bernice Rudich Bernstein, her sister Pearl Rudich Hyman, and her brother Leon Rudich began to wonder what actually was in their brother’s coffin when it arrived in 1944. From the initial reports of the investigation, it appeared that the plane crashed with such force and resulted in a fire that probably made it nearly impossible for any crew member’s entire body to have been recovered. This was just speculation on the part of my uncle’s family; however, when JPAC finished its report, we obtained a copy of the official death notice that stated my uncle had actually been beheaded in the crash. No one had ever informed his family of this cause of death, and we now feel that probably part of him remained in the desert for over 60 years until Jordan went to the area per my request to get some sand to sprinkle on my uncle’s grave in Charleston.
• Another strange coincidence occurred in June 2006 shortly before our local paper ran a follow-up article on the progression of the investigation. The article was to appear in the paper on June 16, 2006, which would have been Michael Rudich’s 62^nd birthday. My mother and I were at her house cleaning out some items when I opened her dresser drawer and found a faded purple handkerchief folded and tucked in the back of the drawer. I asked my mother what this was, and she said that Michael had mailed it to her shortly before she died. I opened it up, and embroidered at one corner was the symbol and letters A.A.F. (for Army Air Force). Above the symbol were the words, “Remember me.” It was as if my uncle was speaking directly to me and telling me not to forget him or the others.
• Some articles were printed in several California newspapers, and one reporter mentioned in his article the names of the two men whose dog tags had been recovered. One was the navigator Donald J. Orth, who was married at the time of his death and whose wife Bernice was pregnant with their first child. Their son was born in November 1944 following the death of his father and was later adopted by his step-father. The son’s name now is Donald J. Treis, and on June 21, 2006, he just happened to be in his office with some extra time on his hands. For some unknown reason, he typed his father’s name into the search engine on the internet—just as I had done the summer before!  He found the article that had mentioned his father’s name on one of the dog tags, and he immediately contacted the reporter. After their conversation, Don asked if the reporter would call me so that I would call Don and tell him everything that I knew about the investigation.

Since that initial phone conversation with Don Treis , we have spoken several times about two other connections besides the fact that both of us lost loved ones in this crash: (1) Both of our mothers are named Bernice.  (2) Don’s father was born on June 16, 1921; and my uncle was born on June 16, 1924.

• Although the initial investigation began in May 2006, it was not until late in 2009 that the Department of the Army was able to locate the next-of-kin for all 10 crew members who had died. A representative contacted my aunt (the primary next-of-kin) to let her know that someone would visit the family to provide a copy of JPAC’s detailed report and to return a hand-made ring which was engraved with my uncle’s initials (MR). Even though these initials could have belonged to the jeweler who made the ring, the Army agreed to let us have the ring since no other crew member had these initials. Once my aunt received the ring, she kindly gave it to me as a keepsake for all of my efforts in uncovering the crash site.
• Lt. Col. Eric S. Wolf, the Chief of the Past Conflict Repatriations Branch of the Department of the Army, wrote a letter on June 19, 2006, that told us the following news: “According to the report, the perimortem trauma and age of the many small bone fragments prevented positive identification and association with any of the individual crew members. Therefore, all material will be designated as ‘group remains’ and this office will coordinate a group burial at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C., later this year. My Identifications Section staff will contact you soon to coordinate the shipment of this report and confirm details related to the process for attending this group burial.”
• This good news didn’t last long because the rest of 2009 passed by without any word of the group burial that had been promised.  Every month I would call and was told that the burial would be soon. I was becoming impatient and expressed my concern in a phone call to the Department of the Army in the spring of 2010. At this time, I was informed that they had changed their mind and that a group burial would not happen since the bodies of all crew members had been returned to their families for burial in 1944. I told the representative that I didn’t think this information was correct since I had a copy of the original article from 1944 that stated, “Bodies of two had not been recovered.” I also mentioned that the two dog tags that had been found in 2006 probably belonged to these two crew members. At that point, the representative said that he couldn’t discuss this issue with me since I wasn’t the primary next-of-kin! I’m sure that he just thought I would go away and quit!! I told him, “This is a bunch of bull!” I continued by saying they were just waiting for me to die so that no one has to do anything at all, but that I wouldn’t stop until the group burial that had been promised was a reality. I also told him that I was going to write President Obama and our state Senator Lindsay Graham to see if they could help. Later that same day, I wrote a lengthy letter to both President Obama and Senator Graham explaining the chain of events and asking for their help in scheduling the group burial. Even though no one from either office contacted me, a few weeks later, my aunt received a phone call from the Department of the Army informing her that they had indeed changed their mind and that a group burial would be held at the end of October 2010.
• In late August 2010, an Army lieutenant from Fort Jackson in Columbia, SC, met with my aunt, my uncle, and me to tell let us know of the scheduled events. We would be flown to Washington on Wednesday, October 27, 2010. Then from 6:00-8:00 P.M. on Thursday, October 28, 2010, there would be a visitation for all family members of the crew at a local funeral home. On Friday, October 30, 2010, there will be a service at Ft. Myer Chapel starting at 8:45 followed by the group burial in Arlington National Cemetery. It is only about six weeks from now, and I can’t wait to meet Don Treis and the other family members. Now these men will finally receive the proper respect which they deserve for sacrificing their lives for our country.
  
• My uncle’s wish to “REMEMBER ME” is finally coming true!