This accident, which occurred three and a half miles southwest of the present town of Mojave, California has only recently been located.  The cause of the accident was never determined.  However,  from the statements of the many witnesses it can be determined that the pilot of this aircraft lost control for unknown reasons, and allowed it to spin all the way into the ground.  The impact and subsequent explosion killed all ten crew members onboard.

 Those crew members were:    Lt. Frank A.  Gurley (pilot)
                                               Lt. James W. Shrum (co-pilot)
                                               Lt. William H. Dethorn (Bombardier)
                                               Lt. Donald J. Orth (Navigator)
                                               Sgt. George W. Beck (Engineer)
                                               Sgt. Michael Rudich (Radio Operator)
                                               Sgt. William C. Mahan (Gunner)
                                               M/Sgt. Jesse H. Church (Asst. Engineer)
                                               Cpl. Thomas V. Perry (Asst. Radio Operator)
                                               Cpl. Morris J. Youngblood (Gunner)
 

 The aircraft had departed March Field at 07:10  that morning on a combat training mission to Redding, California and return.  The pilot, Lt. Frank Gurley, would have been twenty-five years old on April 27, 1944.  At the time of the accident he had 461:05 hours of  flight experience, with approximately 70:25 hours in the B-24D type aircraft.

 The flight had been cleared to climb to 18,000 feet.  That would put the aircraft  well over the tops of the scattered clouds in the vicinity of the Mojave Marine Corps Air Station at Mojave, California.  There was more than enough time for the B-24 to reach that altitude before crossing Mojave.  For unknown reasons Lt. Gurley decided  to remain at low altitude.  One witness, S/Sgt E. M.. Gulewics, observed the ill-fated B-24 at 08:15 that morning, and reported that it was heading in a westerly direction.  At the time it appeared to be under control.

 Sometime between 08:15 and 08:25, the time of the crash, something went terribly wrong on the flight deck, and Lt. Gurley lost control of the four engine bomber.  Witness Patrick H. King made the following statement to the Investigation Board:

     "The airplane fell out of a cumulus cloud at at least 600 or 800 feet.   That is strictly a guess.  My wife and I just got out of the car to go in for breakfast and my wife looked at the cloud and grabbed my arm and we saw the ship coming straight down out of the cloud.  He made a full turn or a turn and a half before he hit the ground.  There was no evidence of any fire before he hit the ground.  There was no visible evidence of any attempt to parachute.  I was about a mile and a half from the crash, on the main street of Mojave, before the restaurant.  The time was 08:30 A.M.".

 The visibility was clear under the cloud layer, but directly above the falling bomber was a large black cloud that appeared to be a thunder storm.  In the control tower at the Mojave Air Station that morning was Sgt. Caroline J. Yeager.  Sgt. Yeager was the Control Tower Operator that day.  Her statement reads in part:

  "I certify that on the morning of April 9, 1944, while on duty in the Control Tower at Mojave Marine Corps Air Station, I saw or rather my first indication of a crash was my partner calling my attention to a B-24 spinning out of a cloud.  I jumped up and saw the aircraft hit the deck with a terrific explosion throwing up flames about 50 feet high.  The fire died down immediately and the remains smoldered.  I saw no parachutes.  Directly above the crash was a huge cumulus cloud which appeared to be quite close to the ground."

 There were many more witnesses to the accident, but the story remains the same.  The aircraft appeared to spin out of the bottom of a large black cloud and hit the ground before the pilot could recover.  It crashed  southwest of Mojave at a location between one and a half to three miles from the Control Tower.

 The town of Mojave is quite small, and the airport  is now a civilian airport.  The two main roads through town are Highway 14 going north and south, and Highway 58 which goes east and west.  At a point two miles southwest from that intersection where the crash site was thought to be is a public golf course.  There are also a few homes scattered among the  Joshua Trees .

  I spent several years looking for this crash site, but the location given in the official records was very misleading.  The death certificate issued by the Kern county Coroner indicated that the crash site is located ten miles south of Mojave.  The local newspapers of the time indicated the site was three miles south of the Marine Air Station.  For a time it was though that the local golf course was built over the site.  When I finally located the  site I found it to be no where near the reported location.  It is my opinion that the site went undetected primarily because of the large amount of modern trash dumped in and around the impact crater.

 The cause of this accident was listed as pilot error.  It was felt that the pilot may have purposely flown into the cloud to get some actual instrument flying time.  But once in the clouds, he apparently lost control and spun to earth, killing all onboard.