The Placerville B-25D
Bad Weather-Bad Decision
41-296653
January 29, 1943
  Copyright 2004
By: Monte Hendricks

Click here to read a Native American's account of this accident.
Updated 7/19/06



    It had been a rainy January in the Placerville, California area, typical of our Mediterranean climate. It was 1943 and the world was at war.  Sad, hard times, and perhaps the weather matched the mood. But, life went on. People still went to work and kids still went to school, but life had changed dramatically. The news brought stories about the fighting. Tires and other items necessary to the war effort were rationed and hard to get. Local “air observers”, mostly women volunteers working for the Army, reported on aircraft activity from their observation posts and stood waiting to sound the alarm at the first sign of invasion. In downtown Placerville, the bus station stood at the corner of Main and Sacramento. Day after day goodbyes were said here as more young men went off to war. For far too many families, this was the last place they saw their loved ones alive. Those of us who did not live through these years cannot possibly share the same understanding of patriotism, courage, despair, and hope that people developed then. But, as best as they could do, they forged on with their lives.
 
   Rain fell most of the day on Friday January 29. Roads were muddy, and everything was drenched. Dick, 10 years old, and his brother Ed, 8, were playing on the bales inside the red barn on the family’s ranch in Gold Hill, four miles north of Placerville. Rich, 13 and a freshman at El Dorado High School, got off of the school bus in front of his family’s ranch on Coloma Road just east of Gold Hill, walked to the house, and set his books inside the screen porch. Marie, who lived nearby on the Brandon Ranch, got off the bus at the stop just before Rich’s and began walking home.  As Rich was about to yell, “Mom, I’m home!’ the roar of an airplane - somewhere in the clouds - stopped him. Dick and Ed heard it. So did Marie.

    Rich said, “What’s that?” and ran to the edge of the yard. Dick and Ed stopped their play and listened. Marie stopped and looked up.  Up in the clouds the plane’s engines were screaming! Above Rich the clouds were low and it was drizzling, but it was clear off to the west past Pine Hill, and he could see the sun, just about to set, now shining under the clouds. Rich was focused on the engine roar when the big Army bomber fell out of the clouds. He says he will never forget the sight of that silhouetted B-25, backlit by the sun, coming out of the clouds and crashing straight into the earth. There was a huge flash, followed by a ball of flame rising into the sky. A few seconds later the shock wave and blast of the explosion reached him and rattled the ground. Marie also saw the death dive of the twin tailed, two engine bomber. Dick and Ed heard and felt the tremendous explosion, too, and ran outside. Rich yelled to his Mother, “I’m going down there!” and took off on a run. Dick and Ed’s parents got the two boys piled in the car. Marie ran home, toward the billowing black smoke. It was 4:33 in the afternoon.   

    Captain Lawrence T. Wagner had lifted his Mitchell B-25D U.S. Army Air Corps bomber off from Hammer Field in Fresno, California at 3:00 that afternoon. He and his crew were making the first leg of their flight home to McChord Field near Tacoma, Washington. Their destination on this leg was Medford, Oregon, but they had already been delayed most of the day. Earlier that morning, at 8:00, Wagner and his officers had walked into the Base Weather Station to get a briefing. The Weather didn’t look good. There was a storm front to the north with moderate icing conditions between 6000 and 15,000 feet. The forecaster, S/Sgt. Howard Winch recommended they wait until the afternoon when the latest reports would be in. Captain Wagner, his co-pilot, 1st Lt. Alto F. Dolan, and his bombardier, 2nd Lt. Dennis O. Sattler spent the last half of the morning in the weather station checking the weather and discussing conditions. They returned once again at 1:50 pm and talked with T/Sgt. Arthur Arbanas, who was taking over for Winch. The weather ahead hadn’t changed much. Arbanas told the crew that it would be an instrument flight and the best plan was to go “over the top” of the storm. Wagner told Arbanas that they were flying a B-25 that could climb well over 20,000 feet. Arbanas said it wouldn’t be “cozy” flying in the conditions ahead and again asked if Wagner wanted to go. Wagner said, “Sure.” He said he knew the country well and would turn back if conditions became “too unfavorable”; and if that didn’t work, he smiled and joked that he would bail out. At 2:35, Arbanas finished writing an instrument clearance for the flight. This document stated that conditions were expected to worsen: icing was expected between 6000 and 16,000 feet, and the top of the clouds was estimated to be between 10,000 and 14,000 feet. Their flight to Medford was expected to take an hour and 45 minutes. They would not be in the air that long.   

    As the B-25 headed north into the storm, it carried seven young men. There were the three officers: Captain Wagner, in the pilot’s seat; 1st Lt. Dolan, the co-pilot; and 2nd Lt. Sattler, in the navigator’s seat.  S/Sgt. Harold Glarum was the flight engineer. Back in the Radio Operator’s seat was T/Sgt Robert L. Morris and four feet away was S/Sgt Robert Huddleston, sitting near the top gun turret. S/Sgt George S. Ostrowski was further back in the tail, sitting to the rear of the rear exit.

    The plane climbed immediately after leaving Fresno. Dolan radioed Fresno when they broke through the first layer of clouds at 8500 feet. Near Sacramento they were back in the storm, flying blind, and still climbing to try to get above the clouds. They broke out momentarily at 17,500 feet and were about 5 minutes from Redding, when Captain Wagner decided the weather ahead was too dangerous to continue and turned around for Fresno. He then found that the storm had grown in intensity behind them.  

     In an effort to get above the storm, Wagner continued to climb, reaching 21,000 feet, but while still in the clouds another problem emerged: the crew was getting cold and some of the men did not have access to oxygen. Their oxygen masks had been stored in bags on a platform in the bomb bay and Glarum could not get to them! They had to descend, and at 18,000 feet they flew into the sleet and snow and ice. They turned on the wing de-icers, and Glarum reported that they were working perfectly. Huddleston, in the back, saw ice forming on the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, however, and showed it to Ostrowski and Morris. He asked Morris, “ Are the men up front aware of it?” They continued dropping, reaching 10,000 feet and the heart of the storm. There they took a beating. Glarum said, “The storm was tossing us around something terrible!” Huddleston added, “The ship began to act up plenty!” The rudder and elevators began freezing up with the ice. Wagner and co-pilot Dolan battled to control the plane – when suddenly it went into a dive. Toolboxes, papers and equipment flew off the floor, slammed to the ceiling, and hung there. Morris and Huddleston also left the floor and were thrown about. The plane reached 550 miles per hour, screaming downward. It took both Wagner and Dolan pulling on the yokes together to finally bring the plane out of the dive. But they were still in the middle of the storm and everything was freezing up. Now both Wagner and Dolan worked feverishly just to keep the plane flying straight.  And then the air speed indicator, flight indicator, gyral compass, and radio died! They were very low at 6000 feet, and not sure of their location. They knew they could be over mountains in a plane they could no longer control. It was time to get out!  

     Captain Wagner gave the order to abandon ship. He motioned to the guys in back to get out and told Dolan to get out with the guys in front. Glarum saw Dolan get out of his seat, but then Glarum was thrown to the ceiling and back down to the floor. Dolan told Glarum to pull the emergency hatch. He managed to do this and was thrown back to the ceiling and then right back down on the hatch. Sattler pushed his way past Glarum and jumped out. Glarum fell down again but got a foot out the hatch and found himself tumbling out of the plane. Dolan followed. In the back, things were just as chaotic. Huddleston saw the Captain give the order to jump and groped his way back to tell Ostrowski to pull the emergency exit handle. Ostrowski wrenched it open, and followed as Huddleston crawled out. 

      Glarum was drifting in his parachute when he heard the explosion, and when he came out of the clouds he saw the burning airplane below him. If he could have looked closer, he would have seen the teenager, Rich, running down the hill and over the irrigation canal, toward the smoke and fire. Rich first reached a pear orchard on the Brandon Ranch where a Japanese man who worked pruning the fruit trees was yelling and waving his shears for the boy to stay away; the plane had hit right near him! Rich darted past into a short open field, over the fence line onto the Wallace Ranch - and there was the crater, about 40 feet across and 30 feet deep. The plane had gone straight in. There were still orange flames burning in the pit and “machine gun ammo was still exploding in the bottom, so I didn’t get too close!” Rich said.  There was nothing recognizable as “an airplane or airplane parts” but the evidence of the death of men on board was everywhere. Horrific damage had been inflicted on the bodies. Dick and Ed saw it too. In the short time it had taken Dick & Ed’s parents to drive over, the road in was already choked with vehicles so they drove to the Brandon ranch house. The boys spilled out and off they went through the same pear orchard. Ed described the field the plane went down in as “newly disced” and said there was an oak tree nearby that was covered with dirt and mud thrown up by the impact. People and authorities arrived as did some of the “air observers” who had reported the crash. One of them was Dick and Ed’s aunt who was quoted in a local paper, “There was hardly a piece of the plane debris but what a person might easily carry away.” Ed remembers Orelli’s ambulance being let through to carry off what was left of the men onboard.

    Sattler was the first out of the plane and also heard the big ship explode as he was riding his parachute down. He landed near a farmhouse in the Cold Springs area and was taken by the farmer to Placerville. Glarum said he rode his parachute for about three minutes. He saw two houses on the way down and, after landing in the brush, went uphill to find the houses. Men were already looking for him, having watched him come down.  Glarum heard their yells and one of the men gathered up the parachute and carried it to the Cold Springs schoolhouse. Men with cars then drove up and he was taken to the Sheriff’s Office in Placerville. Dolan, Huddleston and Ostrowski all drifted to the northeast across the South Fork of the American River Canyon and landed in the Kelsey Canyon area. Dolan, the last one out, spotted the two other parachutes on the ground before he landed. Huddleston’s parachute caught in a tree on the way down and Huddleston banged his head on the hillside. He walked for an hour and twenty minutes before finding the main road and sat down. Members of the “North Side Posse” spotted him there, lead by El Dorado County Supervisor William Breedlove. Huddleston’s face was cut and bleeding, and he was dazed and confused. He asked the men, “Where am I? What state is this?” as he was taken to the Kelsey store. The Posse had already located Dolan. Ostrowski landed further downhill near a “miner’s cabin.” He found the cabin empty and left his parachute there. He continued downhill where he eventually came to the South Fork. He then followed the river downstream all the way to Coloma and walked up to the first house he saw.  Sam Summers took him into Placerville, arriving at about 9:30 that night. Five men were accounted for.

    Two of the airmen didn’t make it out of the B-25, the radio operator, T/Sgt. Robert L. Morris, and the pilot, Captain Lawrence T. Wagner. They didn’t die in a pivotal battle overseas.  They died in a field just north of Placerville. They weren’t great heroes proclaimed in headlines across the country. But, even looking with hindsight on the mistakes we could say they made, I believe they are heroes nonetheless. They left their homes and loved ones and were doing their part, and they died. And I bet the families they didn’t return to believe them to be true heroes, also.

    The Army arrived almost immediately and took control of the crash site, with the help of the local authorities. The plane was also carrying military cargo, which was scattered over a wide area, as were small pieces of the once-proud bomber. The clean-up crew found and removed all of the wreckage they could find. A large crane was set up beside the crater and the two once mighty radial engines were hoisted out from the bottom and trucked down to Sacramento. A problem with curiosity seekers arose. Sheriff Lowell O. West made an announcement on Monday following the crash. He stated, “that both Wallace and the Army personnel from McClellan Field have requested that no further trespassing be done on the property.” He also said that all “souvenirs” taken from the plane crash “be surrendered at once to the sheriff’s office.” The Army worked for a week picking up and trucking away debris. Wallace and Brandon got together and decided that, since the Army made the hole, the Army could fill it in. Rich said that trucks brought loads of “valley loam soil” up from the Sacramento Valley until the crater was filled. The road in had also been deeply rutted by all the heavy traffic in the wet weather and the Army repaired that also.

    On Wednesday, February 3rd , the Gold Hill Observation Post of the Aircraft Warning Service received a visit from Captain Roy Emmerson. Mrs. Corrine Miller was the Chief Observer, and Mrs. Henry Bacchi was the observer on duty that Friday when the ship went down. Emmerson personally thanked all of the volunteer workers. He then presented them a letter of commendation from the Army for their handling of the information about the downed B-25. The story of these women’s work involving the crash was later dramatized on a weekly radio program called “Eyes Aloft."

    In April of 1943 The Distinguished Flying Cross was awarded posthumously to Captain Wagner and was presented to his father. It was felt that Wagner had saved the lives of five of his crew by giving the order to bail out.

    After most of the excitement about the crash had run its course, young Marie was out walking the ranch land near the crash site. As she walked, something caught her eye down in the dirt, so she picked it up and cleaned it off. It was captain’s bars from off a uniform. Marie contacted the Army and turned them over, requesting that the bars be given to Captain Wagner’s family. It was a simple request, but profoundly the right thing to do.

Author’s Note:

    I came upon a 1943 newspaper clipping about the crash while doing research for a different project. It amazed me to read that an Army B-25, the type of bomber that Jimmy Doolittle and his Raiders had flown, had crashed so close to Placerville! I wanted to see if I could find the spot where it went down. I wanted to learn the story. I guess I started out as too much of a cynic. With all the growth in the area, I thought I would find the land all chopped up into estate lots with huge houses replacing the once productive orchards. I thought nothing would resemble the area written about in this old clipping I had. To my surprise, what I found was very pleasing. Yes, there are some absolutely gorgeous new homes out there now, but the area has really retained its rural agricultural feel. The Brandon Ranch and the Wallace Ranch are no longer there; the old, large ranches have been divided up, into smaller ranches, farms, and orchards. Not only was the countryside like the “old days” so were how I might imagine the people to have been. They were polite to listen to my story and I got a lot of, “Yeah, it seemed like I heard about something like that once.” They helped with further leads and let me poke around their property to see what I could find. Dick, the 10-year-old boy in the story, even took me up in his plane to see if he could remember and show me the crash site. Yes, Dick became a pilot! So did his brother Ed! Dick soloed on the 50th anniversary of the Wright brother’s flight and both he and Ed are now retired after careers as commercial pilots.

    I did locate the spot. There’s no wreckage. There’s only a slight depression where all that “valley loam soil” had settled. As my wife, Julie, and I walked with the property owner over the site, the place felt haunted. It was just a field, but two young airmen had died there and one of the great aircraft of our military’s past had exploded into thousands of unrecognizable pieces.  There’s no memorial there to those two almost forgotten heroes or their plane. Nor is there a memorial to all the community members who came together and played a part in this small story. And I don’t think there needs to be - as long as every once in a while someone remembers the story.
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