Re-print 5/13
A
mid air collision by two C-119 aircraft near Clinton County A.F.B.
took the lives of 17. Two survive
Nine
C-119s with their Green Berets and other passengers were returning to
[Clinton County Air Force Base] base in close formation at 8:53 p.m.
when things went wrong.
Seventeen
men were killed and two C-119 transport planes destroyed near the
Warren [Clinton] County hamlet of Melvin, 10 miles from the
Wilmington base.
Among
the dead was Lt. Donald B. Becker, brother of Mrs. Robert B. Smith of
Miracle Mile in Springfield.
The
news reports said that S.Sgt. Zugelder, then 37, was in fair
condition at Clinton Memorial Hospital “with two broken shoulder
blades, a broken nose, fractured clavicle, along with cuts and
bruises.”
The
other survivor, Sgt. 1st Class William Kremer, “a 32-year-old
Columbus fireman in civilian life, was found wandering about a plowed
field in a dazed condition,” a story added. Kremer “later
reported that he was sitting on the left side of the plane near the
exit door when ‘all at once, I was sitting outside in the darkness
with the feeling of falling, the wind going past my ears.’”
Zugelder
recalled that as it entered clouds, his plane was in a three-plane
formation.
Once
inside the clouds, the plane in front “lost reference,” went to
instrument flight and leveled off, he said. “That took us right
into their wing. From that point on, for the next minute, maybe, I
don’t remember what happened.”
In
the accident report, Zugelder learned the windshield of his plane
struck the outboard flap of the plane in front, peeling off the top
of his aircraft.
That
apparently catapulted Zugelder and Kremer into thin air, as Kremer
described in the newspaper story.
“The
next thing I knew,” Zugelder said, “I could feel pressure from my
legs from the parachute, and I could see my parachute collapse on the
ground.”
Just
as he has forgotten everything else in those moments, he doesn’t
remember pulling the D-ring to open his parachute. His survival
suggests he must have.
Grunting
pigs
“From
where I was on the ground, I could see the other wreckage burning,”
Zugelder said. He also could hear pigs “rooting in their feeders”
nearby.
A
field ambulance took Zugelder to a civilian ambulance parked on a
nearby road, and he was whisked to the hospital. There followed a
12-week recovery.
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