Sunday, June 1, 2014

Clinton County A.F.B. Hstory

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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