[The following takes place during US Air Force flight school in the midst of World War II.]
Once, while flying in formation, McGovern’s squadron was practicing warding off an attack. A two-engine B-25 dove on the B-24s. The B-24 pilots expected the B-25 to go under their formation, but instead the plane keep [sic] coming and collided head-on with a Liberator. There was an explosion that took out two other B-24s. Four bombers were just gone. Fortunately they did not have full crews in them – only the gunners and the pilot – but twenty-four men were dead.
McGovern got back to his room, badly shaken, but what happened next made everything worse. Everybody at Mountain Home knew about the crash but no one knew who had been killed. The base chaplain had the duty of informing the wives of the married men. “It was just the most awful night of my life,” McGovern said. The chaplain, carrying a list of the men killed came into the married men’s barracks and started knocking on doors. As soon as the wife opened the door and saw him, she screamed. “Just these awful cries of anguish.” Some of the widows were pregnant. A half century later, McGovern said “I can still hear them yet.”
Source:
Ambrose, Stephen E. “Learning to Fly the B-24.” The Wild Blue: The Crews of the B-24. Simon & Schuster, 2002. 100-1. Print.
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