B-17 Crash, 1943

The bomber was B-17F serial 43-30542, flown by an instructor pilot on a local familiarization flight out of Kearney, according to NebraskaAirCrash.com's account of the site. Witnesses saw it low and in a steep bank, nearly perpendicular to the ground, before it stalled and went into a cornfield. Pilot error was listed as the official cause, though at least two eyewitnesses said they had seen one engine on fire. A March 2007 visit found wreckage still in the cultivated field. The marker was installed on August 17, 2003, sixty years to the day.

What the plaque says

B-17 Crash, 1943 On August 17, 1943, a B-17F bomber from the Kearney, Nebraska, Army Airfield crashed 300 yards south, killing all aboard. The plane was on a routine training flight before going overseas. Losing their lives were 2nd Lt. Sylvester J. Diebold, Benton, MO; 2nd Lt. Ernest H. Endemano, Los Angeles, CA; 2nd Lt. John F. Hickey, Port Henry, NY; SSgt. Jimmie McEntire, Wharton, TX; SSgt. Albert Pivkul, West Warren, MA; Sgt. Cyril B. Butler, Crooksville, OH; Sgt. James V. Pollicita, Bridgeport, CT; and Sgt. Frank E. Sampler, College Park, GA. Wood River Community Centennial Foundation Families and Caring Friends Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 13 mi
  Edward Durell Stone's island pavilion in Grand Island and an 1890s railroad town of moved buildings, among them the cottage where Henry Fonda was born in 1905.
• Rowe Sanctuary — 20 mi
  Audubon's sanctuary on the Platte near Gibbon, where the river's sandbars are kept bare so that sandhill cranes, more than a million in the valley each spring, can roost safely at night.
• Fort Kearny State Historical Park — 26 mi
  The 1848 army post on the Platte, built on a strip of Pawnee land bought for $2,000 in goods, where emigrant wagons passed by the thousand and only the cottonwoods outlasted the fort.

More markers nearby

• Original Townsite of Wood River — 6.0 mi
• Cornhusker Army Ammunition Plant — 6.1 mi
• Solon H. Borglum "Sculptor of the Prairie" — 9.3 mi
• Martin Brothers — 9.3 mi