Midair Collision of B-17 Bombers

NebraskaAirCrash.com reconstructs how it happened. The eight bombers were approaching the field at dusk to simulate a peel-off for landing when one of the lead planes went upward instead of turning down and away, into the path of another. Its wing cut that bomber's fuselage in half, and both planes fell and exploded with no survivors. A third B-17F flew into the wreckage, and its pilot ordered the crew to bail out before it crash-landed in an open field. A witness who was six in 1943 identified one impact site; the other remains uncertain.

What the plaque says

Midair Collision of B-17 Bombers As eight B-17F "Flying Fortresses" returned to Harvard AAF after training exercises on August 28, 1943, three collided. One crash-landed and two were demolished. Fourteen airmen died, including co- pilot Carl Hansen, whose parachute failed. Lieuten- ants David Rowland, Hayden Hughes, and Sgt. Earl Lynes of Hansen's crew survived. Also killed were Lieutenants John Gimperling, Peter Hirt, Lavere Clegg, Robert Twitchell, and Roy Nunn, Jr.; Sergeants Edward Kulisek, Wilbert Miller, Charles Biondolillo, Harold Lovejoy, Charles Ottinger, Francis Bush, and Richard Burchell; and Cpl. Samuel Landry. Veterans Memorial Park Committee Dr. Don R. Gerlach Nebraska State Historical Society, 2013

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer — 23 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.

More markers nearby

• Harvard Army Air Field — steps away
• Harvard's 1915 Carnegie Library — steps away
• Harvard Jail — steps away
• St. John's Episcopal Church - Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska — steps away