Midair Collision of P-47 "Thunderbolt" Fighter Planes, 1944

The airplane both men flew that morning was big for a fighter. Republic's P-47 Thunderbolt, nicknamed the Jug, could weigh up to 17,500 pounds at takeoff behind an 18-cylinder Pratt & Whitney Double Wasp of 2,000 horsepower, and 15,636 were built. That winter the 53d Fighter Squadron of the 37th Fighter Group, based at Scribner, was training on Thunderbolts at Ainsworth, from November 1943 until it left the field in March 1944, a month after this crash.

What the plaque says

Midair Collision of P-47 "Thunderbolt" Fighter Planes, 1944 At 10:45 a.m. on February 5, 1944, 1st Lt. John B. Beatty of Sandusky, OH, and 2d Lt. Earnest W. Fanslau of Mantua, NJ took to the air from the Ainsworth Army Air Field in two P-47 "Thunderbolt" fighter planes for an instrument training flight. Lt. Fanslau's canopy was covered so he could fly solely by instruments, while Lt. Beatty flew nearby as Fanslau's observer. During the flight Lt. Fanslau made an unexpected right turn that Lt. Beatty could not avoid. Rancher Everett Morris did not see the P-47s collide but he heard the impact and observed the planes falling from the sky southeast of his ranch buildings. Lt. Beatty's P-47 went into a flat spin, fell almost straight down, and landed on its back with very little scattering of the wreckage. Lt. Fanslau's P-47 caught fire and exploded in midair, spreading debris over a considerable area. Both pilots were killed. The two crash sites are within half a mile of each other in the Nebraska Sandhills, approximately 15 miles south of Wood Lake near Cherry County's eastern border. American Legion Post 202 Sandhills Area Foundation Nebraska State Historical Society, 2010 Cherry County Residents

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Valentine National Wildlife Refuge — 18 mi
  About 72,000 acres of Sandhills lakes, marsh and grass south of Valentine, set aside in 1935 for nesting birds, where prairie chickens and sharp-tailed grouse dance in April.
• Smith Falls State Park — 18 mi
  Nebraska's highest waterfall, a spring-fed creek dropping 63 feet into a shaded canyon off the Niobrara, where Ice Age birch and an aspen hybrid found nowhere else still grow.
• Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge — 21 mi
  An army post built in 1880 to watch the Sicangu Lakota at Rosebud, turned in 1912 into a refuge where bison and elk graze above the Niobrara east of Valentine.

More markers nearby

• Lakeland Sod High School — 12 mi
• Ainsworth Army Air Field — 13 mi
• Norden Dance Hall — 18 mi
• Bryan Bridge — 20 mi