Flight of the Forgotten. Mark A. Vance
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areas of the U.S. government. As the saying goes, “if you don’t like it, write your congressman,” and we decided to do just that. The legislative branch of the U.S. government controls the military’s purse strings and thus commands a high level of respect from each of the armed services. Congress therefore, was a logical choice for our next avenue of pursuit as we continued to press the military for answers.
In that quest, I personally contacted over a dozen United States senators and congressmen around the country in an all-out effort to apply pressure to the U.S. military. Each request was well-received initially, and our inquiry eventually reached top officials of the U.S. military during closed Armed Services Committee hearings in Washington, D.C. Those top military officials however, continued to hold to the same exclusions to the Freedom of Information Act as before and refused to release my uncle’s accident report to anyone, including elected officials. One senior senator, who had vigorously pursued answers at the outset, eventually did a complete about face. He informed me that the military had explained its rationale for withholding information to him well enough, that he was satisfied I did not need to know what had really happened to the Jack Ketchum crew.
September 4, 1989, Richmond, Virginia
Working closely with Jack Ketchum’s widow, Bobbe, in Topeka, Kansas, I learned that her husband’s good friend, A.J. Crowley, another Eighth Air Force bomber pilot, might be located in Richmond, Virginia. A.J. and his wife had known Jack and Bobbe Ketchum during the war and Jack had mentioned him several times in his letters home from England. I therefore felt it was important to try and contact him to find out what he might know. There had been no contact between any of them since Jack’s crash in 1945, and Bobbe had never understood why.
I remember how excited I was that day to find A.J. Crowley still listed in the Richmond phone book as I dialed the number from my hotel room during an airline layover. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring and I immediately asked to speak to A.J. Crowley. Her cold response caught me completely off guard.
“He died six months ago. Who are you and what do you want?” she snapped.
Trying desperately to recover, I immediately began offering an explanation, certain my reason for calling would put her at ease. I was the nephew of Jack Ketchum’s tail gunner. That would be enough, I assumed. I could not have been more wrong.
“Do you want a piece of advice, mister?” she snarled after my initial attempt at an explanation. “You’ll never find out what happened to those men. My husband was there and saw the whole thing. They blew up right in front of him and you’ll never find out why!” she growled. “A.J. grieved for Jack Ketchum for years. He used to sit up at night in his chair and cry endlessly for him until he finally died of a heart attack. You’ll never find what you’re looking for, mister! I suggest you let it go!” she exclaimed. “Those were sad times and looking back at them won’t do anybody any good.” she added, slamming the receiver down.
Obviously, Mrs. Crowley somehow blamed Jack Ketchum for her own husband’s death even though her husband had outlived Jack Ketchum by over forty years. She also seemed well aware of the government’s sensitivity to the crash itself, but there was no way her husband had witnessed Jack Ketchum’s bomber explode on the ground. A second bomber must have exploded. There must have been two. She’d said with certainty, “A.J. was taxiing past Jack Ketchum’s airplane when it suddenly exploded right in front of him.” Regardless of that misunderstanding, she wanted no part of any of it. A follow up effort by Bobbe Ketchum herself two days later produced the same response, although the message was more civil.
September 8, 1989, Houston, Texas
I remember the phone conversation like it was yesterday. My good friend John Sandersen called to relay what he had been told by the U.S. military about our ongoing efforts to discover the cause of my uncle’s crash. He had been actively pursuing the sabotage theory through his contacts within U.S. Naval Intelligence when higher-ups in the U.S. military became aware of it. The warnings at first were subtle, suggesting we back-off and let the whole thing go. Then things suddenly changed.
“You’ve given the crap pile a good kick, but you’re starting to piss some people off.” his contacts maintained. The tone in my friend’s voice had definitely changed now too.
“Okay, here’s how it is.” he exclaimed. “They’ll use every agency of the federal government to make your life a living hell. That means the IRS, the FAA, you name it, and they’ll use them all. They’ll make sure you don’t have time to think about anything but the problems they’re making for you. If you keep going, they’ll take you for a one-way ride.” he insisted.
“Who, John? Who’s going to do that? The U.S. military?” I demanded.
“Bullshit! The U.S. military? Hell, the military was ready to hand the accident report over to us just to get rid of us. They were stopped by the top level of the civilian government in Washington.” he declared.
“The top level of the civilian government?” I echoed in surprise.
“That’s right. They told my contacts to tell you and me to back off. It’s our last friendly warning.”
“Who are we talking about, John? Who in the civilian government is making that threat?” I demanded, as my friend paused several moments on the other end of the line.
“They told me you can consider it a direct order from the President of the United States.” he finally exclaimed. “I believe them and I’m out of it. If you’re smart, you’ll drop it too. I have a career in the Navy to consider and you need to think about the danger to you and your family. They’ve already killed more than once. Let it go.”
September 12, 1989, Houston, Texas
I hadn’t sensed Buster’s presence for some time. It was obvious that if we were going to uncover what really happened to him, we would have to investigate at the crash site itself. The answers we were looking for were probably still there, scattered across dozens of square miles of Northwestern Scotland. If I couldn’t get the accident report, maybe I could still find clues to the crash there. One way or another, I was determined to find the cause.
En-route, I decided that I would spend a day at the Public Records Office in London searching the records from the R.A.F base at Stornoway for that fateful day in 1945. It was important to know if any distress calls were received by the R.A.F. base and whether a search and rescue operation was ever mounted. At the least, an accurate weather report at the time of the crash would be helpful to the investigation. Our stops en-route to the crash site would also include the American Military Cemetery at Cambridge, England, where several of the Ketchum crew and passengers are still buried. Buster himself had been interred there until his body was eventually returned to the United States in 1949.
Chapter Three: Search and Discovery
September 13, 1989, London, England
I spent the first day in London reviewing the R.A.F. records from the Stornoway Base. It was obvious that no distress calls had been received from the Jack Ketchum crew. That seemed odd, in view of the fact that the Ketchum crew had a full time radio-operator aboard and the airplane had been out of control for some time before crashing. Radio failure might have been one of those “anomalies” in the crash sequence that day, I reasoned.
The R.A.F. weather report at the time indicated very low clouds and drizzle; similar to the censored U.S. military report we had been given. From the routine nature of the British report though, it was obvious the Royal Air Force had no idea the Jack Ketchum crew was losing its battle for life only twenty-five miles away.
September 14, 1989, Cambridge, England
When our train arrived at the station in Cambridge, England, I was filled with anticipation, yet also dreading the experience awaiting me. For two days, it had been as if we were following Buster’s footsteps across