Another B-17 Crash
Because we live in an era of ubiquitous camera phones, it was only a matter of time before video footage surfaced of the mid-air collision that occurred last Saturday at the Wings Over Dallas Airshow. Indeed, by early Sunday morning, anyone with an internet connection and access to YouTube could watch as a large B-17 bomber belonging to the Commemorative Air Force soars across the frame. As it banks gently to the left, the tip of the starboard wing briefly passes in front of and eclipses the mid-afternoon Texas sun. That’s when the second plane appears.
The P-63 initially appears to be flying away from the lumbering bomber, but it is fast and is turning to the left. In an instant, it overtakes the larger, slower B-17. The single-engine fighter disintegrates as it slices through the four-engine bomber. The tail section of the B-17 immediately plummets to the ground while the wings and forward fuselage—still propelled forward by momentum—spiral more slowly toward the ground. Upon impact, the fuel in its wings erupts into a sickening fireball.
Although it will take months for the NTSB to conduct its formal investigation, the accident was in all likelihood caused by multiple, seemingly unrelated factors that aligned perfectly to cause the tragedy. When multiple aircraft are airborne at an airshow, they each follow predetermined and separate routes through space in order to prevent collisions. Perhaps because of poor planning, miscommunication, or a simple a gust of wind , the P-63 appears to have overshot where it was supposed to be. It seems the smaller plane entered an extended banked turn in order to return to its intended flight path. But while the streamlined and elongated design of the P-63 allows it to be fast, it also prevents its pilot from having a clear view of what’s going on below and in front of its elongated nose. That blind spot is exactly where the B-17 would have been before the two planes collided.
Had it been a less windy day, had the planes in front of P-63 been flying a little slower, or had the P-63 itself been designed with a slightly shorter nose back in 1942, this disaster would not have occurred in 2022. But it did. Although safety precautions can limit risk, sometimes the outcomes of our lives are determined by chance.
Indeed, my very existence was determined by the chance outcome of another B-17 crash.
In the early morning of April 12th, 1944 a B-17 belonging to the 390th Bomb Group of the Eight Air Force was on its final approach into the Framlingham Airfield in southeastern England. The mission was both simple and short: the objective was merely to move the aircraft from one airfield to another. But the flight ceased to be routine when the airmen on board the B-17 saw tracers streaking through the night sky around them and heard the sound of 13mm rounds cutting through the bomber’s thin aluminum skin. Unbeknownst to anyone on board, a Messerschmitt Me 410, a German fighter modified to act as a night intruder, had positioned itself behind the B-17. With its flaps and landing gear deployed, the bomber’s airspeed was low as was its altitude. It was an easy target.
The B-17 broke in two when it slammed into the ground near the small village of Great Glemham. It plowed through a row of trees and then a brick fence that ran along a country road before the fuel in its wings ignited. The following morning, one of the few recognizable remains of the B-17 was its tattered vertical stabilizer.
Seventy-eight years later and some 4,700 miles away, a tattered vertical stabilizer was one of the few recognizable parts of the B-17 to remain in Dallas as well.
Neither the pilot of the P-63 nor any of the crew members of the B-17 survived last week’s crash in Dallas. But somehow, nine men walked (or were carried) away from the crash in Great Glemham. One of them was my grandfather.
Lieutenant Isaac Leslie Hightower was the co-pilot of the B-17 that night. Had the German fighter opened fire a little sooner, had the American bomber been slightly higher, or had any other factor been infinitesimally different, he might not have survived. Indeed, the plane’s navigator, bombardier, and radio operator, all of whom would have been sitting just feet away from my grandfather, did not survive the crash.
But my grandfather did survive. He recovered from the injuries he sustained and went on to fly additional bombing missions. He survived the end of the war and returned to Texas to become my father’s father.
As with other members of the Greatest Generation, my grandfather didn’t talk much about his experience of the Second World War. But even if he rarely recalled the story of the time he was shot down over allied airspace, I believe the incident always stayed with him. Towards the end of his life, he hung on the wall of his office a photograph not of his B-17 crew mates, but of his B-17 crash site. I imagine him reflecting on how so much of his life was determined by multiple, seemingly unrelated factors that aligned perfectly to allow him to live. I imagine him being thankful, as I am, that things turned out the way they did.
Because my grandfather was allowed to live, my father was able to live which, in turn, allowed me to live. It allowed me, in 1999, to visit the Parham Airfield Museum in England to see a display of fragments recovered from my grandfather’s crashed B-17. It allowed me, in 2016, to visit and climb inside the Texas Raiders, a restored B-17 like the one my grandfather flew. It allowed me, in 2022, to write a blog post describing how that restored B-17 was destroyed in a tragic accident in Dallas.
