Story about the plane crashes I saw...

[Ol Smoke]

I was 13 years old and we lived in Bly, Oregon.  I was outside playing when I heard a single engine dual seater airplane flying around.

I was watching as it did loops and stuff, and once in a while he would turn it upside down and flip it over.  He was in the midst of doing

a loop when I saw him come out of the loop and just continue straight down.  Suddenly I couldn't hear the motor anymore.  I then saw them

hit the ground.  I ran inside and told my mom, and I got on my bike to go out there.  By the time I got there, some of the men from the

lumbermill had arrived and were trying to get the two men out of the wreckage.  They were really messed up.  I could see the bones of

the legs sticking out of the flesh.  They were covered with blood.  A makeshift ambulance took them to Klamath Falls hospital.

A few months later I found out that the passenger died and the pilot lost both legs.  He later killed himself.

 

In the winter of 1971, I was living in Klamath Falls when a commercial plane struck a mountain near there.  I had worked for the Sherriff's office for

about 2 years as a trained tracker, so we could find lost hunters and hikers, so I was contacted to go with search and rescue because they

were short handed.  We got to the top of the mountain and there was about 3 feet of snow.  The plane was burning and there was wreckage 

everywhere.  Since the plane was beginning it's takeoff, all the bodies were still strapped into the seats.  We found one person still alive,

but he died before we got him off the mountain.  The strangest thing about that wreck was the shoes.  A lot of the bodies didn't have their shoes

on, or had only one.  Picking up the bodies and placing them into the bags was weird because some didn't have their shoes.  It didn't seem to

ever bother me to pickup body parts, but those shoes haunted me for years.  Till this day I never wear my shoes when I am on a flight.  I store 

them overhead.

One gruesome thing I did see, that was later explained by a doctor.  I saw several of the bodies had their eyes almost hanging out of the skull

or just swollen and exploded almost.  It was explained that the pressure of the brain, striking the frontal area of the skull with such force, blows

the blood and tissue thru the orbital foreamen (hole where the nerves go thru the eye socket), it pushes the eye out or it cracks the eye open

and  well you get the idea.  

 

 

My friend Duane and I were pretty close through high school and his dad owned a small plane.  One day his dad was going to take it up to

check it out before they took a trip.  We drove out to the local airport, which was no more than a mowed field, and watched him take off.

He flew in a big circle a few thousand feet in the air and then turned to land.  He lowered the landing gear and touched down.  As he was

slowing, the right wheel suddenly folded up and the plane leaned over onto the wing.  He was still going about 70 or 80 mph when it happened

so the plane really swung around in a circle.  His dad flipped the motor off before it came to a rest.  Then he climbed out and went around

to see the damage.  There was just some dings and dents in the bottom of the edge of the wing.  Everything else was fine.  The landing gear

locking pin had broken on impact and folded up.  We went back to their garage and got tools and had it fixed in a few hours.  He took it up

a couple of times and landed twice to check it out.  He wasn't the least shook up about it.  Which leads me to Duane's dad's history.

He was in the Army in World War II and landed on Omaha Beach.  He and two other guys took out 2 concrete bunkers that day after they made

it off the beach.  Then later destroyed a mounted MG emplacement by themselves.  He earned the Silver Star.  He went through the whole

war without being wounded.  He later earned the DSM for his work behind the enemy lines.

He taught me how to drive semi-trucks.  Later, Duane and I split a cab and hauled freight out of LA and Sacramento to Seattle.  His mom and

dad were lifelong bikers and drove a 1966 Electra-Glide till he was 78 years old.  He and my dad were at Omaha Beach at the same time.