Data from Oklahoma County Newspapers

Data from Oklahoma County Newspapers

Mid-Air Crash Leaves Two Dead; Lawton Pilot, Fletcher Man Okay
Ponca City (UPI)
Investigators probed through the crumbed wreckage of a light plane in a northern Oklahoma wheat field today in an effort to determine what caused a mid-air collision that killed an Oklahoma City couple.
Ned and Lila Shoffner, parents of five children, were killed when their plane scraped the bottom of another light plane 6, 500 feet in the air and crashed near Ponca City Monday. Two men in the other plane escaped injury when they landed their damaged craft at the Ponca City airport.
There was speculation Shoffner may have been blinded by the sun and failed to see the other plane until too late.
Shoffner, 30, vice president of the Shoffner Sand and Gravel Co. of Oklahoma, and his wife, Lila, 30, both of Oklahoma City were killed instantly when their plane plummeted to the earth after the mid-air collision.
Escaping injury were the pilot of the other plane, John Potts, of Lawton, and his passenger, H. D. Dalton, a Fletcher, Okla., funeral home director.
The Shoffners had traded in a Cessna on the 2-year-old Piper Commanche last Saturday. They left Sunday for Kansas City and were returning home when the accident occurred.
The highway patrol said the Shoffner plane came up under the Potts plane, striking the underside and causing considerable damage. The collision occurred about four miles from the Ponca City airport.
The Shoffner plane crashed in a wheat field four miles east of Tonkawa, some five miles from where the planes collided. It sank about four feet into the soft ground and wreckage was scattered over a 1 ½ square mile aea.
The other plane made a belly landing, without wheels, at the airport. Dalton and Potts were en route to North Dakota to pick up a body to return to Fetcher.
"We had just checked in with the tower at Ponca City and I had closed my eyes and settled back in my seat to catch 40 winks." Dalton said.
"The next thing I knew there was a terrific bang and I was bounced severly in my seat…. I thought we had hit a goose, but the pilot told me we had struck another aircraft."
"I never did see the plane. By the time I came to my senses, I looked out the right-hand side and we didn't have any landing gear."
"We came in without any wheels. We both had to stand on the left rudder pedal to keep it under control." Dalton added. [Lawton Constitution (Lawton, Oklahoma) October 10, 1964 - Submitted by Nancy Piper]