Thirteen Airmen Lost in Horry Air Disaster
Florence Morning News South Carolina December 7,
1972
Conway - Thirteen airmen are believed to
have been killed in a fiery collision of two military planes that lit up a
dark December sky over a remote rural area of Horry County Tuesday
night.
It is thought to be the worst military air
disaster in South Carolina history.
The two planes, a heavy transport
four-engine C130 Hercules from Pope Air Force Base, NC, and an F102
fighter interceptor from McIntyre AFB near Columbia, apparently collided
while on a routine training mission. Air Force officials said the F102 was
supposed to intercept the transport and try to shoot it down with hits
recorded electronically.
But training somehow became reality and the
two planes burst into flames, spewing fiery wreckage down on the small
Berea Church community near Bayboro, about 15 miles north of Conway off
Hwy 410.
The heavy transport, carrying 12 men,
plummeted into the middle of a farm road, digging out a crater 20 by 50
feet and six to eight feet deep.
The impact and resulting explosion was so
great that it blew out the doorknobs and locks in a nearby house and sent
bits of flaming metal flying hundreds of yards in all directions. The roof
of the house was set on fire.
The jet, carrying a lone pilot, crashed in
woods about a mile and a half away. It apparently dropped almost straight
down, because few of the surrounding trees were damaged. The cockpit and
tail section of the plane landed in a cornfield about two hundred yards
away.
Thousands of curiosity seekers flooded into
the area following the approximately 7:15 pm crash, hampering the efforts
of searchers who filtered through the thick pine woods with floodlights.
People reported seeing the midair crash as far away as Myrtle Beach and
Florence County.
Light rains Tuesday night and heavy rains
Wednesday also impeded search operations, but the wreckage of both planes
continued to smoulder Wednesday afternoon, sending curls of acrid smoke
into wet and unseasonably warm air.
Several witnesses reported seeing
parachutes following the crash, but a spokesman for the Disaster Response
Force out of Myrtle Beach AFB discounted these sightings shortly after the
crash on the grounds that no signals had been picked up from the emergency
transmitters contained in the chutes.
Johnny Creel, Horry County Civil Defense
Director, said one woman told him she had positively seen five parachutes
float into the woods. There were no reports, however, of searchers finding
any parachutes.
As of late Wednesday, the Air Force had
listed only the pilot of the jet as being officially dead. He was Capt.
James C. Hagood, Jr., 28, of Lexington, an Eastern Air Lines pilot on
National Guard duty at the time of the crash.
The 12 men in the C130 transport were
officially listed as missing, but Air Force spokesmen said there was
little hope anyone survived.
The transport personnel
included:
Lt. Col. DONALD E. MARTIN, White Oak,
Tex.
Maj. KEITH L. VAN NOTE, Mason City,
Iowa
Capt. JOHN R. COLE, Tulsa,
Okla.
Capt. LOUIS R. SERT, St. Louis,
Mo.
Capt. MARSHALL K. DICKERSON,
Chicago
2nd Lt. DOUGLAS L. THIERER, no home town
available
Tech. Sgt. ROBERT E. DOYLE, South Hill,
Va.
Tech. Sgt. CLAUDE ABBOTT, Adel,
Ga.
S. Sgt. GILMORE A. MICKLEY, JR.,
Chambersburg, Pa.
S. Sgt. BILLY M. WARR, SR., Slymar,
Calif.
Sgt. GERALD K. FAUST, Oregon,
Wis.
The name of the twelfth man was withheld
pending notification of next of kin.
It was announced Wednesday afternoon that a
special panel of top level military brass would be formed to investigate
the cause of the mysterious crash.
Special attention will probably be given to
a series of secondary explosions which reportedly took place in the big
transport plane after the initial explosion. The plane was supposed to be
carrying dummy bombs.
Whatever the cause, the crash will probably
go into the books as one of the worst military air disasters in South
Carolina.
Capt. Bob Gore, public information officer
with Myrtle Beach AFB, said he had "never seen anything this bad." Several
other Air Force people also said they couldn't remember a worse air
disaster.
