The 394th was in the process of moving troops and aircraft to their new assignment. Pilots and crews were flying the 33 aircraft of the 585th, 586th and 587th Squadrons to Ardmore while the support personnel were traveling to Ardmore on two troop trains.
The six aircraft were flying under “radio silence” and visual flight rules at 2,500 feet. Captain Edward B. Saxon was leading the No. 1 element. Captain Shelton H. Pierce and Lt. William M. Lester, co-pilot, were on his left wing and Lt. William T. White, Jr. was on his right wing. Lt. George C. Pinyerd was leading the No. 3 element with Lt. Francis M. Kirby on his left wing.
The planes were to land at DeRidder Army Air Base before proceeding to Ardmore. Prior to their arrival there, Captain Pierce and Lt. Lester's aircraft, 41-34770, and Lt. Pinyerd's plane dropped out of formation. Due to radio silence, Captain Saxon physically signaled them to return to their positions. He checked a short time later and had four planes on his right, assuming they had followed his instructions. When they landed at DeRidder, it was discovered that 41-34770 was missing. The aircraft had crashed approximately 26-miles southeast of Harding Field, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. All seven crew members perished. Accident investigators could not discover the cause of the crash, declaring it "100% undetermined."
Lt. Lester's younger sister, Annie Ford Lester Williams, Birmingham, Alabama, now in her 80s, mentioned her brother's 1943 war-time death to a friend who began an Internet search for information. Locating the Ardmore website was the result. The Lester family never knew the details of the accident, the parents dying without that helpful measure of closure.
ReplyDeleteAnnie Ford and her friend launched an intensive information search, locating newspaper accounts of the Louisana crash and making contact with relatives of owners of the farm where the B-26 crashed. The approximate location of the crash was identified and a newspaper account of an eyewitness served as a healing ointment for the wound of long ago.
The crash occurred approximately two miles north of Port Vincent, Louisana. The crash location and newspaper account can be viewed at "In Memory Of" http://www.brightok.net/~gsimmons/memorial2.htm