http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/n...ldiers-who-disappeared-70-years-ago.html?_r=0
EAST FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — On Monday morning, two World War II veterans held bouquets of roses and boarded an old warplane at Republic Airport here. Both men — Frank Kittle, 90, and Jack McMullen, 91 — narrowly escaped death while serving on such planes over Europe during the war.
And now, 70 years later, they were being pulled back into service, aboard this military transport plane built in the 1940s. Their mission this time was to honor 19 soldiers who most likely crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of eastern Long Island 70 years ago in two B-24 bombers running training missions before going overseas.
Neither plane was ever found; nor were the crews. Their stories were largely forgotten — at least until last May, when a clue to their disappearance emerged from the ocean.
A local fisherman off the East End of Long Island snagged his net on a 600-pound rusted piece of metal that resembled the landing gear of an airplane, some 250 feet underwater. A friend of the fisherman brought the piece to the American Airpower Museum, which has a space at this airport on Long Island.
Photo
Jack McMullen, left, 91, next to Frank Kittle, 90, in a memorial flyover on Monday. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
“I knew right away it was a B-24 landing gear,” recalled Mr. Kittle, who volunteers at the museum. He was referring to a common type of bomber used by the United States in World War II. It is a type of plane he used to repair, and the type that Mr. McMullen flew on 32 missions during the war, including on D-Day.
By tracing the landing gear’s serial number, and checking military records, Mr. Kittle and fellow museum volunteers concluded that the landing gear was probably from a B-24 that, along with its 11-man crew, went missing off the coast of eastern Long Island on April 7, 1944 — 70 years ago Monday — just two months before D-Day.
“Back then, they didn’t have the technology to find it — it just disappeared,” said Mr. McMullen, adding that the crash did not generate the type of worldwide headlines that have resulted from the disappearance of a Malaysian commercial airliner last month.
Inside the plane on Monday, the two men sat on riveted steel seats, secured by simple seatbelts in the plane’s bare-bones interior. The roses bounced in their laps as the noisy old warplane rumbled down the runway and roared into the sky, heading out over the open ocean, just off Robert Moses State Park.
“There were a lot of planes that went down here in the States that need to be commemorated,” Mr. McMullen said over the roar of the twin engines during the flight, which was organized by the museum as a flyover memorial. The plane being used was a C-47 transport aircraft built in the 1940s that the museum restored and uses for educational tours and flights.
Photo
Wreckage believed to be the landing gear of a B-24 bomber was recovered off Long Island last year. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
“The B-24 was a hard plane to fly — it didn’t have power steering,” said Mr. McMullen, who flew for the Army’s Air Corps.
Mr. McMullen, who later became a commercial pilot and lives in Seaford, N.Y., noted that the two lost bombers were just two of thousands of military training flights that crashed in the United States during the Second World War.
The B-24’s disappearance 70 years ago was followed by a 10-day search by the military, from New Jersey to Canada, museum officials said, adding that it was also possible that the landing gear was from a B-24 that had taken off four months earlier — on Dec. 12, 1943 — with an eight-man crew bound for the same training area. It, too, disappeared without a trace, along with its crew. Both flights originated in Westover field in Massachusetts.
“There’s probably not much left of the plane down there to look for,” Mr. Kittle said as he ran his hand over the landing gear, displayed in the museum’s hangar. A piece of fishing net remained lodged near the wheel section, and a section of chromed steel was still shiny.
Mr. Kittle, a retired aircraft mechanic living in Deer Park, N.Y., was a Navy mechanic and flight engineer whose B-24 was on patrol off the coast of Spain when it crashed into the Atlantic in 1943. He and the nine other crew members spent several days in a life raft until rescue.
On Monday, the plane approached Fire Island Inlet, flying at about 1,400 feet. A crew member opened an emergency exit so that the old war veterans could drop the roses down. The flowers were sucked out the window and floated down to the wind-rippled waters below.
“This is for all the men who never came home,” Mr. McMullen said.
A version of this article appears in print on April 8, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: With Roses, Remembering 19 Soldiers Who Vanished. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
EAST FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — On Monday morning, two World War II veterans held bouquets of roses and boarded an old warplane at Republic Airport here. Both men — Frank Kittle, 90, and Jack McMullen, 91 — narrowly escaped death while serving on such planes over Europe during the war.
And now, 70 years later, they were being pulled back into service, aboard this military transport plane built in the 1940s. Their mission this time was to honor 19 soldiers who most likely crashed into the Atlantic off the coast of eastern Long Island 70 years ago in two B-24 bombers running training missions before going overseas.
Neither plane was ever found; nor were the crews. Their stories were largely forgotten — at least until last May, when a clue to their disappearance emerged from the ocean.
A local fisherman off the East End of Long Island snagged his net on a 600-pound rusted piece of metal that resembled the landing gear of an airplane, some 250 feet underwater. A friend of the fisherman brought the piece to the American Airpower Museum, which has a space at this airport on Long Island.
Photo
Jack McMullen, left, 91, next to Frank Kittle, 90, in a memorial flyover on Monday. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
“I knew right away it was a B-24 landing gear,” recalled Mr. Kittle, who volunteers at the museum. He was referring to a common type of bomber used by the United States in World War II. It is a type of plane he used to repair, and the type that Mr. McMullen flew on 32 missions during the war, including on D-Day.
By tracing the landing gear’s serial number, and checking military records, Mr. Kittle and fellow museum volunteers concluded that the landing gear was probably from a B-24 that, along with its 11-man crew, went missing off the coast of eastern Long Island on April 7, 1944 — 70 years ago Monday — just two months before D-Day.
“Back then, they didn’t have the technology to find it — it just disappeared,” said Mr. McMullen, adding that the crash did not generate the type of worldwide headlines that have resulted from the disappearance of a Malaysian commercial airliner last month.
Inside the plane on Monday, the two men sat on riveted steel seats, secured by simple seatbelts in the plane’s bare-bones interior. The roses bounced in their laps as the noisy old warplane rumbled down the runway and roared into the sky, heading out over the open ocean, just off Robert Moses State Park.
“There were a lot of planes that went down here in the States that need to be commemorated,” Mr. McMullen said over the roar of the twin engines during the flight, which was organized by the museum as a flyover memorial. The plane being used was a C-47 transport aircraft built in the 1940s that the museum restored and uses for educational tours and flights.
Photo
Wreckage believed to be the landing gear of a B-24 bomber was recovered off Long Island last year. Credit Uli Seit for The New York Times
“The B-24 was a hard plane to fly — it didn’t have power steering,” said Mr. McMullen, who flew for the Army’s Air Corps.
Mr. McMullen, who later became a commercial pilot and lives in Seaford, N.Y., noted that the two lost bombers were just two of thousands of military training flights that crashed in the United States during the Second World War.
The B-24’s disappearance 70 years ago was followed by a 10-day search by the military, from New Jersey to Canada, museum officials said, adding that it was also possible that the landing gear was from a B-24 that had taken off four months earlier — on Dec. 12, 1943 — with an eight-man crew bound for the same training area. It, too, disappeared without a trace, along with its crew. Both flights originated in Westover field in Massachusetts.
“There’s probably not much left of the plane down there to look for,” Mr. Kittle said as he ran his hand over the landing gear, displayed in the museum’s hangar. A piece of fishing net remained lodged near the wheel section, and a section of chromed steel was still shiny.
Mr. Kittle, a retired aircraft mechanic living in Deer Park, N.Y., was a Navy mechanic and flight engineer whose B-24 was on patrol off the coast of Spain when it crashed into the Atlantic in 1943. He and the nine other crew members spent several days in a life raft until rescue.
On Monday, the plane approached Fire Island Inlet, flying at about 1,400 feet. A crew member opened an emergency exit so that the old war veterans could drop the roses down. The flowers were sucked out the window and floated down to the wind-rippled waters below.
“This is for all the men who never came home,” Mr. McMullen said.
A version of this article appears in print on April 8, 2014, on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: With Roses, Remembering 19 Soldiers Who Vanished. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
