RiverQuestion of the Month

for January 2008

Question:

On January 31, 1956, a B-25 bomber on route to an air force base in Harrisburg, PA, crash-landed in the Monongahela River, just downstream from the Homestead Grays Bridge.  For decades, the "ghost bomber" has inspired debate over what the plane may have been carrying, and whether or not the wreckage was recovered from the river.

What really happened to the remains of the B-25 bomber?

Image © 1994 by Filmet, Inc.

Used by permission.

 

Answer:

No one knows for sure.  Some people believe that the government covered up the removal of the bomber shortly after it crashed.  Others are convinced that it remains buried in the Monongahela River substrate.

On January 30, 1956 a Mitchell B-25 bomber left Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada with a crew of five and two passengers.  After an overnight stay at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and a stop at Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan, where one of the crew parted ways, the remaining six men set out for Olmsted Air Force Base in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  It became clear as they neared Pittsburgh that they were dangerously low on fuel. After changing their landing destination several times the pilot was forced to ditch the plane in the Monongahela River near the Homestead High Level (now the Homestead Grays) Bridge.  All aboard survived the emergency landing, but two of the men drowned while waiting for rescue.

Varying stories began to emerge once the aircraft slipped beneath the water approximately 1 mile from point of impact.  The official line is that recovery efforts for the missing plane began the next morning and continued for two weeks before they were abandoned.  Conspiracy theorists, and some eyewitnesses, claim that under the cover of night the military found and removed the wreckage.  Explanations for why the military would want to shield the plane from the public’s eye range from a mysterious seventh passenger to the presence of nuclear or biological weapon components.

Regardless of what happened to the plane, over 50 years later the mystery surrounding the lost bomber continues to fascinate many.  A second retrieval effort was launched by the B-25 Recovery Group in 1995.  Using high-tech instruments the group has located what they believe is the final resting place of the plane and hope to one day recover pieces of it.  Ray Duquesne, a local independent film-maker, plans to produce and direct a movie about the crash entitled “Mystery of the Mitchell Ghost Bomber.”

Sources:

 

 

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