During World War II, training was sometimes just as dangerous as the enemy. For 11 men stationed at the Ardmore Army Air Field in February 1944, the danger became an experience only one would live to talk about. A mid-air collision while in formation seriously damaged one bomber and sent another to the ground after it was cut in half.
The oldest of the 10 men who perished that Saturday was Capt. Oswald Bernich, a 28-year-old bombardier instructor from Biloxi, Miss., while the youngest was Sgt. Ray Wise, a radio operator from Texarkana, Ark., who turned 20 about two months earlier. The lone survivor, 20-year-old Cpl. Jack McClanahan, was promoted to sergeant soon after the incident.
McClanahan would later fly as a tail gunner in Europe during the war and return home safely, but hometowns from West Virginia to California mourned the loss of sons and brothers that died in that collision over southern Oklahoma.
The story of their ill-fated B-17 “Flying Fortress” circulated among some around Mill Creek seven decades later, but the town where the bomber crashed had no physical reminders of the event. McClanahan, who happened to be from nearby Lawton, passed away in 2015 and the tale of that particular training accident was at risk of becoming a forgotten piece of Mill Creek’s history.
Then a 6th grader complained that nothing ever happens in his small Oklahoma town. According to Brighton Lanier, classmate Bryson Allen made the comment one day in early 2019 while the class was looking for something to do with teacher Gary Jones.
“We were in Mr. Jones’s class, which was our history teacher then, and Bryson said ‘man, nothing ever happens in Mill Creek’ and Mr. Jones was like ‘I’m going to prove you wrong,'” said Lanier.
With that comment, a small group of students and teachers embarked on what would become a two-year endeavor to mark the tragedy and remember the airmen. The project is expected to finally come to an end on June 5 when a monument for the men is unveiled at the Mill Creek Community Center.
A COMMON AND DEADLY OCCURRENCE
According to historian Bob Blanchard, who researched troves of military data between 1939 and 1945, the U.S. lost nearly 26,000 airmen in accidents like training or transport during the war, compared to the 52,173 airmen lost in combat.
At least 15,000 deaths were from aircrew training during the war. The two B-17s that collided over Mill Creek in 1944 were among 44 other crashed planes in that one month alone. Blanchard said if a B-17 crashed, that usually meant a crew of 10 airmen on board lost their lives.
“Every time a bomber went down, it was usually the loss of the whole crew,” Blanchard said. “So the numbers are pretty staggering, really.”
The number of training fatalities each year grew as the war progressed and more men went through aircrew training, according to Blanchard’s research. In 1941, 1,300 crashes resulted in 199 fatalities. Three years later in 1944, almost 21,000 crashes killed more than 5,600 airmen.
In 2019, Blanchard wrote an article for the website Real Clear History about the sobering statistics of U.S. airmen killed during training accidents during WWII.
“I just thought it was one of the great unreported stories of WWII,” he said.
MIDAIR COLLISION OVER MILL CREEK
The Ardmore Army Air Field was originally used to train glider pilots and later trained combat crews for medium and heavy bombers during WWII. At least eight crashes linked to the facility between 1943 and 1944 killed 37 airmen. Several other incidents killed or injured even more people on the ground.
On the afternoon of February 12, 1944, a dozen B-17 bombers flew in two formations of six planes each. One of those planes, piloted by Capt. William Heck of Middletown, Ohio, became the seventh assigned to the Ardmore Army Air Field that would eventually crash and kill service members in training.
After several hours of flying, the formation led by Heck started a left bank and descent several miles northeast of the air field. During the maneuver, turbulence caused Heck’s lead B-17 to look like it was coming out of the bank.
The pilot of the innermost B-17 in the formation, acting as the pivot plane in the maneuver, mistakenly came out of the bank as Heck corrected. The right wing of the innermost plane made contact with Heck’s plane and two propellers effectively sliced Heck’s B-17 in half.
Heck’s plane fell to the ground just north of Mill Creek and killed 10 on board. The other plane returned to Ardmore with only two of four engines but no injuries. McClanahan, the tail gunner in Heck’s plane, parachuted to safety and was promoted from corporal to sergeant immediately after the crash.
He was the only survivor from Heck’s crew.
Others killed in the crash included 2nd Lt. Robert Bulloch of Cedar City, Utah, Sgt. Albert Franczyk of Vandergrift, Penn., Sgt. Leslie Hill of Medford, Ore., 2nd Lt. Jack Rider of Glendale, Cali., 2nd Lt. Collins Gerstner of Minneapolis, Minn., and Sgt. John Ashba of Steubenville, Ohio.
NEW STORIES FOR A NEW GENERATION
Almost 75 years to the day after that 1944 crash, the Mill Creek 6th grade class was at the crash site near the Mill Creek Park with metal detectors looking for artifacts. Just days after learning about the incident in class early in 2019, the story of one crash soon became stories about 11 men.
“We didn’t end up finding anything, but it was cool to sit there and imagine this crash happened here,” Lanier said about their visit to the crash site. As the group wanted to learn more details, the challenges of researching a decades-old event started.
“We spent hours and hours calling places where these men lived,” said Lanier.
Julie Kirkpatrick is an English teacher at Mill Creek schools and has been helping the small group of students with the memorial project. While the teachers have helped point the students in the right direction, she said most of the heavy lifting – from research to fundraisers – has been spearheaded by the kids.
“They’ve called historical societies, libraries, funeral homes, cemeteries, anything they could to try to locate family members and pictures for these men,” Kirkpatrick said.
Several roadblocks emerged during their research. For instance, many records for Cpl. Antonio Casini were difficult to locate. Finally, a phone call to his niece in Las Vegas, Nev., uncovered a unique family story and gave personality to one of the victims.
“The records we had, the crash report and everything, has him listed as ‘Casino,'” said Julie Vestal, parent of Mill Creek student Kash Vestal. “Then the picture of his headstone and everything we had found said ‘Casini’ and so we were really confused.”
“When we finally got in touch with his family, his name is Casini but when he joined the army he changed his last name to Casino because he thought it sounded cooler and his dad was not very happy with him,” she said.
REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS
The names of the men who perished in the crash are engraved on a memorial near the former air field, now the Ardmore Municipal Airport, and on monuments in hometowns across the country. Upon learning about the crash 75 years after the fact, Mill Creek students took it upon themselves to also erect a memorial near the crash site.
The students have raised nearly $8,000 from weekly cookie sales, fundraisers at every home sporting event and donations from area organizations and military veterans. Students and teachers interviewed for this story all agreed that fundraising was the most difficult part of the project.
Photos of each service member were also difficult to locate but Kirkpatrick said students wanted to make sure that the airmen’s images were engraved on the monument. Even though the men are memorialized on monuments in their hometowns, students wanted to make sure the men and their sacrifice weren’t forgotten in Mill Creek.
“They wanted a three-foot by five-foot granite monument and they will have pictures of each man engraved on it,” Kirkpatrick said. “We’re cutting it awfully close but the kids really want it there.”
Mill Creek Mayor Scott Clark said he remembered hearing stories about the 1944 crash but didn’t know many of the details until local students started digging. He hopes the monument to the 1944 crash could be the beginning of an even larger war memorial in Mill Creek.
“They worked hard. They had a lot of it done before they even contacted me,” he said.
Family members of at least half of the victims are expected to travel to Oklahoma for the June 5 dedication. Kirkpatrick said guests from Nevada, West Virginia, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas and Texas have all indicated they will be on hand next week.
Cindy Cunningham, the niece of Casini, said she and other family members will travel to Mill Creek for the dedication. While her uncle’s name is already on a marker in his hometown of Follansbee, West Virginia, she is impressed that students are behind a monument near the crash site.
“The kids knew more than I did,” Cunningham said. “My family is very, very excited about it.”