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Town honors airmen killed in B-29 crash

BENTON, Ky. — Maxine Bohannon remembers distinctly the visage of a bloody and dazed soldier, parachute in his arms, standing in the doorway of her rural western Kentucky home.

That was 63 years ago, hours after a B-29 Superfortress on a cross-country training flight crashed in a thunderstorm about three miles from her home near Benton. The injured soldier at Bohannon’s door was Cpl. Irving A. Elias of Brooklyn, N.Y., the lone survivor of the Army Air Corps bomber’s 10-man crew.

“The first thing he asked was what state he was in,” Bohannon said. “We assumed his plane had crashed.”

The July 1, 1945, crash has long lived in stories and memories in rural Marshall County. Now, the soldiers who were killed in that crash are being honored.

The Marshall County Fiscal Court bought a monument honoring the crew and unveiled it near the crash site.

“What a better time than now,” asked Marshall County Planner Josh Tubbs, who helped organize the event with Gary Teckenbrock of Benton. “As Gary said when we started this project, these men didn’t die in the field of battle, but they died serving our country.”

The four-engine propeller heavy bomber crashed around 1 a.m. The plane had originally taken off from Kirtland Airfield in Albuquerque, N.M., and refueled in Nashville, Tenn., before flying into the storm over western Kentucky. Bohannon recalls debris being scattered over two miles of woodlands and farmland along Ky. 80.

Bohannon said she didn’t hear the crash over the thunder that night. She and her husband, Ernest, were awakened by a knock at the door.

Elias told the couple that he wasn’t clear about what happened. He was walking through the bomber when it seemed to come apart and threw him clear. Suddenly Elias was falling more than 8,000 feet. He managed to activate his parachute, took cover underneath a bush and walked to the Bohannons’ house at daybreak.

At first, communication with the soldier was difficult. Elias had minor injuries and a thick Brooklyn accent, Bohannon said.

The Bohannons took Elias to the Mayfield hospital for treatment. By the time they returned, souvenir hunters were combing the crash site for pieces of the wreckage before Army officials blocked off the area.

The bodies of the other soldiers — 1st Lt. Joseph F. Arone, Cpl. Roy G. Berryhill, 2nd Lt. Ward W. Copenhaver, Flight Officer Eugene M. Graham, Sgt. Romold A. Krzyzan, Sgt. Delmar H. Lumberg, Sgt. Arnold A. Rushton, Flight Officer James R. Schetzsle, 2nd Lt. Richard O. Snow — were taken to then Camp Campbell, the Army post now known as Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee line.

Bohannon said her husband later received a thank you letter from Elias. It marked the last time they heard from him.

“My husband and I were glad we could help one of the soldiers who was fighting for our country,” Bohannon said.