Memorial conducted at B-52 crash site

GREENVILLE – It was “gut-wrenching” for the members of the search party to come upon the destruction caused by the crash of a B-52 bomber on Elephant Mountain in January 1963. And it was just as difficult for five of the searchers to be standing at the remote crash site four decades later.

With the gruesome details of that tragic day still etched in their minds, four former Air National Guard members and a Millinocket man were among those who paid their respects Saturday to the seven airmen who died in the fiery crash. The two sole survivors – retired Capt. Gerald Adler of Davis, Calif., and the aircraft commander retired Lt. Col. Dante E. Bulli of Nebraska – who ejected from the plane before it crashed, also were recognized and honored Saturday.

“You never forget something like that; a scene like that is not erased,” said Bill McHale of Bangor, a former Air National Guard member who helped in the 1963 search.

The memorial, sponsored annually by the Moosehead Riders Snowmobile Club, is conducted at the resting place of a section of the airplane’s fuselage.

There, seven yellow roses were left in remembrance of the men who perished: Lt. Col. Joe R. Simpson Jr., Maj. William W. Gabriel, Maj. Robert J. Morrison, Maj. Robert J. Hill, Capt. Herbert L. Hansen, Capt. Charles G. Leuchter, and Tech. Sgt. Michael F. O’Keefe.

Two red roses also were left in recognition of Adler and Bulli. Three Blackhawk helicopters flown by the Army National Guard and a Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife plane made a ceremonial flyover during the memorial event at the crash site that followed a short ceremony held a few miles away outside a snowmobile clubhouse, where an engine from the aircraft is on display.

Joining McHale for the 40th anniversary ride to the crash site in the bitter cold Saturday were his former comrades from the National Guard – Jim Campbell of Hampden, Rollie Andrews of Bangor, and Ralph Harris of Hermon – along with Wayne Campbell of Millinocket, a civilian who had joined in the search.

Paul Tower of Brewer, another member of the rescue party attended the ceremony at the clubhouse but was unable to take the lengthy snowmobile trip to the remote crash site.

Others in attendance for Saturday’s ceremonies included the 101st Maine Air National Guard honor guard, which included Mark Andrews, the son of Rollie Andrews, and a contingent of wardens from DIF&W.

Wayne Campbell and his younger brother, Steve, traveled to the memorial site on the same snowmobiles that Wayne Campbell and his father, the late Earlan Campbell, had used to search the area the night of the crash. One colored red and the other powder blue, the antique Polaris Snowtravelers, which are normally on display at the Northern Timber Cruisers Snowmobile Museum, putt-putted to the location and had to be stopped by brute force since the vehicles have no brakes.

“When you get up there [to the crash site] it’s a very solemn feeling; it just makes you realize how insignificant you are,” said Wayne Campbell, who was a 19-year-old home from college at the time.

The B-52 Stratofortress had left Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts at about noon Jan. 24 and was on a routine training mission when a malfunction caused the unarmed plane to go down in this remote wooded area of Maine.

Officials at Dow Air Force Base in Bangor asked Earlan Campbell, who owned a snowmobile dealership, to assist in the ground search. While others canvassed the ground on snowshoes, Wayne Campbell, his father and two local men scoured the area on snowmobiles.

Wayne Campbell said they initially searched the Katahdin Iron Works region where officials first believed the airplane had crashed. When the wreckage was spotted from the air later, the snowmobilers altered course and went to Elephant Mountain where debris from the airplane was still burning, he said. The foursome ended up hauling the bodies of the dead from the wilderness to a waiting ambulance.

“It had a profound impact on me; I had never seen anything like it before,” Wayne Campbell recalled.

Nor had most of the young men with the Maine Air National Guard who assisted at the crash site. Tower said so much snow had fallen after the crash that it was difficult to find the airplane and the occupants. A small depression in the snow where $10 and $20 bills were blowing around led him to the first body, he recalled. Even after 40 years, the memory of that discovery causes him emotional distress.

“We had a mission and job to do, and we did it,” Tower said.

Adler, who was found away from the crash site by a different search party, said Saturday he is thankful for the dedication of Tower and the other searchers.

The only person to have survived an ejection from an aircraft in a Weber Ejection seat without the parachute opening, Adler admitted to living with survivor’s guilt.

Though he met most of the searchers for the first time Saturday, Adler grasped their hands and shoulders like old friends, and together they recalled that tragic afternoon and the days that followed the crash. Making his fourth appearance at the site since the crash, Adler sported a “Maineiacs” cap and said the crash site never ceases to amaze him.