In the early morning hours of Friday May 10, 1946, two PB4Y Navy patrol bombers took off from Whiting Field to commence a training exercise. This particular scenario required the two aircraft, each with a crew of fourteen men, to evade a simulated attack by an enemy fighter. This training curriculum had been in use for some time and the Navy boasted of having 24,000 hours without an incident. That record would end today!
The two bombers were flying side by side when a F6F Hellcat fighter dove on the pair similar to the methods used by the Japanese and Germans during the recent fighting in WWII. But something went wrong! A Florida Forestry Service observer, L. C. Cook (assumed to be Louis C. Cook) observed the three Navy planes flying overhead around 10:30 AM heading north. Then he saw the Hellcat fighter begin his simulated attack. A few minutes later, he saw a column of smoke to the north and sent a ranger to investigate. The ranger found aircraft wreckage scattered over twenty acres about seven miles north of Munson. Inside the main fuselage he could see some of the bodies inside.
A second witness, Charles B. Brackin of the "Beedland community," described the crash from his vantage point. He stated that he saw the two bombers side by side when the fighter appeared to strike one of the bombers and then "bounded over the two ships." The collision knocked one engine out of the lead plane causing it to go into a spin. Pieces of the bomber filled the air and the impact threw the plane against the other bomber. The first plane started turning over when it exploded in the air as it fell. It struck the ground in the field in the back of William Chester "Chess" Bass' house. The second bomber flew straight and level for a short time before losing altitude and falling to the ground where it caught fire and exploded. Brackin saw bodies scattered all over the place while they waited for the Navy trucks to arrive about an hour later.
In the meantime, two law enforcement officers arrived and began looking for survivors. There were none! FHP Patrolman Wesley Washington Slappey Jr. and Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office Deputy McRae "Red" Walling observed that one plane had broken in half with one half on fire near the highway and the other half in a nearby field. The second plane had crashed about 400 yards from the first and was still burning as well. They saw that one airman had been able to jump out of one of the plane but he was either too low or his chute failed to open and he was found impaled in a scrub oak a half mile away. In all, there were twenty-eight victims.
The newspaper reported that eight of the victims were from Milton however none of them were local men. Most likely, they had their families living off base with them at the time as they went through their training. They were identified as:
Ensign John J. Corcoran
AMM1c Milton M. Leftwich
AMM1c Norman J. Schmolke
AMM1c Alec J. Kennedy
1c Seaman Ralph Holmes
LTjg Wallace R. Jones
LTjg Donald G. Brandos
As for the Miltonians who had volunteered their efforts that horrible night, they would go on with their lives forever remembering the fate of the 28 young men. Ranger Louis C. Cook (1885-1957) had been a farmer in Jay and Wallace most of his life and would marry Mattie Sewell (1884-1977) in 1904. Another witness was William Chester Bass (1896-1982) who was married to Bessie Marie Hendrix (1911-1997). He would retire from farming before he and Bessie passed away and were buried in McLellan Cemetery in Munson. And witness Charles B. Brackin (1875-1961) would spend his life as a farmer along with his wife Armentha Cobb (1878-1938). The two had married in 1893 and together they would bring twelve children into this world. Armentha would pass away in 1938 and Charles would join her in 1961 in the Bullard Cemetery in Baker, Okaloosa County, Florida.
The two law enforcement officers who searched for survivors would continue their chosen career throughout Florida. Trooper Wesley Washington Slappey Jr. (1909-1976) was the son of Wesley Sr. (1842-1930) and Lucinda David Kendrick (1859-1942). He would serve the highway patrol in Milton, Deland, and Kissimmee to name a few. He would marry Pauline Kemp and had one daughter Paula, born in 1944. He was living in Cocoa Beach in 1976 when he was found murdered in his residence. He was buried in the Woodland Cemetery in Havana in his home county of Gadsden. The second officer that night was McRae "Red" Ray Walling (1915-1996). Walling enlisted in the US Army during WWII on February 21, 1941 and was sent to Camp Blanding, Florida for processing and orientation. He had been working as a pool room operator in 1935 and a telephone lineman in the 1940's. He received his honorable discharge after the war on November 17, 1945 as a Staff Sergeant. He would join the Florida Highway Patrol shortly after the plane crash in 1946 where he served in various duty stations in his career. That same year of 1946, he would marry Elva Presley (1921-2008) and today they both lie at rest in the Bagdad Cemetery.














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