THE POST-STANDARD

SYRACUSE, N.Y., SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1944

LOST BOMBER BELIEVED HEARD NEAR LAKE ONTARIO

SEARCH TURNED TO NORTH BY OSWEGO REPORT

B-24 CARRYING EIGHT MISSING SINCE 2:30 A.M.

Lake Ontario coast guard patrols reported last night that a "multi-motored" plane was heard over Oswego and henderson Harbor, which are about 50 miles apart on the curving southeastern shoreline of the Great Lake. This information focused attention in the statewide search for a missing B-24 army bomber on the Oswego-Jefferson counties area, despite a discrepancy in time element of when the lost Liberator was heard over Syracuse.

HEARD OVER OSWEGO

C. O. Baucher of the coast guard at Oswego reported to state police at Adams that a multi-motored plane was heard over Oswego about 1 a.m. and over the town of Scriba about 1:05 a.m. It was headed north-west, he added. Shortly after 2 a.m. BM 2/c Flaherty, on watch at Galloo island, in the Henderson Harbor area, reported to BM 3/c Tucher that he heard a "roaring noise overhead and in the direction of Henderson harbor, but due to the storm could not distinguish identity." Mrs. Pearl Hammond, who lives on the bay at Henderson Harbor, which is about 60 miles directly north of Syracuse, told Adams state troopers she heard a plane flying directly over her home between 2 and 3 a.m. She explained further that the plane appeared to be headed northwest, which would have taken it over Lake Ontario and in the direction of Canada.

LOST RADIO CONTACT

These reports from jefferson and Oswego counties do not tally exactly with reports that the bomber was flying over the Syracuse area about 2:30 a.m., when radio contact with the plane and its crew of eight men was lost. According to reports from Westover Field, the gasoline supply of the bomber, names "Getaway Gertie," was exhausted about 7 a.m., "even if the stretched the gas to the utmost."  The commanding officer at Westover ordered the crew by radio to bail out when the bomber ran out of gas. Hampered by a blinding show storm, parties thru out upstate New York last night pressed their search for the bomber. Several air force planes from Rome army air field braved poor flying weather to join state police, forest rangers and gape protectors in the widespread search.

ON ROUTINE FLIGHT

Army officials disclosed that the plane was thought to be "somewhere east of Syracuse" when last heard from. Authoritative spokesmen reported that the bomber, on a routine flight from Westover field, circled the municipal airport at Amboy for more than an hour at a high altitude, unable to land because of poor visibility. After communicating by radio with their commanding officer several times, the crew was ordered to abandon ship at 2:30 a.m.. It was thought at first that the fliers and their plane were downed in the 50-mile stretch between syracuse and Hinkey, Oneida county, which were describes as the "east leg o the Syracuse radio beam."

MAY BE IN ADIRONDACKS

Uncertainty of the planes location at the time of its last contact, however, led observers to theorize that the bomber may have been farther east of Syracuse than was originally supposed and that it may have come to rest in the foothills of the Adirondacks. A teletype message reporting the loss of the bomber and its crew was dispatched at 2:45 a.m. to state police in eight states, including Troop D, which covers 11 counties in upstate New York. Also notified and asked to join in the search were forest rangers and game protectors in Herkimer, Malone, Old Forge and Remsen and coast guard personnel at Oswego.

MANY PLANES IN SEARCH

Army officials at the Rome air field revealed that, in addition to the undisclosed number of planes sent up to hunt for the missing bomber, all planes passing thru were asked to assist in the search. Location of the gas-exhausted bomber was complicated because, as official spokesmen put it, "It was a poor night for reception" when the crippled ship broadcast its plight. destination of the bomber was not revealed yesterday by army authorities at Westover Field, which is near Chicopp, Mass.

RELATIVES NOTIFIED

Stating that relatives of the missing fliers had been notified, the army listed as officers and men aboard the missing craft the following:

Flight Officer Wendell K. Ponder of Jackson, Miss
Flight Officer Raymond A. Bickel of Springfield, Mass
Sgt. Audrey H. Alexander of Rogersville, Ala
Sgt. Kenneth M. Jonen of Milwaukee, Wis
Sgt. Thomas C. Roberts of Boston
Sgt. Joseph M. Zebo of Pawtucket, P.I.
Corp. James O. Cozier of Tulsa, Okla
Philip R. Walton of Berkeley, Calif

THE POST-STANDARD

SYRACUSE, N.Y., SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1944

HUNT FOR BOMBER TURNS TO TUG HILL

COLD AND SNOW BAR SEARCH OF WOODED SECTION

EXPLOSION HEARD FRIDAY MORNING TROOPERS LEARN

Sub-zero temperatures and blinding snow squalls late yesterday halted a state police attempt to search for the lost Liberator, Gateway Gertie, in a 6 mile square wooded area on the northeastern slopes of snowbound Tug hill, near Denmark, in the Lowville-Carthage sector. The search for the B-24 bomber and its crew of eight men, which vanished abut 2:30 a.m. Friday after losing contact with Syracuse municipal airport, centered in that area after a resident reported hearing a crash and explosion like thunder about 4 a.m. Friday.

FAIL TO ENTER WOODS

Led by Lt. Charles B. McCann of Troop B, a party of state troopers, equipped with snowshoes, converged on the small village of Denmark about 2 p.m. but due to the lateness of the hour and weather conditions did not enter the woods. They surveyed the area after Gerald Clemons, a justice of the peace at Denmark, about 12 miles north of lowville on route 26, reported the crash. He placed the location of the crash as southwest of Denmark in a large wooded area on the eastern slope of Tug hill, and the time checks with the approximate hour that the big bomber should have exhausted its gasoline supply

AWAKENED BY CRASH

Clemons told Lt. McCann that at 4 a.m. Friday his wife and daughter, Helen, 14, were awakened by a "loud crash and explosion like thunder, altho there was no rumbling sound after it." They noticed the time and roused Mr. Clemons, who looked out the window but could see nothing"because it was snowing and blowing so we couldn't see more than aa few yards." They were in rooms on the southwest side of the house and the noise came from that direction, the Clemons' decided, pointing to a wooded area, two miles by three miles, on the slope of Tug Hill as the place where the noise came from.

Capt. Walter Begland, intelligence officer at Rome air base where headquarters has been established for the search, said an airplane was sent over the Tug hill area to assist in the hunt. While state police talked with Clemons, an army plane, one of 15 from Rome air depot searching 40,000 square miles in Central New York, roared overhead to make an air study of the sector.

NONE SEES WRECKAGE

Later it was reported at Rome that all planes returned to the base at 6 p.m. yesterday as the search via air was halted until dawn today. None of the planes saw any trace of the wreckage, Capt. Gegland said. This would indicate that the plane which circled the Denmark area did not see anything that would indicate the bomber crashed in those woods, altho visibility was limited due to snow squalls. The search by air will continue today, Capt. Begland said, with planes from Westover Field, Mass., base of the missing bomber, joining aircraft from Rome Air depot.

Lt. McCann said Trop B state police will stand by in readiness to enter the snowbound wooded area, if aerial reconnaissance indicates that the bomber crashed near Denmark.

BELIEVE NONE JUMPED

With some 40 hours elapsed since the crew of eight was ordered to bail out by operations as Westover Field, Mass., where the bomber was based, army officers believe now that the men didn't jump, because one of them should have been found by this time. Whether the plane crashed before the men had a chance to jump, or whether they decided to "stick with the ship" in defiance of orders, will not be known until the wreckage is found, and perhaps not then, officers said.

Clemons, who did not know the bomber was missing until he read yesterday morning's newspapers, first called Undersheriff Louis Kohler of Lewis county to tell of the "crash and explosion like thunder." Meanwhile, in the operations room at Rome air base a zigzag line of pin points on a map of Oswego, Jefferson, Lewis and Oneida counties provided army officers with the best method of locating the bomber.

REPRESENTS REPORT

Each pin point represented a place from which a report has come that a plane was heard Thursday night or early Friday morning when the lost Liberator roared thru a snowstorm in futile efforts to find a "hole" in the ceiling zero weather. Oswego, Fulton, Henderson, Galloo Island coast guard outposts in Lake Ontario, Remsen, Philadelphia, Redfield, Great Bend and Denmark are among the places marked. By drawing lines thru these places, army air officers are able to plot an approximate course the bomber was flying so that they can concentrate their search from the air over the territory covered by this reported line of flight. Operations are not depending entirely upon this pinpointing method, however. The overall technic is to cover 40,000 square miles, roughly 100 miles between Syracuse and Albany and 100 miles north and south of this main line.

ASSIGNED TO SECTIONS

To cover this vast area, planes from the Rome air depot are assigned to sections, and as a report comes from a certain section, planes are concentrated there, as in the Lowville case, Capt. begland explained. fifteen planes took off from the Rome air depot yesterday to continue the ceaseless patrol over the Central New York area, which has been covered by new snow from Friday's storm.

This fresh layer of snow, most of it coming after the bomber presumably crashed early Friday morning when its

REPORTED PLANE

Reports from coast guard personnel at Oswego and Galloo island, roughly 50 miles apart on the curving southeastern shoreline of Lake Ontario, told of a "multi-motored," plane flying over that area between 1 and 2 a.m. Friday. If the plane crashed into Lake Ontario, which is free of ice away from the shoreline, it would have disappeared without a trace, according to Oswego observers.

All coast guard personnel in that area have been placed on the alert to assist in the search, just as forest rangers and game protectors in the wild, mountainous country east of the lake are on "stand by" orders to cover their territory. Yesterday's reports of hearing a plane centered in the Oswego-Lewis-Oneida area, altho a railroad telegrapher at Philadelphia told Watertown police he heard a plane over that village about 2 a.m. Friday. He could not determine the direction of flight.

PLANE FLYING LOW

Supervisor William J. Alone of Redfield, which is on the southwestern slope of Tug hill in Oswego county, reported to Sgt. O.H. Gardinier of Pulaski state police patrol that his mother and Merton Yerdon of Redfield heard a plane at 11 p.m. Thursday flying high in the direction of Lowville. Farther to the west and south at Remsen, Sgt. Roy Peterson interviewed Mrs. Harry Thayer and Oliver DuPont, residents of Russia Rd. out of that village, and they told of hearing a plane between 10 p.m., Thursday and 4 a.m. Friday.

DuPont said he heard one about 10:30 p.m. and then heard another roaring sound like a plane shortly after midnight. Both times the plane seemed to be headed north, DuPont added. Mrs. Thayer said the plane she heard was north bound. The day's farthest report from the North country came from Great Bend in Jefferson county, where Alvin Brotherton of RD 3 said he heard a plane flying low over his home about 11 p.m. Thursday, altho he couldn't tell Lt. McCann in which direction it was flying.

THE POST-STANDARD

SYRACUSE, N.Y., MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 1944

GROUND AND AIR SEARCH FOR PLANE PROVES FRUITLESS

NO SIGN IS FOUND OF LOST LIBERATOR IN NORTH COUNTRY

Search for the missing B-24 bomber and its crew of eight men entered its fourth day early this morning without a tangible clue to indicate where the lost Liberator crashed.

SKI TROOPERS READY

Army offices in planes and state troopers in prowl cars and on snowshoes combed wide areas thru out Northern "New York without success, while trained army ski troopers were held in readiness at Rome air depot to be taken to any snowbound spot where wreckage might be sighted.

Lt. Col. Melvin Skinner, liaison officer in the conduct of the search from base operations office at Rome, denied emphatically radio reports that the search has been abandoned. "I don't know how such a report started,but it is definitely not true. We have been conducting the search every flyable hour, and we will resume flying at dawn Monday", he said.

The officer added that he flew over Lake Ontario as far as Rochester area sighting a single piece of wreckage, parachute or any other object that might indicate the bomber plunged into the Great Lake. Four other planes criss-crossed every square mile of the Tug hill "and had nothing positive to report",. Col. Skinner added.

A resident of Denmark had reported saturday that his family heard a "crash and explosion" near that village un 4 a.m Friday, nearly three hours after Syracuse municipal airport lost radio contact with the bomber. Meanwhile, two state troopers from Lowville patrol entered that wooded area on snowshoes in a fruitless search to track down the explosion report by justice Peace Gerald Clemons of Denmark.

PLOD THRU DRIFTS


They plodded thru deep snowdrifts for eight hours, covering much of the six-miles square wooded area where the Clemons family reported hearing the crash, and found nothing to indicate the wreckage is there. Planes from the Rome air depot zoomed low over the troopers' heads and they, too, radioed back to the operations office at Rome that there was no trace of wreckage visible against the snow.

Weather conditions were ideal for the search yesterday, contrasted with Saturdays snow squalls that hampered early study of the terrain. Snowfall was not sufficient to cover all parts of the bomber if it is there, troopers estimated. The Gouverneur - Philadelphia, Great Bend area farther north, where residents claim they heard a combed for three hours by planes from the Rome depot, but all aerial reports were negative. Today the search by air will be concentrated in the section bounded roughly by Watertown, Clayton and Alexandria Bay, where a number of Jefferson county residents have told authorities of hearing a plane early Friday morning.




THE POST-STANDARD
SYRACUSE, N.Y., TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1944
WATERTOWN AREA SEARCH FAILS TO UNCOVER BOMBER


Still no trace of "Gateway Gertie" and its crew of eight. That was the dismal report last night as hundreds of searchers, including Canadian flier trainees, completed their fourth day of intensive search since the B-24 bomber was reported missing after its crew was ordered to bail out "somewhere east of Syracuse" at 2:30 a.m. last Friday.

Planes from the Rome air depot and state police thru out the North Country concentrated yesterday on the Watertown area, particularly in the 50 mile radius to the northeast army officials reported. Despite their second successive day of favorable weather, searchers pointed out last night after planes returned to their base at 6 p.m. that much of the rugged area northeast of Watertown is blanketed with as much as four feet of snow and that much of it is "densely wooded." "The woods are so thick up that way that it might take four or five days to explore it thoroly from the ground and in the air," an officer at the Rome base declared.


MOUNTAIN EXPLORED


Among the areas scrutinized yesterday was the revine-chucked Catamount mountain section, about 10 miles northeast of Lake Placid. At 12:55 p.m. state police at Potsdam sent out a teletype message stating that a trooper had surveyed the mountainous area from the fire tower but that sight was limited to "only one side of numerous hills in the area." The trooper suggested that the vicinity could be scanned thoroly only from a plane flying above the fire tower of Catamount mountain.

Planes from the Rome air depot covered the vicinity yesterday afternoon without success. Another clue was offered searchers by a New York Central railroad track walker who told state police at Pulaski yesterday that he saw a plane flying low over the Richland station about 2:15 a.m. Friday. He said the engine was "laboring hard" and that the ship seemed to be in trouble.


HEADED TOWARD LAKE


The track walker, Ernest Spink of Richland, reported that the plane was headed northwest, which spokesmen said, would take the plane over Lake Ontario. The wooded "Tug Hill" area southeast of Watertown also was covered again yesterday without success. At the Rome depot monitors in the control tower are keeping a 24 hour "listening watch" in case the downed bomber should put out a radio signal, it was learned.

Among theories concerning the missing bomber was this one, advanced in Syracuse yesterday: The pilot, searching thru the storm for the Syracuse municipal airport field, dropped the plane from a relatively high altitude to avoid the snow. When ice formed on the plane's wings as officials investigating point out would have been probable, the flier, afraid to descend lower, again went above the storm.


OTHERS LANDED


Other planes which had about the same experience that night made safe landings after continuing the downward course, it was learned yesterday. Trained ski troopers are being held in readiness at the Rome air depot to be taken to any snowbound area where wreckage might be sighted. Also fruitless, at least yesterday, was an exploration of a wilderness north of Gouverneur, undertaken by deputies of Sheriff Floyd San Jule and state police in St. Lawrence county. They were acting on information from Robert Hall, a resident of that area, that between 2 and 3 a.m. Friday he "heard a noise that shook his house and continued 15 minutes."

THE POST-STANDARD
SYRACUSE, N.Y., WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 1944
WEATHER CURBS LOST PLANE SEARCH

Overcast skies abbreviated army planes search yesterday for "gateway Gertie," B-24 bomber, which has been on the missing list since the Liberator and its crew of eight were officially contacted at 2:30 a.m. Friday near Syracuse. State police and forest rangers joined army planes in the fifth day of fruitless search for the bomber, concentrating again on the Tug hill area southeast of Watertown and on the Adirondacks mountains.

Unofficial and semi-official comment persists in the belief that the Liberator may have come to rest in Lake Ontario, but army planes did not return to scrutinize the lake again yesterday. "We're banking on the probability that the bomber is in the densely wooded area east and northeast of Watertown because most reliable reports on the plane's direction have come from that area," an army officer at the Rome air depot said last night.

Aside from the impenetrable nature of that area, there is approximately four feet of snow in most sections to complicate the job of searching parties. Officials reported that it may take three or four more days to comb the area thoroly.



THE POST-STANDARD
SYRACUSE, N.Y., THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1944
RUMOR BOMBER FOUND IS DENIED BY ARMY OFFICERS

An imaginative report from undetermined sources that the missing B-24 bomber had been located near Denmark and that several ambulances had been dispatched there early yesterday from Utica was emphatically denied and denounced last night by officials at the Rome air depot. "Gateway Gertie," they said, is still on the missing list.

Generally overcast weather and moderate snowfalls thru out the North Country kept most searching planes grounded as state police and forest rangers scoured the densely wooded area including the Adirondacks and the "Tug Hill" section during the sixth successive day of their hunt for the Liberator and its crew of eight. Officials explained that the baseless rumor of the plane's discovery apparently was a badly garbled version of a report earlier in the week from Gerald Clemons, justice of the peace in the town of Denmark. Clemons told authorities that he was awakened about 4 a.m. last Friday by a loud noise which sounded like an explosion.

Since the bomber was last officially contacted at 2:30 a.m. Friday "somewhere east of Syracuse," searchers theorized that the bomber might have crashed near Denmark. A thoro search from the air and ground of the entire vicinity disclosed no trace of the bomber, however, it was announced early this week. "We have by no means abandoned the search," Lt. Booth Mooney, public relations officer at the Rome air depot, declared last night. Lt. Mooney said that planes will resume the search as soon as flight weather improves.


THE POST-STANDARD
SYRACUSE, N.Y., FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1944
MISSING BOMBER BELIEVED FOUND NEAR OSWEGO
FORM OF PLANE SEEN IN LAKE BY GUARDSMEN
FLOATING WING LEADS TO NEW HUNT IN ONTARIO

Coast guardsmen from the Oswego station announced early today that they believe they have located missing Gateway Gertie, in Lake Ontario east of that city, near where part of an airplane wing was discovered yesterday afternoon. Searching the area in a small boat, aided by state and country police and an FBI representative, the coast guardsmen saw what appeared to be that outline of a large plane beneath the surface of the lake. They could just make out its form with the aid of strong searchlights, but lacked equipment for reaching it.

LACK EQUIPMENT

An attempt to reach the wreckage probably will be made today, altho it was said that necessary equipment is lacking at Oswego. All power boats to the coast guard are taken out of the water for overhauling during the winter and only skiffs are used at the station. Because ice and the danger of winter storms on the lake, it probably will be necessary to get a larger craft before any attempt can be made to raise the plane. It is not known wheather the bodies of of the eight crew members are still in it.

SP 1/c Stanley Feldman of the Oswego station said that the plane was seen about a mile west of where the wreckage was floating east, it was believed, that it most have broken loose shortly before it was seen. He located its position as about 2,000 feet off shore, one mile west of pleasant point and about 10 miles east of Oswego. Coast guard craft at Oswego were mobilized shortly before sundown after A.C. Baily, flight instructor of the Safair school at the fulton CAA airport, spotted the floating wing about 300 yards from shore during a routine flight.

The missing bomber, a B-24 liberator, disappeared one week ago today, after reporting its gasoline supply-low in a radio contact with the Syracuse airport about 2:30 a.m. It was in a routine training flight from Westover Field. Mass. Its crew had been ordered from Westover to abandon ship when the plane became lost in a storm, but until yesterday no trace had been found of ship or crew. Bailey flew the trainer over the object several times before he determined that it was a wing from a large military plane.

He returned to the Fulton airport and reported his findings to O.P. Hebert, director, and Fred Fuld a second official. The trio took to the sky and returned to the area where Bailey had discovered the significant "object." This time they observed they said, army insignia on the wings and all agreed that the wing was definitely from large plane. They notified officials at the Rome air depot who dis patched several planes to assist coast guardsmen before darkness fell.

Army planes had inspected the lake earlier in the sic-day search but had found no floating debris, they reported. Discarding temporarily the widespread theory that the plane might have zoomed into the lake, which is not ice-covered, searchers concentrated most of this week on the Tug Hill area southeast of Watertown and on other sections of the Adirondacks.

Reports on the bomber's direction after it left the syracuse area last Friday indicated that Gateway Gertie was downed either in the Adirondacks or in Lake Ontario. Unofficial comment persisted in the later theory the army in the former.