There were accidents
at Canton and aircraft disappeared at sea on the way to and from there,
but in only one known instance – the crash at Sydney Island – did an
airplane go down on one of the other atolls of the group. No loss of Japanese
aircraft on any of the islands was reported and an unreported loss seems
highly improbable. A flight from the closest Japanese base – the airfield
at Betio on Tarawa – meant a round trip of nearly 2,000 nautical miles.
It was done once. Early in 1943 a bombing raid caused minimal damage on Canton
with no losses to the attacking force. Tarawa fell to U.S. amphibious forces
later that year. In 1944, Gardner became the site of a 25-man U.S. Coast
Guard Loran navigation station resupplied periodically by a PBY flying boat
from Canton. Records of those flights show that no accidents occurred. In
short, the possible sources for aircraft wreckage found on Gardner (Nikumaroro)
are few.
The crash on Sydney
Island is of special interest to us because the Gilbertese settlers there
were said to have used the wartime wreck as a source of aluminum. In the
years after the war some of the Sydney residents came to live on Nikumaroro
and it seems likely that they may have brought pieces of wreckage with them
as raw material. Understanding just what happened on Sydney might help us
better understand what we’ve found on “Niku” and either
eliminate or further substantiate the artifacts suspected of being from
the Earhart aircraft. But pinning down the details of the Sydney crash
proved to very difficult. A search of all the usual, and many unusual,
sources for accident reports turned up nothing. Rumor held that it was
a “large, four-engined aircraft from Canton,” and because some
of the parts found on Nikumaroro appeared to be from a Consolidated B-24
we began to suspect that the airplane had been a Liberator. Earlier this
year, we obtained photos of wreckage seen on Sydney in 1971. They showed
two 14-cylinder, twin-row radial engines such as those used on the B-24 and
our suspicions were strengthened, but nowhere could we find a B-24 loss which
might be the Sydney crash. Then this week a TIGHAR researcher stumbled upon
the official U.S. Army Air Force accident file which tells the story. It
is tragic, poignant, and different than we expected.
It
was only one among the thousands of airplanes that struck the ground with
unspeakable violence in 1943. They were only nine among the millions of young
lives that ended suddenly and unnaturally that year, but perhaps because
we have sought the facts about their death for so long, their end – as revealed in the dry tones of the official reports – seems
real and very personal.
It was late November
1943 when Second Lt. William Prater, USAAF and his crew arrived at Canton
Island in C-47A-60DL serial number 43-30739 enroute to their first combat
assignment in Toatouta, New Caledonia. The airplane, Douglas constructor’s
number (c/n) 13890, had come off the Long Beach assembly line for delivery
to the Army on October 5th. Bill had gotten his wings the previous May
and had less than 100 hours in type when he picked up his crew – Second
Lt. John Barcharik, co-pilot; Second Lt. Morris Steinberg, navigator;
and Sgt. Malcom Willson, radio operator – on November 15th. On November
24th they had set off across the Pacific Ocean in an airplane that was as
new and as green as they were.
Although Canton was
supposed to be only a refueling stop on the long haul to the Southwest
Pacific, somewhere along the way Prater had taxied into a guy wire and
damaged the ship’s right wing tip. They were stuck on Canton until it
could be fixed. About a thousand miles off to the northwest, the bloody
Tarawa landings and the re-taking of the Gilbert Islands had just been
completed. Canton had played a major role as a staging area and the repair
facilities were undoubtedly busy with business from that action. It was
weeks before Prater’s wingtip was tended to. There wasn’t much to do on
the hot, barren atoll. Pilots were allowed to fly take their aircraft
out on local flights with little formality and jaunts to Hull or Sydney
Islands, which were said to be interesting to look at, were not uncommon.
Two civilian USO entertainers – Bob Ripa and Bobby Del Rio – were
equally bored and shared quarters with the various transient crews. On at
least one occasion the two entertainers had gone along on a sight-seeing
hop even though, as civilians, their participation on such flights was against
regulations.
By the afternoon
of December 17, 1943 the C-47 had finally been fixed and signed off as
airworthy. Boredom, rather than the coincidence that it was forty years
to the day since the Wright brothers’ first flight, was the likely reason
for Bill Prater and John Barcharik’s decision to take a ride down to see
Sydney Island. Morris Steinberg, the navigator, was up for it and they
found several other guys who wanted to go along. The radio operator, Sgt.
Willson, decided to let the officers have their fun without him. Bob Ripa
and Bobby Del Rio were alone in the barracks shack reading, stripped own
to their shorts in the heat, when Barcharik stopped by in a jeep and asked
if they were ready to go. Del Rio wanted to finish his book and declined.
Ripa hesitated for a bit but then decided to join the others. Bobby thought
it was odd that his friend should accept because he and Ripa had just
been on such a flight a few days before. Neither had any idea that they
had just made life or death decisions. To get around the regulations,
Bob Ripa was listed on the manifest by his real name, Edvin Hansen. Second
Lt. Ed Hall, the Assistant Operations Officer who approved the flight,
assumed that this Hansen guy was an Army private. He knew that the only
civilians on the base were Ripa and Del Rio. Around 3 p.m. Prater, Barcharik,
Steinberg, Hansen, another 2Lt. named George Gee, and four Sgts – nine
men in all – took off in 30739 and headed south for Sydney, about an
hour’s flight away. The only first hand account of what happened next
was later provided by the Native Magistrate of Sydney Island:
The
plane was crashed on land. Flew around the island more than four times.
At last during the time flying it slide wheel down and flew off at a distance
of not more than a mile and then return perhaps ten or twenty feet above
sea level. When reached above there be fit [sic] flew up of all a sudden
it bumped the palm with right wing. During that time the plane get in
fire and at the last the body fell down beyond the Maneaba [meeting house].
All the crew found dead except one of the lot get breath not fifteen minutes
later, then died again.
From this it would
seem that the plane may have been attempting to land, but the accident
report by Major W. C. Cotner, Commanding Officer of the Air Transport
Command unit at Canton, paints a more complex picture. Cotner inspected
the site the next day and wrote:
It was found
that the right wing had clipped a tree, outside of the motor, at the
beach while coming in low from the water. ... The right wing struck
a tree breaking the tree off about thirty feet from the ground. The
ship must have been in a right bank or there would have been other trees
damaged in this vicinity as there was not enough room for a ship to
come in between the trees. A portion of the right wing was found approximately
86 feet inland. The plane went up over the trees for a distance of about
150 yards and started coming down through the trees again, shearing
off the trees until it came to rest approximately 376 yards from the
first tree which was struck. The motors continued on after the plane
came to rest, one for 46 yards and the other 63 yards from the plane.
The airplane burned completely with the exception of the tail section
and the left wing from the motor out, and the right wing which had been
lost. The right elevator showed evidence of the plane having been scraped
along the ground on the right side. The wheels were retracted and that
the throttles and controls were in full flight or cruising position.
All evidence indicates that the pilot came in in a right bank, struck
the tree, careened on over the village and other trees and finally hit
ground with all power on. Both propellers were badly bent and broken
off. One occupant was said to have been thrown clear of the plane but
died a few minutes later. The remaining eight were said to have been
found in the plane after the fire. The natives stated that the plane
made several circles over the island and kept coming lower and lower
and finally came in over the water quite low just before the crash occurred.
The Gilbertese wrapped
the bodies in white sheets and covered them with woven mats in graves
six feet deep. The next day an Army Air Force investigation team exhumed
and recovered the bodies. Maj. Cotner put the cause of the accident to
“low flying.” A review board later found that “it appears
that the pilot may have been attempting a forced landing.” Whether
Bill Prater simply smacked a tree while pulling a buzz job or had an inflight
emergency and failed in a desperate attempt to land his airplane will never
be known for sure. What is certain is that ten tons of Douglas workmanship
and the lives of nine young men came to a fiery end on an otherwise tranquil
Pacific island on an afternoon 55 years ago. It seems likely that relics
of that tragedy eventually made their way to Nikumaroro and are among the
artifacts collected by TIGHAR. It is also the case that knowing what airplane
crashed on Sydney Island may allow us to eliminate yet another alternative
explanation for recovered objects which we suspect are from a much more famous,
but no less tragic, loss.