CEDAR COUNTY, NEBRASKA - SGT. DONALD TUTTLE GIVES VIVID PICTURE OF PLANE CRASH IN WHICH HE WAS BURNED ==================================================================== NEGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. This file was contributed for use in the NEGenWeb Archives by Kristi Bergman Lam. Permission granted by: Rob Dump, Editor, Cedar County News ====================================================================== SGT. DONALD TUTTLE GIVES VIVD PICTURE OF PLANE CRASH IN WHICH HE WAS BURNED EIDTOR'S NOTE--The following account of the army bomber crash at Ft. Meyers, Fla., July 6 in which Staff Sgt. Donald R. Tuttle of Hartington was painfully burned, was contained in a letter received recently by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Tuttle. Sgt. Tuttle, who wrote the letter from the army hospital at Ft. Meyers, has since then been transferred to the hospital at his home base at Boca Raton, Fla. "Well, I am here alone now. The other two fellows left this morning for Drew Field, Tampa, Fla., by ambulance. They both have to have some skin grafting done. I just barely missed the same on one spot on my arm which is all that's holding me here now. I'll probably be sent back to Boca to do my final recuperating one of these days. Six months from now when my hair has all grown back to normal and my hands are toughened up, no one will be able to find anything to prove that I was burned. "Are you still curious to know how it all happened? We had come over here by plane July 5 to go through the high altitude chamber. The next morning some of the fellows left for Boca on the plane that stayed overnight. Then about 11:30 another plane came for some more of us. About 2:30 the same plane, a B-34, the same kind I've been flying for a year and a half, came for the rest of us. "Well, after checking out the engines okay, we started down the runway. Just as we pulled into the air the left engine cut out. On these heavy planes the lifting power at takeoff and before you get up full flying speed comes from the propellers. So when there was no pressure under the left wing, it dropped. At the same time, the right engine was still exerting its forward power to the plane, causing it to start turning left or going sideways. When the landing gear touched the ground it just slid right off. So there we were skidding on the ground about 100 miles an hour breaking up the plane, twisting it, jerking one engine off entirely, and breaking all the gas tanks of 100 octane fuel. By the time we came to a stop there was gas all over. "Consider the temperature at that time of day. In the shade it was at least 90 degrees. Add about ten to twenty degrees to that caused by reflection of heat waves from the ground and you can clearly see that the whole inside of the plane was full of gas fumes. "We came to a full stop and I immediately grabbed for the door to get out. The three in the pilot's compartment opened their emergency hatch above them and climbed out. After getting out, the pilot saw that the back door was still closed and came back to open if from the outside, but it was wedged in so that none of us could get it open. About that time--whoosh--and the whole dog gone plane, inside and out, was enveloped in flames. While we were working on the door the other fellows went on up front to get out up there. The first one was just about out when it caught fire. Either the suction it created or the reaction on his nerves caused him to fall clear back in the plane. But he got up and out okay. "Well, when it started to burn, I was sort of dumbfounded but began looking for another way out--and fast. I looked up front and saw legs going out the pilot's hatch and decided that I'd make a fast dash through the flames without getting burned and go out that way. I didn't lose any time, either, because I was afraid the thing would blow to bits any minute. "One fellow had trouble getting his safety belt loosened, but got out right behind me, and the last one just behind him. He had been helping me with the door. When I jumped from out the top of the plane onto the right wing, I was clear from the fire, except my clothes were so hot I thought they were on fire from head to foot. "My first objective was to get clear of the plane, then to roll on the ground. By that time, though, my hands had started to hurt and the air had cooled my clothes so that I decided they weren't on fire, I ran to where the others were in time to hear one of them finish counting and exclaim that we were all out. "That was all I wanted to know and having had some first aid lessons, laid down on my back to stave off the effect of shock. I had a good look at the plane first, which was a blazing inferno by this time. "The crash truck got there about that time, but they could not do a thing with the plane and it burned completely. Then the ambulance got there and someone came along and gave me a hypo shot of morphine in the chest, and told me I'd be out by the time I got to the hospital. But I wasn't. The doctors took a pair of scissors, and starting from the bottom, ripped my clothes off all the way up. I remember them starting to bandage my hands, but then I went out. I didn't know my face was burned until I came to some time later. My mind is practically a blank from then until Sunday morning, but you know the story from then on." THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1944 CEDAR COUNTY NEWS