The Sigmond Hons Crew

Today, I received parts of a B-24 Liberator Bomber in the mail! These parts are from a B-24 that crashed on November 16, 1943 in the desert near Tonopah, Nevada. The men on board this ship were in the same squadron as the Hetzler Crew. Donald Davis, the Tail Gunner on the Hetzler Crew wrote home about this crash:

Did you read in the paper about the plane that crashed here? They were in our flight. Their crew played our crew a football game while we were waiting for the ships to be gassed and oiled. They took off 2 planes ahead of us. They got about 200 ft. in the air and went right straight down. One of the guys had a cold, so the doctors wouldn't let him go up. 8 of them got killed and the other one got hurt pretty bad but is going to live. Boy that is awful isn't it.


I wrote Allen Metscher of the Central Nevada Museum to get more information about this crash. Mr. Metscher has placed 17 markers to memorialize fatal crash sites near what was Tonopah Army Air Field. This work is known as the Tonopah Army Air Field (TAAF) Project. He said that when he placed the marker at this site 20 years ago, there were still gouge marks in the ground and hundreds of small pieces of the aircraft covering the area. Not only did Mr. Metscher send me a photo of the memorial marker, he also sent me the parts from the aircraft that you see above.
Training flights were dangerous enough, not to mention the dangers of combat flying. Unfortunately, these would not be the last friends from the 458th Bomb Group that the Hetzler Crew would lose, before they themselves were shot down over Germany on March 23, 1944.
For more information about this crash, including photos of the crew, the crash and an eyewitness account from the only survivor, go to: http://www.458bg.com/crew16hons.htm