May 26, 1944 - Huburt Sammons

I never met my great uncle Huburt.

Huburt Sammons was my grandmother Hall's younger brother, a gunnery instructor in the Army Air Force. At 7:19 PM on May 26, 1944 Uncle Huburt and a crew of 9 other airmen aboard B-24 Liberator #42-51180 departed Goose Bay, Canada en route on a 9 hour 46 minute direct flight to Nutts Corner, North Ireland. 62 other aircraft left Canada that night on the same route.

Shortly after reaching a cruising altitude of 11,000 feet, flight B24 #1180 (Code Name Bloomer Tare) vanished over the Atlantic. The last radio message the crew received before being being passed off to Canadian air traffic control was, "You are now leaving the United States. God Bless You."

Huburt was 26 years old.

My great-grandmother Maude Sammons only received two telegrams about Huburt's disappearance: the first one simply said his flight was overdue in Ireland; a few days later a second telegram reported Huburt was presumed dead. When I was about 6 years old I remember seeing the framed black and white photograph of Uncle Huburt in his Air Force uniform and cap at my great-grandmother Sammons's house and asking my father, "Who's that man?"

But the Air Force never offered any details or explanations about the flight's disappearance.

After all, in 1944 America was engaged in a desperate war with the Nazis in Europe and the D-Day Invasion of France was just 11 days away. By the end of World War II America had suffered 407,316 war-related deaths and the disappearance of 10 airmen during a routine ferry flight across the Atlantic seemed insignificant. Beyond ordering aircraft departing along the same route that night to report any signs of wreckage or survivors, no formal search was ever undertaken.

For whatever reasons, the official Aircraft Accident Report was classified Confidential until just a few years ago. Earlier this year I assembled copies of reports including documents from Air Force Achives, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, and from the airplane manufacturer's (Douglas-Tulsa) records. It's interesting to compare what the different sources recorded as fact.

Even though it's been 22,644 days, 13 hours and 25 minutes since Huburt disappeared, it's still interesting that the reports don't always agree on what happened ...

Weather conditions were perfect for an Atlantic crossing... absolutely clear all the way to Ireland. According to the Air Force Accident Report from May 29, 1944 "There was no contact with the plane after its departure from Goose Bay" at 7:35 PM. Yet Huburt's aircraft was one of 62 airplanes en route to Ireland that night - and no one recorded a distress call on the radio?

An Air Force Description of Accident report 18 days later on June 16 1944 indicates the plane contacted Cape Harrison Radio (Labrador) at 8:54 PM, not 7:35 PM as previously recorded ... which is exactly the same time a log entry from Royal Canadian Air Traffic Control indicates radar contact with the aircraft was lost over the Mealy Mountains ... 204 miles from Goose Bay.

The Individual Aircraft Record Card, obtained from the National Air and Space Museum, indicates the the aircraft was "condemned" with a code which, according to the Smithsonian, "we have not seen before, FFC. We can conjecture only, but it is possible this might have been short-hand for Friendly Fire Casualty." [my italics]

Friendly fire? On a routine ferry flight across the Atlantic? Why would the Air Force use an unfamiliar code to indicate why Huburt's airplane went missing?

My father, who was 16 years old at the time, remembers talking to Huburt just before he left for Ireland that summer in 1944. But no one's sure what happened to Huburt's black and white photograph after my great-grandmother passed away in 1974.

May 26, 1944 was 62 years ago ... had he survived Uncle Huburt would be 89 years old today. But I'd still like to know what happened that night over the Atlantic, if only because I don't know happened.

I recently spoke on the phone with the great-niece of 2nd Lt. Elvin L. Pentecost, who was the airplane's co-pilot that night. You can see his memorial here: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=11048202

The airplane's pilot, 2nd Lt. Virginius Stell, Jr., attended VMI until joining the Army Air Force. An anonymous classmate maintained a memorial page, including a photograph, until last month.

Navigator 2nd Lt. James R. Thompson's sister also maintained a web memorial until just a few weeks ago; I was never able to locate her address, and can only assume she's passed away.

Flight B24 1180 Crewmen
Virginius R. Stell, Jr. - pilot
Elvin L. Pentecost - co-pilot
James R. Thompson - navigator
Ernest D. Lampkin - bombadier
Edward J. Harlacher
Copeland A. Forrester
John Demko
Warren F. Carr
Huburt D. Sammons
George H. Brown

Their names are listed individually among the missing at the American Battle Monuments Commission:
http://www.abmc.gov/search/wwii.php

B-24 Liberator image:
http://www.aviation-history.com/consolidated/b24.html