Photo by The United States Army Wreckage of the B-17 near Wellfleet, April 10, 1945.

In a pasture south of Wellfleet, a low-altitude B-17 “Flying Fortress” flew into a ridge in the dark, slashing a long furrow in the Nebraska soil.

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It bounced violently and broke apart, flinging young airmen out of the torn metal in its wake.

It was April 1945.

“In the first hour after the crash,” author Jerry Penry writes in Nebraska’s Fatal Air Crashes of WWII,“it was impossible to correctly determine who had died and who had survived due to the confusion in the darkness.”

Shaken but alive, the two pilots left a dozen dazed and injured crewmen behind, and set out for help. Several hours after the crash, they found a farmhouse and pounded on the door.

Before WWII ended, Penry writes, 243 young Army Air Corp trainees in airplanes fell out of the skies onto Nebraska soil and died for their country. Five deaths occurred in the B-17 that fatal night.

Penry visited the Wellfleet site in March 2007 with local witnesses Melvin Werkmeister, Leo Werkmeister and Dick Wolf.

“After an extensive search with a metal detector, the site was finally located,” Penry writes, “and yielded approximately 20 small pieces of the wreckage.”

The crash site is four miles south and four miles west of Wellfleet, or three and one-half miles north and 10 miles west of Maywood. A diagram of the flight and crash is in the book.

The price of war

Unplanned landings were almost a daily occurrence for the thousands of young men and women who trained from the dozen Army Air Corp bases scattered across Nebraska, Penry writes.

The “Flying Fortress,” headed for McCook, was one of 60 fatal crashes.

With his metal detector and meticulous research, Penry has reconstructed those crashes, adding 200 photos, maps and diagrams.

“In terms of war, he writes, “one rarely thinks of the price that is paid on the home front just to be able to prepare to meet the enemy.”

Across the nation, in the years 1942–45, that price came to the lives of some 15,500 young trainees in the Army Air Corp alone.

One canyon claimed 10

A year before the Wellfleet crash, 24-year-old Melvin Beardsley was at home with his parents in the country near Merna when they heard a low-flying airplane.

Outside, the family could see nothing in the low afternoon fog. Suddenly there came the sound of a violent impact, and then a shocking silence.

Beardsley ran to saddle his horse.

The pilots of a B-24E “Liberator,” flying from Illinois to Denver, had decided to fly by sight, rather than instruments, over the smooth plains. Nearing Custer Co., Nebr., dense fog set in over a landscape of deep valleys and rising tablelands.

“Without warning the canyon wall became visible through the fog directly ahead,” Penry writes.

Reaction came moments too late. Brushing the ridge, the plane went out of control and smashed into a second ridge. All 10 airmen were killed -- ejected by the force of the crash.

When Beardsley arrived, bodies and debris were strewn over the landscape.

The site is about halfway between Arnold and Merna, three and one-half miles south of Hwy 92. A diagram is in the book.

Penry visited the site in November 2006 with local rancher Jack Bartak, who was an early witness to the crash site. Deep ruts torn by the rescue trucks are still visible, Penry writes.

Sacrifice and memories

“For many farm families it was a horrific site since the deaths from the air crashes often resulted in catastrophic damage to the bodies of the airmen,” Penry writes. “If there were still members of the plane alive, comfort was given until medical help arrived.”

Often the survivors and relatives would keep in touch with the farm families for years, Penry says.

Penry himself has sent pieces of wreckage to families of those who died -- pieces he found in fields sometimes tilled for decades.

The greatest generation

The book is a personal mission for Penry, 43, who has attended WWII reunions for years.

“I've had a 20-year fascination with WWII because I was able to befriend so many of the men that served our country during that war,” he said in an e-mail.

Penry also wrote an earlier book, The Sunrise Serenade, about a bomber crew that was shot down on a war mission.

“I detailed their 20 missions, life in POW camp, the anguish of knowing their beloved pilot had died in the crash, to their coming back home again,” he said. “Seven of the men were still alive when I started writing that book in 1998. Last month, the last one died.”

Nebraska’s Fatal Air Crashes of WWII and The Sunrise Serenade are available from Penry’s own Blue Mound Press, P.O. Box 150, Milford, NE 68405 (402-761-3670) or http://www.nebraskaaircrash.com