VINTAGE FLYER
Lady Grace wrestles with Lady Luck
Lady Grace was a B-24 Liberator Bomber flying in the spring of 1945. Lady Grace wrestles with Lady Luck
Lady Grace was a B-24 Liberator Bomber flying in the spring of 1945. She was special, a member of the elite Carpetbaggers, a special operations group run by the OSS, a forerunner of today’s CIA. The aircraft and her ten man crew were transferred to the Harrington Air Base on March 14th was going to fly over to the new base. It turned out to be a flight with destiny.
The airfield, known as Station 179 during WWII was built by the U.S. Army as a Class A airfield, intended for heavy bomber use. Being some 500 feet above sea level, hosting a mile long runway and located near the supply bases of Cheddington and Holme as well as the British SOE based at Tempsford, Harrington became the Carpetbagger base of operations. Their special missions were to deliver supplies, special agents and night drops of leaflets over enemy territory.
The base was busy with a composite mix of aircraft including B-24s, B-17, C-47 Dakotas, A-26 Invaders and British built Mosquitoes. It was not unusual for there to be more than 60 operational planes on the airfield at any one time.
The B-24 was important; it possessed distinct advantages over the Flying Fortress. Flying with the same size crew, the B-24 fuselage was built around a central bomb bay that could accommodate up to 8,000 pounds of bombs and could carry them farther. The bomber was divided by a central catwalk in the bomb bay which was also the fuselage keel beam. The only entry and exit from the bomber was in the rear and it was almost impossible for the flight crew and nose gunner to get from the flight deck to the rear if they were wearing their parachutes. For all of its peculiarities over 18,000 were built, more than any other military aircraft – ever.
Lady Grace was part of the 406th Night Leaflet Squadron and had scarcely avoided being shot down two nights earlier by a German radar controlled night fighter. She didn’t escape unharmed; Ed Canner, Lady Grace’s pilot, was only able to shake the enemy fighter with violent maneuvers, a steep dive reaching 350 mph and then banking the B-24 from the dive at over 70 degrees. The maneuvers over Cologne exceeded aircraft specifications and she shed almost all of the rivets over her wingtips. The B-24 was challenging to fly the rest of that evening but she brought her crew home.
Lady Grace had been repaired in two days and ok’d for active duty. She had not been flight tested as the crew along with 3,000 gallons of 100-octane fuel, their personal belongings and two additional volunteer pilots climbed aboard on March 14th. Starting the engines, number three was not cooperating and after the third attempt the volunteer pilots decided to join another aircraft. They expected Lady Grace to abort. Canner gave the engine one more crack and it responded and checked out ok. They taxied out onto the runway on all engines and gained clearance to take-off.
At about 1,000 feet, number two engine started signaling a problem. It was no longer developing full power. Since it was operating, Canner decided not to feather the prop and continued with the short flight. It didn’t long before other problems arose. The aircraft started to lose altitude and veer off to the left. It took the full strength of both the pilot and the co-pilot, Butsie, to keep the aircraft straight and level by pushing on the right rudder pedal as they set a course to the nearby new base.
Obviously something gave way in the B-24. Maybe some control cable was splintered during the steep dive of a few days earlier or an enemy shell had found a mark from that night. Either way Lady Grace was in trouble. She continued to lose altitude, they couldn’t climb and Canner instructed the crew to lighten the aircraft. “Throw everything out of the plane, personal items, .50 caliber guns, and ammunition anything and everything that was movable.”
Relentlessly losing altitude, Lady Grace dropped to about 500 feet and was flying between the tops of hills on either side of the aircraft. Everyone thought, or knew, they were going to crash but when and where? The navigator, Dutch gave the final course to Harrington and suddenly the air field appeared ahead of the aircraft. Canner ordered Dutch to get out of the navigators station and come up with the crew. Dutch would be up in a minute he needed to turn off his navigational equipment before they landed. Navigators were never allowed to be in their station on B-24 landings.
Lady Grace was not responding well and the pilots couldn’t line up with the runway. They would have to go in fast and straight ahead onto the grass field. A man stepping out of an outhouse directly in Lady Grace’s flight path got a big surprise. He looked up, saw the B-24 at 200 feet, and took off running. In preparation of landing the flight engineer lowered the landing gear. It created additional drag and slowed the aircraft to ten mph below normal landing speeds of 135 mph. Lady Grace was almost home.
The landing gear went down but the right gear didn’t lock. When Lady Grace touched down the right landing gear collapsed, then “all hell broke loose.” Within a moment the wings were torn off, the fuselage broke apart and the nose section that had extended 12 feet beyond the pilot disappeared. The tail section, with four crew members was completely separated and the engines were spread across the grass field. A large portion of the separated wing was burning, fed by 2,500 gallons of aviation gas and ended up about thirty feet away when everything stopped moving. What had been the aircraft’s center section became the size of a compact car still holding the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, crew chief and radio operator. They had rolled many times and ended-up, upside down.
Canner released his seatbelt and fell to the ground and ran to the separated tail section of the aircraft. At about the same time .50 caliber ammunition started popping off from the flames – obviously some was left onboard. The ambulances and fire fighting equipment arrived quickly.
Dutch Coehoorn, the navigator, perished in the crash and many of the crew were seriously injured. Canner, also seriously injured, was eventually flown back to the states for six months of hospital treatment. The waist gunner, Ruben Hill, tail gunner Charlie Bunnell received a Purple Heart while they were hospitalized in Europe. Pilot Ed Canner was awarded the Purple Heart 55 years later in 2000.
During a 1990 crew reunion they finally pieced together how Lady Grace lost to lady luck. It seems likely that a fuel line was loose, leaking fuel and causing intermittent flows of fuel to the engine. It made that engine appear as a bad engine. As a little added excitement to the crew, the pilot never saw that the red-hot supercharger had ignited the leaking fuel causing a stream of fire and flames trailing behind the aircraft. Just think about that gent stepping out of the outhouse, seeing, hearing and feeling a B-24 with a huge fire streaming out behind her just 200 feet above! I’d run for cover too. Ed Canner and some of the crew can tell you this story in person today.
John Cilio is a freelance writer living in Connecticut. You can contact him at: questions@vintageflyer.com You can contact John at: questions@vintageflyer.com