Does anyone other than myself remember the fatal crash of a P38 Lightning airplane crashing north of Jefferson grade school? (Glenn Smith on Facebook)
February 2020 was the last date of my files on Jefferson Elementary (Norman, Ok.) history before Covid.
During Covid I made a promise to finish my Miami Ok. Golf and Country Club history story, and I did. That also meant that I could not concentrate on two aspects of history at the same time, even though I continued to collect trivia and newspaper clippings about Norman and Jefferson. This history brain doesn't forget when there is an unsolved question.
What parachute? Where did it land? Why can no one find an answer?
That question hung in the back of my historical, sometimes hysterical, brain until January of 2025.
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| Notice the treeless prairie in this 1894 original landsite of Eastside school, later renamed Jefferson in 1916 after the building mysteriously burned to the ground, and was replaced. |
It housed grades 1-12. After statehood, Norman began to grow and needed more classroom space. In 1914 this thinly clad red brick and stone building mysteriously burned to the ground by some bad people. A sturdier structure was built and opened for classrooms in 1916. The north and south wings of that structure still stand and have been reconfigured several times over the decades.
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| This is the only picture we have found of the structure from 1918--1958 when the middle part was torn down leaving the north and south wings. The playground would have been a large area behind and surrounding this building and very few houses on the north side which is the right side of this picture. |
From research in 2019 through elicited memories on Facebook about The History of Norman, I copied this paragraph: 1944 Lee Hester--That information puts me back to 7th grade in Jefferson school where I imagined seeing a parachute coming down.
For the last few weeks I have read over nearly everything we have collected and found nothing about that parachute. My handwritten note to self, read, "Where is the rest of this story? It was collected in 2019?"
Recently, I discovered how to research on Facebook. It is not that easy but better than sitting for hours at the Ok. History Museum Archives reading microfilm.
At last I found this clip on The History of Norman on Facebook.
The replies meandered for days and weeks. Piece by piece I found significant proof that Mr. Hester must have seen a parachute falling from the sky. Here is the rest of the story.
My dad wad a little boy and he would tell us stories about a plane crash about 1945, but was north of Wilson school. North of Robinson. His mom let his older brother walk up to see it, but said my dad was to young. My uncle found what looked like the tongue of a boot with blood on it. We have tried to research but can never find anything.
If it is the one that crashed during the war where the copilot was riding
piggyback and didn’t reject. I remember my mom and I were on the main street by
the Palace garage and vaguely remember hearing about that at that time. Didn’t
know where it crashed. I was only about three or four years old.
At the time of the crash a parachute was seen descending so one of the pilots did eject. The reason that I said that it was a fatal accident was because a friend and I rode our bicycles out to view the crash site after the authorities had done their thing and we found Little Things like a label out of a sweater collar and actually some flesh. After a fatal crash medical people gather up the bodies and everything else as well they can but they don't get everything. Many years ago I went on a crash investigation of a B-52 in New York state. The plane was flying at low level over a landing strip when something went wrong, and it crashed into the woods and burned. Most of the crew perished but the copilot managed to survive. When we went through the debris looking for technical evidence for the cause of crash, I found a hand with a wrist watch still around the wrist.
Thomas F. to Glenn Smith
I think I think what I remember is correct… That a guy riding piggyback was not able to reject and died in the crash.
I remember talking to a retired Norman firefighter in the early 1970's. He told me that he was at the P-38 crash in 1945-46 He said that the plane had crashed nose first in to the ground at the edge of a small pond and left a big smoking hole in the ground. He told me that 2 men were killed in the crash, me being a smart 11 year old boy I let the gentleman know that the P38 was a single seat aircraft. He told me that the plane was at Tinker AFB for some work and had the radio equipment removed from behind the pilots seat. This made just enough room for the pilots buddy to hitch that final ride. I recall the plane that crashed was the F-4 version, of the P-38E in which the guns were replaced by four K17 cameras. It was not ever clear to me where the plane crash was.
I think the P-38 crash you are talking about happened on May 4th or 5th, 1945. The crash site was on my Great Grandparent's farm on the SE corner of Tecumseh Rd. and NE 12th (Sooner Rd). The plane went into a small pond and supposedly the engines areas still buried there. My dad saw it go down from Moore.
Bill Lessly to Larry
The pond was on the south side of NE Rock Creek
Road between 12th and 24th. My Dad told me about the crash. I used to swim in
that pond back in the 1970’s. The crash happened 11 years before I was born.
Our farm was 3 or so miles NE from the pond.
Apparently, Glenn Smith felt as frustrated over this crash info as I did. He used the Daily Oklahoma and found the story, the true story about the parachute high in the sky that the kids saw one day while they were outside playing at Jefferson. The parachute would have landed about two miles north of the school grounds. In 1944 there would not have been big neighborhoods of houses, cars, buildings to the north.
PLANE CRASH KILLS
WILL ROGERS FLIER
January 21, 1944 the
Daily Oklahoman
Crash of a P-38 one and
one-half miles northeast of Norman, Thursday morning fatally injured
Lt. Harry G. Kirk, 22 of New York City. The plane burst into flames and
was destroyed. Col. B.S. Thompson, commanding officer of Will Rogers field
announced.
Capt. Vernon E. Black,
Madera, Calif. parachuted to safety and sustaining only slight bruises and
minor shock. Capt. Black's temporary home is at 2014 N.W. 12.
Cause of the crash was
being investigated Thursday night by a board of air force officers. Kirk's
mother, Mrs. Frances Kirk of New York City, was notified of her son's
death.
**At this point I jumped up and hollered at my husband. I know where the plane crashed in 1944. It's only a few miles from here.
Hey Glenn, I remember the incident. Our teachers at Jefferson took us outside so that we could see the man in the parachute still on his way down.
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Lockheed P-38 website and credit for photo |
Lee Hester, thanks for your research (Glenn Smith) and the good information. That clears up some things in my mind. The newspaper puts the date at 1944. which puts me back to 7th grade in Jefferson grade school. All the time that I have been thinking about this incident, I have imagined seeing a parachute coming down, but I thought it was my imagination. In a post by Lonnie Morris, he said that he was in Jefferson school when that happened and they took the students outside to watch the parachute coming down. That makes it possible that I really did see a parachute.
We are the Jefferson Dragons. We symbolize "Power, Wisdom, and Chaos." Right now, we are sorting through the chaos and laughing...laughing and loving every moment of the research expedition into our history.
Mrs. Watt, Librarian and author
1978-95
