Bakers Creek Crash Site At Baker's Creek

2. "Taking off from Mackay, Queensland, on a routine flight, the B-17C, CBA, crashed killing 40 of her 41 passengers. This catastrophe was the worst ever suffered in the S.W.P.A. (Southwest Pacific Area)." 7

<Insert Image 14. Crash site at Bakers Creek on June 14, 1943>
(Courtesy Al Soxman Collection)

Official Statements
The first call to local police came at 6:05 a.m. from Joan Harris, the young daughter of the proprietor of the Harris Store at Bakers Creek, to the effect that an airplane had just crashed into the nearby Harris Paddock and appeared to be on fire. Hearing the noise and seeing a rising column of smoke, her father, Gordon Harris, told her to call the police.

A local sugarcane farm worker, Arnold Radcliffe Bragg,
was one of the first people to arrive at the crash scene. He found a survivor, Corporal Foye K. Roberts, lying face down on the ground. He rolled the soldier onto his back and told him to lie still. Later, while tending to another still-living crash victim, Bragg noticed that Cpl. Roberts had gotten to his feet and was walking about in a daze, but relatively unhurt.8

In the wreckage of the B-17C VH CBA, a military policeman recovered a manufacturer's data plate identifying the ill-fated airplane as: "United States Army Air Corps B 17C, Serial Number 40 2072, thus positively identifying the wreck.9
All told, the crash was considered at the time (mid-1943) to be "the biggest air crash in American Air Transport History to date." 10 This forgotten WW II mishap, according to the Air Force Times, “earned several grim distinctions: In terms of loss of life, it was the worst crash ever involving a U.S. bomber; the worst aircraft loss in the Southwest Pacific war; and now, some seventy years later, still the worst aviation disaster in Australia’s history." 11
< Insert Image 15 – Aircraft Data Plate>
[Caption: Boeing Aircraft Company’s Identification Plate for B-17C (40-2072) found at Bakers Creek Crash site on June 14, 1943.]
(Courtesy Colin E. Benson)

News of the tragic event was withheld from the American public by wartime censorship.
Although it was common knowledge throughout the Mackay district, there was no mention of the disaster in either the Australian or the American press or radio. However, on the day after the crash, the local Mackay newspaper, remarkable for its discretion, stated simply in a brief Ambulance Notice that “an American serviceman had been injured during his visit to Mackay” – a reference to Corporal Foye K. Roberts, the only survivor of the crash. Together with a brief editorial, “We Share Their Grief,” 12 these two news items were the only public reference to the B-17C aviation disaster published during the war.13

An Ironic Note
S/Sgt. Romeo “Connie” Costantine, a crew chief with the detachment of 46th Troop Carrier Squadron personnel stationed at Mackay, was told the evening before the fateful flight that VH CBA's former crew chief, S/Sgt. Frank E. Whelchel, would replace him on the next day’s flight to Port Moresby. Costantine said “S/Sgt. Whelchel needed the flight time to qualify for his monthly flight pay; he was scheduled to return to the U.S. later in June and probably would not find another flight assignment before then.” 14

On the morning of June 14th, about 9:00 a.m., S/Sgt. Costantine was having breakfast at the American Red Cross Center in Mackay when he and his companions were informed that his
airplane,
B-17C (VH CBA), had just crashed. Later that day, he departed as ordered by plane for Townsville on a new assignment, realizing that “Whelchel's fate had granted him life.” 15 < Insert Image 16 – Bakers Creek Crash Pile of Junk >
(Courtesy Al Soxman Collection)

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