Way back in the 70s my Brother in Law, who is now chief of our city Fire Department, asked if I could check the local sources about a B25 that went down in our Lake Greenwood. I did find a couple of news articles in our local paper about it but searching microfilm without any sort of indexing was a bit time consuming. Especially for a pre-teen kid.
Fast forward to 1983, I was stationed at Grand Forks AFB ND. Local folks got together and were able to arrange the U.S. Navy reserve to come to the lake and raise the B-25C. You can see the walk around of it at ARC. Forget about the text, mostly wrong, I attempted to contact them with corrections but never heard anything from them.
Greenwood had an auxiliary air base (Coronaca Army Airfield(pronouced "Corn acre" this name has deep history but that's another story) ) that was used up to 1945 when it was transferred to the County, it is now our County Airport. Crews would fly in and come out to the restaurant that my family would later own some 35 years later. Over the mantle was an aerial photo of the restaurant that was taken from the nose of a B25 (sadly I don't know where that picture is today). This was also the same training wing that Doolittle Raiders were attached to, that's why South Carolina has paid host to reunions in the past.
To the story. On June 6th, 1944 B-25s were making practice runs and low level passes over Lake Greenwood. Mrs Anna Knox, with her husband were owners of the Panarama Restaurant (not the same restaurant my family would later own, in fact, 10 miles down the lake) were cleaning up from lunch when she heard one bomber come very close to their restaurant. She looked out their large plate glass windows to see the bomber belly flop into the lake. The pilot of the B25 was indeed buzzing sunbathers on the lake and his props hit the water. The pilot was on hand at the raising in 1983 and was interviewed for the local paper...they have since lost that interview...Mrs Anna knew how to swim, but didn't know how to drive a boat, her husband knew how to drive the boat, but not swim. So they both jumped in the boat and drove out to the sinking bomber and rescued the crew. No one was seriously hurt and they watched the bomber go down.
When I was a kid it had turned into a myth whether the bomber was there or not. Some would say they had been inside it swimming, others said there was a huge cat fish living inside. I doubted both stories.
She sat out at the Greenwood airport for several years until the State took guardianship of it and hauled it down to Columbia, where she took off from in 1944. Skunkie is painted on the side of the aircraft, the pilot said he never saw the name and I have to admit, I'm not sure I ever saw it the years it sat at Greenwood Airport either.
Where am I getting to with all this?
http://www.schistoricaviation.org/
I'll be making donations to them as I can and will be offering elbow grease if they need someone to sand down some crud or something...
Fast forward to 1983, I was stationed at Grand Forks AFB ND. Local folks got together and were able to arrange the U.S. Navy reserve to come to the lake and raise the B-25C. You can see the walk around of it at ARC. Forget about the text, mostly wrong, I attempted to contact them with corrections but never heard anything from them.
Greenwood had an auxiliary air base (Coronaca Army Airfield(pronouced "Corn acre" this name has deep history but that's another story) ) that was used up to 1945 when it was transferred to the County, it is now our County Airport. Crews would fly in and come out to the restaurant that my family would later own some 35 years later. Over the mantle was an aerial photo of the restaurant that was taken from the nose of a B25 (sadly I don't know where that picture is today). This was also the same training wing that Doolittle Raiders were attached to, that's why South Carolina has paid host to reunions in the past.
To the story. On June 6th, 1944 B-25s were making practice runs and low level passes over Lake Greenwood. Mrs Anna Knox, with her husband were owners of the Panarama Restaurant (not the same restaurant my family would later own, in fact, 10 miles down the lake) were cleaning up from lunch when she heard one bomber come very close to their restaurant. She looked out their large plate glass windows to see the bomber belly flop into the lake. The pilot of the B25 was indeed buzzing sunbathers on the lake and his props hit the water. The pilot was on hand at the raising in 1983 and was interviewed for the local paper...they have since lost that interview...Mrs Anna knew how to swim, but didn't know how to drive a boat, her husband knew how to drive the boat, but not swim. So they both jumped in the boat and drove out to the sinking bomber and rescued the crew. No one was seriously hurt and they watched the bomber go down.
When I was a kid it had turned into a myth whether the bomber was there or not. Some would say they had been inside it swimming, others said there was a huge cat fish living inside. I doubted both stories.
She sat out at the Greenwood airport for several years until the State took guardianship of it and hauled it down to Columbia, where she took off from in 1944. Skunkie is painted on the side of the aircraft, the pilot said he never saw the name and I have to admit, I'm not sure I ever saw it the years it sat at Greenwood Airport either.
Where am I getting to with all this?
http://www.schistoricaviation.org/
I'll be making donations to them as I can and will be offering elbow grease if they need someone to sand down some crud or something...
