When 12 servicemen died in a Christmas Day plane crash in northern York County
(Note: This is adapted from my Veterans Day presentation in Newberry Township as part of a dedication of a veterans memorial on the grounds of the township complex.)
Early on a foggy Christmas morning 80 years ago, a transport plane filled with soldiers was flying over mountainous northern York County, its crew straining to find a runway.
The C-47 had originated its trip in Florida, with a stop in Dayton, Ohio. The transport’s flight plan called for arrival in Minneapolis, but it picked up ice. To get ahead of the weather, its rerouted destination became Harrisburg-York State Airport in Fairview Township.
The transport with 27 crew members and servicemen aboard tried nine times amid deteriorating weather to land at what is today’s Capital City Airport.
Low on fuel and in search of the runway, the plane crashed into Reeser’s Summit about 200 feet below its 900-foot height.
One resident saw a flash of light on the sparsely populated mountain.
An emergency official heard a report that the mountain was on fire. That could not be, he said later, with that high terrain covered with snow.
It was a white Christmas in that densely wooded, rocky area.
Emergency responders rushed to the scene, or tried to, considering the elevated terrain.
“It was the worst sight I ever saw,” Fire Chief William Vogelsong of New Cumberland said. “The men were in the plane crying for help, and we had to cut our way to them with an ax. Part of one wing was on a tree 200 feet from the plane.”
The crash of this transport took the lives of 12 World War II soldiers and crew members and injured 15, the most wartime casualties on county soil since the Civil War’s Battle of Hanover counted more than 300 dead, wounded and missing.
Every year, Memorial Day honors those who died in American wars. Veterans Day commemorates those who served.
Those servicemen who died or survived on the snowy side of Reeser’s Summit should be remembered on both national holidays. In November, they were among those honored at a Veterans Day memorial dedication in Newberry Township.
Fighting a two-front war
By my count, in just one war — World War II — about 19,500 veterans came home to York County. That’s service by one out of 11 York County residents, about three times capacity crowds at FNB Field on City Island in Harrisburg or WellSpan Park in York.
Thus, York County families, battling mixed feelings, provided thousands of young men and women to the Allied cause in this two-front war.
York County residents, before and since, are known for willingly donning their military uniforms in every American war. Here’s a story from one family, from just over the York County line in McSherrystown, whose service started in the Vietnam era.
Mike and Anna Brady’s first son joined the Marines in 1965. Thirty-three years later, the seventh son of this Adams County family left the service – seven sons with 74 years of service.
“After 33 years of standing watch,” the military told the family, “you are relieved of duty,”
Indeed, many area families have sacrificed, some in full measure.
In World War II, eight sons of the Bennett family of Hanover served. The Zimmerman family of York Township sent seven sons.
And the Carter and Williams families of York each sent six. Only five men in uniform from the latter two families came home, one son in each dying in combat or stateside.
About 570 residents in military uniform perished in World War II, a number that approximates the junior and senior classes at a medium-sized county high school.
One year, three crashes
In World War II, the wrath of war erupted across oceans and continents. And the wages of this war particularly touched the soil north of the Conewago Creek.
Three times in one nine-month period in 1944 — 80 years ago — the violence of war exploded on land in and around Newberry Township, a fiery and bloody indicator of what many of those who came home had to witness on the battlefield.
Two other Army plane crashes in that region in 1944 preceded the Reeser’s Summit aviation accident on Christmas Day.
On June 7, the day after the D-Day landing, a B-24 bomber on a test flight from Olmstead Air Force Base across the Susquehanna from the Harrisburg-York State Airport came down between Newberrytown and Yocumtown on the Walter Beshore farm.
Two military crew members and three maintenance workers died, and a sixth man parachuted to safety. The survivor, a civilian, rushed to a farmhouse for help then returned to the scene. Mrs. W. Worrell Wagner grabbed a first-aid kit and drove to the scene.
The four-engine bomber’s wreckage was spread over a 200-yard area.
Another plane crash earlier that spring took the life of a Ferrying Squadron pilot. Evelyn Sharp, 24, of Nebraska was piloting a P-38 fighter plane when she stopped over at Harrisburg-York State Airport.
As she was taking off the next morning, the right engine of her twin-engine plane lost power, just as it was getting airborne. Sharp tried to pilot the plane back to the airfield, but it hit trees and crashed onto the Arthur Zimmerman farm, just over the Cumberland County line.
Newspaper reports stated that the 24-year-old pilot was thrown from the plane, which immediately caught fire. A memorial in New Cumberland honors her pioneering work as an aviator.
She was the second woman with York County ties, however brief, to die in uniform in wartime. Jeannette Zinn, who wore a YMCA uniform, died of pneumonia in England on assignment in World War I.
Airmen die in crashes
Aviation was far from refined – or safe - in World War II.
One of the six Carter brothers to serve, Lloyd, died in a South Carolina crash near the war’s end. He was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen unit.
And Maj. William L. Glatfelter II was one of six men killed in the crash of an Army transport in Mississippi. He was the son of P.H. Glatfelter II and great-grandson of the founder of the Spring Grove paper mill, P.H. Glatfelter. Three of his brothers came back: P.H. III, Ted and George.
Scores of airmen with county ties died in combat, and their contributions are remembered.
West York’s Kenneth E. Slenker died as his bomber was shot down over the sea in 1943. He is remembered in Margraten American War Cemetery in the Netherlands; a resident of Holland decorates his plaque on military holidays.
Airman Robert Zercher from York parachuted from his crashing bomber in World War II and was taken in by the Dutch resistance.
He was discovered by German forces, executed and his body laid in an Apeldoorn street in the Netherlands, along with an Allied airman and Dutch resistance members, with a sign saying “terrorist.” He is buried in Ardennes American Cemetery in Apeldoorn in Holland, his name remembered on a monument.
About county war memorials
One more story must be told of these unforgettable men and women in uniform and the importance of memorials such as dedicated on Nov. 11 in Newberry Township and later that day on high school grounds in Dover.
The York area was without a prominent Vietnam War memorial until 2009, about 35 years after the last American left Vietnam.
Then Anthony Stabile and other veterans led a successful campaign to erect a monument.
Stabile said the sculpture, from the hands of noted sculptor Lorann Jacobs, sparked vivid memories.
“It just brings you back to the hot days and the rainy days in Vietnam,” said Stabile, who served in the Marines in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. “You get real emotional.”
His last job as a Marine was to notify the next of kin of those killed in the war.
Interestingly, only five of the 124 county military markers in a York County History Center inventory are listed under the Korean/Vietnam War heading.
Remembering our heroes
None of the dead in the three crashes in or near northern York County in 1944 lived in the county. But those in uniform and civilian defense workers — 18 dead and 16 wounded — must not be forgotten.
Before year’s end in 1944, the bodies of the deceased from the Reeser’s Summit crash were transported by train to their respective homes where military funerals awaited, with the exception of the remains of one 20-year-old soldier who was taken to Arlington National Cemetery for burial.
A military escort of the same rank as the deceased serviceman accompanied each flag-draped coffin.
The C-47 carried 21 South Dakotans, and their Minneapolis destination would have placed them within a four-hour drive of many of their homes.
Seven from South Dakota died and 14 suffered injuries in the Fairview Township crash, their absence crushing to their families that Christmas season.
A significant marker near the crash site on Reeser’s Summit focusing on all three nearby military plane crashes in 1944 would be a fitting way to remember their service and sacrifice.
Sources: YDR file, asn.flightsafety.org, James McClure’s “In the Thick of the Fight.”
Jim McClure is a retired editor of the York Daily Record and has authored or co-authored nine books on York County history. Reach him at [email protected].