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FOUR AIRMEN KILLED IN CRASH OF BOMBING PLANE AT McADAM
On December 19, 1943, four RCAF men from Pennfield were killed instantly Sunday when a twin-engine bomber crashed a quarter of a mile from the railway station here.
The aircraft had been flying in formation with two others over McAdam.
Railway Employees saw something fall from the plane when it collided with a 20-foot indicator above an 80-foot water tank. Flames shot from the plane when it struck the indicator, a few seconds later a heavy explosion occurred apparently from the bomber's gas tanks.
The flame-enveloped plane crashed on a knoll, side swiped a house occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Webber and seven children. After breaking a window and ripping off a back porch, it turned over several times while cutting a broad swath 300 feet long through snow, ice, and bushes.
The explosion blew the bomber to
bits over a large area. Bodies of the three occupants were hurled a
considerable distance from the crash scene, the fourth was found in the
wreckage after the McAdam Fire Department extinguished the flames with
water pumped from a locomotive.
The nose of the engine was found three hundred yards from where the crash
occurred.
SOURCE: "The History of McAdam (1871-1977)" by McAdam Senior Citizens Historical and Recreational Club.