Hiking Mount Tom, the B17 memorial, from mttommemorial.org

The Mt Tom B-17 Memorial Story
On July 9,1946 at 10:21pm, a B-17 “Flying Fortress” bomber, converted into a transport plane, crashed into the southeast slope of Mt. Tom, outside of Holyoke, Massachusetts. The flight, enroute to New York from Greenland, was to stop at Westover Field in Chicopee as the port of entry into the United States before continuing on to its final destination.
The passengers 15 Coast Guardsmen, 4 Army Air Corps servicemen, 1 Red Cross official and 1 US Public Health Corps medical doctor 11 were returning home after serving their country in Greenland during World War II.

While making the approach to Westover on a dark, rainy night, the plane struck the 1200-foot mountain about 300 feet below the summit. After tearing through trees, the B-17 hit a rocky outcrop causing the aircraft to disintegrate and starting an intense fire that burned for much of the night. Several people who were at the Mountain Park amusement park at the base of Mt. Tom that evening climbed up toward the accident site via an old cable railway roadbed but could not get close due to the heat of the fires. In the morning, rescue crews found the bodies of the young men among the wreckage in the scarred and charred landscape. All were killed on impact.
The crash was, at the time, the worst air disaster in New England’s history. Behind the memorial you can still see the charred landscape.

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