B-57 Down

Rarely is Bass Strait as calm as it was on the morning of October 16, 1962. The sky was cloudless, the sands of the long, curving beach that runs for some five miles from below the Split Point lighthouse at Airey's Inlet to Eastern View, where the rocky coast of the Otway Ranges runs out to the south, were a pristine yellow, and instead of the usual booming breakers only tiny wavelets lapped the shore; the swells of the Strait almost invisible; the sea close to a dead calm.
   Brian Hunt, a fisherman from the little logging and holiday town of Lorne that fits into a bay in the Otways, was at sea. I was on the beach at Eastern View. Both of us were watching the B-57. It was flying flat and low, and had come – we learned later – from the direction of Torquay, where the pilots lived with their families.
   Whatever mission they and two other B-57s had been on had finished, and these two guys, instead of returning to base, had decided to fly above Torquay, and then – possibly because of the sheer beauty of the day – mosey on toward Lorne.
   Directly above Brian's fishing boat, they banked out to sea – and in a single shattering moment were but two plumes of water rising into the still, calm air...

   "The name of the pilot," Jim Cox, S/SGT- AF13694566, AFSC 30271 and 42360 Aircraft Electrician and Meteorological Atmospheric technician says, "was 1st. Lt. Sprague the guy in the back seat I foget his name as he had just joined our squadron at Avalon Airfield. Ref 57th WRS Commander Colonel Tom Aldrich.
   "I knew Lt. Sprague very well as he was quite a character. Last words he spoke to me before he closed the canopy were: "You know, you never know what these jets can do to you"."
   Jim served active duty Sep 1960-68, spending 3 years with 57th WRS at Avalon Victoria, Australia. He notes: "In 1962-65 We also had U-2 aircraft based at Laverton at this time also doing atmospheric sampling. We lost a S/SGT with the U-2 Squadron who fell through the roof in the U-2 hanger to retrieve a volley ball and was killed. Overall a few losses in Australia without even firing a shot.
   "We had 4- RB57 aircraft + 1 C130 support aircraft. During this time we also belly crash landed a B57 on the runway due the left main landing gear would not come down due to electrolysis in one of the door rods having metal fatigue."

I knew Brian Hunt, the bloke out there in the fishing boat on the calm waters of the Strait fairly well in those days, but we did not live in the same town and I can't remember much conversation we ever had about that moment – it was not something for casual conversation, so until I return to my own experiences of the day I am recording what I heard.
Nothing came immediately to the surface after the B-57 went in save those two plumes, so Brian dropped an anchor with a line attached to a surface buoy and headed back for the Lorne pier.
Sometime later, with a SCUBA diver (a young doctor from Apollo Bay) aboard, Brian took his fishing boat back, and the SCUBA diver went down. Reports are that he had no problem with finding the B-57, and could see the two pilots still strapped in their seats – but that was the last report of either men or machine ever made.

By the time I reached a telephone the alert was already out. My study at Fairhaven was about 20 feet from the Great Ocean Road, and I could look from my desk to the breakers across the beach through a break in the dunes.    Within a couple of hours of the B-57 going down, the weather rapidly deteriorated; the swells of the Strait corrugating the sea, the combers rising and thundering again as the wind rose and heavy cloud obscured the clear blue skies of the morning. Police cars raced impotently back and forth along the Road, and above the sea the skies began to resemble live footage from the Battle for Britian. Aircraft of miriad varieties came and circled and flew search patterns and fired innumerable flares – then were slowly joind by ships of various descriptions, and a very large raft – I guess for the divers to work off.
   To my mind they were searching far from my estimation of where the B-57 went down; but there were an increasing number of people who had heard the plane go in and rushed to the beach and seen disturbed water all over the Strait.
   Guys from USAF began arriving during this; one an officer I remembered from a recent copy of National Geographic story on the search for an atomic bomb that fell out of a plane somewhere in the sea off Spain. Then four of the fellow pilots of the two who had gone down. They were quiet, friendly and intense, and kept asking me was I sure the plane went into the sea, as they were sure their fellows must have bailed out over the Otway Ranges.
   I wished I could have been uncertain, but I couldn't; and when they finally accepted this they told me the story of the morning's operation and why the guys in WB-57B 52-1496 had taken their side trip.

Vale: Glenn and Bobby

Why did this plane go down? "It must have been a very tight turn," one of their fellow pilots told me. "It's normal to black out a moment in that situation. Guess they were just too low and had no chance to correct."
    Why was it never found? Over the next few months some bits and pieces were washed up along the shore. The largest that I remember was a wheel. Years later, maybe ten or more, one of the Lorne fisherman brought in a large metal section which had become entangled in his lines that was attriuted to WB-57B 52-1496; but, on the day, there was nothing.
   The day following, Lt. Chuck Nichols (USAFF) spent quite a time interviewing me as to exactly what I had witnessed; and for days to come US servicemen patrolled the beaches.
   My sister, Judi, was at Belmont High School at the time, and friends with some of the daughters of the airmen who lived in Belmont (a suburb of Geelong). Judi remembers them telling her their father's previous base had been in Alaska. They were stationed (at the time) at Avalon Air Field, not far from the Laverton air base.

   Bass Strait is a relatively shallow stretch, and the search was intense, so a theory which gained adherents at the time was that there was a relative buoyancy in the aircraft which allowed the currents to float it along the bottom until it was tucked under an overhanging ledge, which effectively hid it.
   We may know, one day – it was only recently the remains of a Mitchell bomber that went down during WW2 was found in the general area – but equally we may never know. The wreck of the sailing vessel out of Lorne en-route to Melbourne Towne, the Foam, has never been found (though some believe she lies at the foot of the Eagles Nest Reef).
    WB-57C 53-3826 was flying out of the Avalon base.
   Just for interest – and in the hope of eliciting some further information from someone – I note: B-57s and U-2s were operated out of Laverton and East Sale back in the early 60's. They were USAF and they flew over the Southern Ocean to sample the air for signs of krypton-85 as a part of an exercise to discover the extent of the USSR's nuclear capacity.

An additional note to the B-57s and U-2s based at Laverton and Avalon Air Fields during this period, is to record two others who gave their lives while serving their country on a Weather Reconnaissance mission.

B-57 — WB-57B 52-1496
— 17 September, 1962 —

Capt Paul H. Palmer
Capt Joseph W. Ivins
U.S.A.F
This plane crashed shortly after take off from the Laverton runway in the area of the town of Werribee.

— B-57 Down —