Date:	Friday 8 June 1951
Time:	day
Type:	Republic F-84E Thunderjet
Owner/operator:	560th FS, 12th FEW, USAF
Registration:	50-1209
MSN:
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana -   United States of America
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	Wright Patterson AFB, Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio (FFO/KFFO)
Destination airport:	Selfridge AFB, Harrison Township, Michigan (MRC/KMTC)
Confidence Rating:	Little or no information is available

Narrative:
Republic F-84E-25-RE Thunderjet 50-1209, 560th FS, 12th FEW, USAF: Written off (destroyed) June 8 1951 when this F-84E (and 7 others) crashed during a training flight near Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana. All 8 suffered icing on the jet engine intake screens while flying through a thunderstorm. Accident also reported as "engine fire/engine explosion in flight". Pilot Richmond J Moroney USAF was killed. According to one published source (see link #5)

"Death from the sky.
On June 8, 1951, fiery debris rained down in a kind of Hell from above as eight planes dropped like lead weights into east-central Indiana. Many thought an atomic bomb had been dropped or that UFOs were attacking.

Ten-year-old Harold Bowlby of Fountain City had just sat down by the family piano. His mother was working around the house. Children were playing outside in the warm sunshine. It was a perfect day. Suddenly, a loud crash erupted. A concussive blast threw Harold into the piano. Children screamed. Bowlby’s uncle grabbed a neighbor girl outside and quickly ducked for cover.

An F-84 Air Force jet had just slammed to the ground several hundred yards from the house, one of six planes crashing almost simultaneously in Wayne County. Two more crashed in Henry County.

“Metal was flying all around us,” a resident reported. “We had to jump in the car real fast in order to not get hit by flying parts.”

“It had blown completely apart,” Bowlby said. The plane left a huge crater in a neighbor’s field. “We found parts in our yard the size of grapefruits. I expected to see some wreckage and there was nothing. It was completely obliterated.”

Lois Ulerich witnessed something similar on the family farm near Cambridge City. “It sounded like a scream when you hear a jet or a bomb in the movies. A jet had flown down close over the house and crashed south of the farm. I could see a puff of smoke in the field.” She did not go out immediately because she wanted to check on the children first.

Mrs. Fred Musser’s family resided northwest of Richmond where two F-84s crashed, killing the pilots. One plane almost crashed in her front yard. She at first thought she and her five children were caught in an enemy bombing raid.

“I heard the planes zooming around and then heard a noise that sounded like thunder — only a lot worse. I ran outdoors and saw the first plane go down across the road from the Perfect Circle, and then suddenly there was an explosion almost right over my head. I thought sure it was an air raid and that those planes were dropping bombs.”

Aircraft parts smashed four windows in the Musser home and tore several holes in the frame walls. Planes crashed near Fountain City, Williamsburg, Cambridge City, on Richmond’s north side and near the Richmond Municipal Airport as well as in Mooreland and Straughn in Henry County. It was the biggest multiple airplane disaster in peacetime history, and all within a 25-mile radius of Richmond.

Three squadrons of jets had just refueled at Dayton’s Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and were en route to an Air National Guard Base in Michigan on a training mission when they encountered an electrical storm over Wayne County. The first and third squadrons went around the storm, but the second group consisting of eight planes plowed straight through.

Then something terrible happened. Two pilots testified their engines exploded. Another said his simply conked out. They had been in the air mere minutes before dropping from the sky. When their engines failed, everything else failed, including radio contract and canopy release.

Of the eight pilots involved, three parachuted to safety. One unlucky pilot’s parachute didn’t open. Another was obliterated and pieces of him were found near Perfect Circle and at a grocery store.

Captain Robert Jackson saw nothing but a small patch of light below as his Thunderjet dropped, so he headed for what was to be the Richmond Municipal Airport but didn’t make it. With his engine in flames, it took almost superhuman effort spurred by the adrenaline of panic and the will to survive for him to manually release his canopy and “dead stick” the F-84 into a plowed field near Boston just short of the airport. He crawled from his plane before the rapidly spreading fire reached the cockpit.

Three men died. Three were unscathed. Two were injured, including Robert Jackson who crawled out barely alive from burning wreckage. He suffered back injuries and a cut eye.

Air Force guards were called upon and posted at the crash sites. Mechanics made an inch-by-inch inspection of every part of the wrecks seeking evidence of possible sabotage.

Air Force settlements ranged from paying for that season’s crop and/or reimbursements for damaged homes or outbuildings.

The FBI determined that a buildup of ice on the planes’ intake screens choked the airflow and caused the engines to quit. This caused the crashes, not a UFO attack, as some residents speculated."

1. "Palladium-Item" Richmond, Indiana, Sunday 10 Jun 1951, Page 20
2. Illinois Daily 9 June 1951: https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=DIL19510609.2.42&e=-------en-20--1--img-txIN----------
3. The Sunday Herald (Sydney, NSW) Sunday 10 Jun 1951 Page 3 EIGHT JETS IN MASS CRASH: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18500786
4. http://forgottenjets.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/F-84.html
5. https://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_serials/1950.html
6. https://www.aviationarchaeology.com/rptAF55.asp?RecID=16461
7. http://www.accident-report.com/Yearly/1951/5106.html
8. https://eu.pal-item.com/story/news/local/2015/06/07/years-ago-jets-fell-wayne-co-sky/28641615/
9. https://www.facebook.com/IndianaHistoricalBureau/posts/on-june-8-1951-a-squadron-of-eight-us-air-force-f-84-thunderjets-crashed-or-cras/4539182956107615/
10. https://wreckchasing.websitetoolbox.com/post/mystery-of-the-jets-4613217
11. https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=d&d=DIL19510609.2.42
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond,_Indiana

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
24-Feb-2015 21:39	TB	Updated [Total fatalities, Total occupants, Other fatalities, Location, Narrative]