Date:	Wednesday 6 October 1948
Time:
Type:	Boeing B-29 Superfortress
Owner/operator:	3150th Electronics Sqn USAF
Registration:	45-21866
MSN:	13759
Fatalities:	Fatalities: 9 / Occupants: 13
Aircraft damage:	Destroyed
Location:	Okefenokee Swamp, 2 miles South of Waycross, Georgia -   United States of America
Phase:	En route
Nature:	Military
Departure airport:	Robins AFB, Macon, Georgia (WRB/KWRB)
Destination airport:

Narrative:
Written off (destroyed) October 6, 1948: According to published sources (see link #2)...

"B-29 Crashes in Georgia; Subsequent Lawsuit Becomes Focus of Government’s ‘State Secrets Privilege’

A test flight for the Air Force’s Project Banshee, located at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, is set for 8:30 a.m. Banshee is an attempt begun in 1946 to develop and deploy a long-range missile ahead of both the Soviet Union and rival US military branches. The airplane used in the test flight crashes less than an hour into its flight, killing 9 of the 13 aboard.

The flight is moved back to the afternoon after some crew members fail to show up on time, and to allow last-minute repairs to be made. By takeoff, the flight crew is assembled:

Pilot, Captain Ralph Erwin
Co-pilot Herbert W. Moore
Flight Engineer Earl Murrhee
Navigator, First Lieutenant Lawrence Pence, Jr
Left Scanner, Sergeant Walter Peny
Right Scanner, Sergeant Jack York
Radio Operator, Sergeant Melvin Walker
Bomb Sight & Autopilot, Sergeant Derwood Irvin

The crew is joined by civilian engineers assigned to Banshee: Al Palya and Robert Reynolds from RCA, William Brauner and Eugene Mechler from the Franklin Institute, and Richard Cox from the Air Force’s Air Materiel Command. In violation of standard procedure, none of the crew or the civilians are briefed on emergency procedures, though Murrhee will later say that the crew were all familiar with the procedures; he is not so sure about the civilians, though he knows Palya and Reynolds have flown numerous test flights before. In another violation of Air Force regulations, none of the flight crew have worked together before. As author Barry Siegel will note in 2008, “The pilot, copilot, and engineer had never shared the same cockpit before.”

Less than an hour into the flight, one engine catches fire and two others lose power, due to a combination of maintenance failures and pilot errors. The civilians have some difficulty getting into their parachutes as Erwin and Moore attempt to regain control of the aircraft. Four of the crew and civilians manage to parachute from the plane, but most remain on board as the airplane spirals into the ground on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp, two miles south of Waycross, Georgia. Crew members Moore, Murrhee, and Peny survive, as does a single civilian, Mechler. Four others either jump at too low an altitude or die when their chutes foul the airplane; the other five never manage to leave the plane and die on impact.

A few months later, the engineers’ widows sued the government for damages of $233,000 each for the wrongful death of their spouses under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). Congress passed the FTCA in 1946 to provide a uniform, statutory basis for citizens to sue the U.S. government for harm caused by its negligence or misconduct.

The widows of the deceased engineers — Patricia Reynolds, Elizabeth Palya, and Phyllis Brauner — turned to a well-known Philadelphia lawyer, Charles Biddle, to handle their lawsuit. Biddle had been an ace fighter pilot in World War I. He knew military aviation as well as any lawyer in America and he knew that B-29s were prone to accidents. But he quickly ran into a bureaucratic brick wall.

In the fall of 1950, preparing for trial, Biddle requested a copy of the Air Force investigative report of the accident. The government denied the request. Biddle brought this to the attention of Federal District Judge William Kirkpatrick of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, who ordered the government to produce the report. Instead, the government produced a letter from the secretary of the Air Force, Thomas Finletter, who said it would not be in the “public interest” to release the document.

Kirkpatrick withdrew his order and scheduled a hearing to give the government an opportunity to justify its intransigence. At that hearing, the government offered a sworn statement from the judge advocate general of the Air Force, Maj. Gen. Reginald Harmon, who declared that releasing the report would seriously hamper national security. Kirkpatrick decided to review the report himself in private and then make a final ruling.

Biddle agreed, but the Air Force considered that arrangement unacceptable. Instead of escalating the battle over the report by holding the government in contempt, Kirkpatrick decided to punish the government by simply ending the case, entering a judgment for Biddle and the widows on the negligence claim.

The government appealed the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In its arguments, the government repeated its sweeping claim that it could withhold any documents on the basis of the “public interest.” Biddle shot back that the administration of justice in American courtrooms is most assuredly in the “public interest.” Nevertheless, on March 9, 1953, the Supreme Court announced its landmark “state secrets” ruling in United States v. Reynolds. In a 6-3 decision, the court concluded that the Air Force could withhold its accident report. The report remained withheld and classified "RESTRICTED" until 2000 (see link #7)

1. El Tiempo 7 October 1948, page.8
2. Siegel, Barry (2008). Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case, and the Rise of State Secrets. Harper. ISBN 0060777028.
3. http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=alate1148rcareports
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_Waycross_B-29_crash
5. http://www.joebaugher.com/usaf_serials/1945.html
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Reynolds
7. Declassified Documents: https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/reynoldspetapp.pdf
8. http://www.trbas.com/media/media/acrobat/2004-04/12265670.pdf
9. https://fas.org/sgp/jud/herring0204.pdf

Date/time	Contributor	Updates
30-Aug-2012 12:34	Masen63	Added
10-Apr-2014 09:52	TB	Updated [Date, Aircraft type, Registration, Operator, Total fatalities, Total occupants, Location, Country, Phase, Destination airport, Source, Damage, Narrative]
28-May-2014 21:27	TB	Updated [Operator]
24-Jun-2017 22:10	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Registration, Cn, Operator, Total fatalities, Total occupants, Location, Phase, Departure airport, Source, Narrative]
24-Jun-2017 22:14	Dr. John Smith	Updated [Source, Narrative]
11-Feb-2019 16:47	stehlik49	Updated [Operator]