An airman comes home

An Arkansas airman comes home: Decades are over atop Alaska peak

Surviving sister readies last respects

A U.S. Air Force team inspects debris atop Mount Gannett of the C-124 Globemaster that crashed Nov. 22, 1952, killing all 52 men on board, including Bateman Roscoe Burns of Marvell. The team identified remains after reaching the crash site in 2015 in Alaska.
A U.S. Air Force team inspects debris atop Mount Gannett of the C-124 Globemaster that crashed Nov. 22, 1952, killing all 52 men on board, including Bateman Roscoe Burns of Marvell. The team identified remains after reaching the crash site in 2015 in Alaska.

Christine Manning has waited more than 63 years to put her brother to rest, and she will finally receive closure Saturday at a Marvell funeral service.

photo

Special to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Bateman Roscoe Burns, an airman with the U.S. Air Force from Marvell, was killed Nov. 22, 1952.

photo

Special to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A tire, believed to be from the C-124 Globemaster that crashed Nov. 22, 1952, was unearthed atop Mount Gannett in Alaska. A U.S. Air Force team identified the remains of airmen killed in the crash in 2015.

photo

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of the 1952 plane crash in Alaska.

Bateman Roscoe Burns, an airman with the U.S. Air Force from Marvell, was killed Nov. 22, 1952, when his Globemaster C-124, bound for Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska, crashed into Mount Gannett.

In the service for only 19 months, Burns had turned 22 just 13 days earlier.

Fifty-two men, mostly Air Force and Army personnel, died in the Alaskan crash caused by poor weather conditions.

According to a U.S. Air Force news release recounting the crash, a Northwest Orient Airlines passenger plane picked up a distress call on the radio. The Northwest pilot heard someone from the Globemaster say, "As long as we have to land, we might as well land here."

Then there was silence.

Because of the constant inclement weather atop the 9,100-foot-tall mountain and the treacherous terrain where the aircraft went down, recovery teams could not immediately access the crash site. It took more than six decades to locate and identify the remains of Burns and other servicemen.

Manning was 10 years old when she heard news of the accident at her home in Marvell. Her father, Fred Burns, and her four siblings mourned the loss.

"That changed our whole life," said Manning, the only family member who is still alive. "My mother [Effie Burns] held out hope he was alive. She thought maybe he survived. Maybe he had amnesia.

"But she knew for real. We all knew."

THE AIRMAN

Burns was a happy-go-lucky type, Manning recalled. He was born Nov. 9, 1930, in Marvell and attended high school there before entering the service April 9, 1951.

"He loved his family," said Manning, who is now married and lives in Hot Springs. "I had wonderful memories of Bateman. He'd write me letters from Wyoming and Texas [while stationed there], and when he came home, he'd bring me bluejeans and cowboy shirts."

On Oct. 3, 1952, Burns wrote a letter to his family informing them of his transfer to the Alaskan Air Force base.

"Well, I guess you have already gotten word of where I am going," Burns wrote in small, cursive handwriting. "Alaska. (HA). But they say it is pretty good up there. There sure isn't any fighting up there. And where I'm going is just like the states, summer, winter, autumn and spring. It's not cold there. So everything will be like here."

Burns returned to Arkansas on a 30-day leave and got married Nov. 11 -- 11 days before the Globemaster crash.

"He was looking forward to life in Alaska," Manning said.

His wife still lives in Marvell and has since remarried but did not want to be identified.

"She said that was in the past," Manning said, describing the woman's response upon her learning that Burns' remains had been identified and a service would be held Saturday.

THE CRASH

Burns' Douglas C-124A Globemaster, a heavy-lifting transport plane nicknamed "Old Shaky," left McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma, Wash., early Nov. 22, 1952. There were 41 servicemen and 11 crewmen on board, said Maj. Patrick Simmons, a spokesman for the Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations at Dover Air Force Base in Dover, Del.

The plane passed Middleton Island in the Gulf of Alaska south of Prince William Sound. At about 4 p.m. that day, the Northwest Airlines pilot heard the scratchy radio distress call from the Globemaster.

"The weather was very bad with heavy clouds," Elmendorf Air Force Base historian Douglas Beckstead said in a news release about the recovery of the victims. "They were flying with no visual reference, going by altitude, a radio beacon and a stopwatch."

Three days after the crash, the weather cleared enough and 32 military planes began to scour the mountain. Four Coast Guard vessels searched Prince William Sound. Searchers reported seeing possible wreckage on glaciers but nothing could be confirmed, Beckstead said in the release.

Civil Air Patrol Lt. Terris Moore, who in 1952 was president of the University of Alaska, spotted the tail section of the Globemaster on Nov. 28. In a book about Moore's college presidency, author Neil Davis wrote that Moore said, "The large aircraft had plowed into the mountainside at full speed, and except for a portion of the tail section, everything else including the crew and passenger complement was strewn over the glacier in small pieces."

Air Force personnel said the aircraft was scattered over 2 acres and covered by 8 feet of fresh snow.

Teams scaled the mountain, braving 70 mph winds, blowing snow and frostbite. On Dec. 9, 1952, they reached the wreckage but found no trace of survivors and returned to base camp.

Family members of the servicemen received official letters informing them the men were considered deceased.

"It devastated us," Manning said. "He was so fun. He'd win dance contests all the time at the Hut [the Marvell Community Center]."

THE RECOVERY

In 2006, Manning and her husband traveled to Alaska on vacation. As the couple boarded an airplane bound from Anchorage to Houston, Manning saw a map of Alaska and thought "Maybe we could see Mount Gannett."

Her husband asked a pilot on the plane if the flight would near the mountain. The pilot said he'd notify the navigator, and if it did, he'd make a radio announcement during the flight.

The plane took off and five minutes after leaving Anchorage's airport Manning heard the pilot on the craft's speaker. Mount Gannett would be on the right of the airplane, he said.

Manning was sitting on the left side of the plane. She jumped up, crossed the airplane's aisle and asked a woman in the seat across if she could look out the window.

Below her was Mount Gannett.

"I told her my brother died there 54 years ago," Manning said. "I just lost it and cried."

Six years later, June 9, 2012, an Alaska National Guard UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter spotted aircraft wreckage and debris while conducting training exercises near the Colony Glacier, Simmons said.

Three days later, another Guard team landed at the site -- now some 12 miles from where the Globemaster originally crashed because of the glacier's movement.

Teams from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System used DNA testing and in November 2015 identified at least 31 of the servicemen killed.

Burns was Number 17, Manning said.

THE SERVICE

Manning broke into tears Tuesday as she read the Oct. 3, 1952, letter from her brother.

"I can't believe it's still so emotional," she said. "I was 10 when he died. Roscoe has always been with us."

Manning and relatives will hold a memorial at 11 a.m. Saturday at Sunset Memorial Park near Barton.

Simmons called the length of time it took to recover Burns and the other servicemen "unique" because it happened on U.S. soil.

"It is a long time," Simmons said. "Our government continues to look for our missing around the world on a daily basis that includes World War I. The government is committed to and finding more of our service members beyond those years on a regular basis."

More than 63 years later, Manning will receive the closure she has waited for. Part of the service will be held at Marvell's community center, the Hut, where Burns won those dance contests more than six decades ago.

"This is not a funeral," Manning said. "It's a homecoming."

State Desk on 04/22/2016

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