Death Main article: The Day the Music Died With the success of Chantilly Lace, Richardson took time off from KTRM radio and joined Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and Dion and the Belmonts for a Winter Dance Party tour. On the eleventh night of the tour, Holly chartered an airplane to fly them to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. The musicians had been traveling by bus for over a week, and it had already broken down once. They were tired, they had not been paid yet and all of their clothes were dirty. With the airplane, Holly could arrive early, do everyones laundry and get some rest. 21-year old pilot Roger Peterson had agreed to take the singers to Fargo, North Dakota, where the airport serves the cities of Moorhead and Fargo. A snowstorm was inbound, and the pilot was fatigued from a 17-hour workday, but agreed to fly the trip. The musicians packed up their instruments and finalized the flight arrangements. Buddy Hollys bass player, Waylon Jennings, was scheduled to fly on the plane, but gave his seat up to the Big Bopper, who was suffering from influenza. Hollys guitarist, Tommy Allsup, agreed to flip a coin with Ritchie Valens for the remaining seat; Valens won. The three musicians boarded the red and white single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza at the Mason City Airport around 12:30 AM on February 3. Snow blew across the runway, but the sky was clear. Peterson received clearance from the control tower, taxied down the runway and took off. He was never told of two weather advisories that warned of an oncoming blizzard ahead. The plane remained airborne only a few minutes; no one is sure what went wrong. The best guess is Peterson flew directly into the blizzard, lost visual reference and accidentally flew down instead of up. The four-passenger plane plowed into a cornfield at over 220 mph, flipping over on itself and tossing the passengers into the air. The bodies of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper were jettisoned from the plane, landed yards from the wreckage and lay there for ten hours as snowdrifts formed around them. Roger Petersons body was not jettisoned from the plane.[6] Because of the weather, no one reached the crash site until later in the morning. Their airplane registered on the radar of the 789th Air Force Radar Station located near Omaha for a few sweeps. Long enough for the Search Radar Operator to contact me and notify me of the appearance of the new target. As Movements and Identification Operator, my job was to identify every radar return as Friend or Foe. I had enough time to realize the blip was moving away from our site, thus it was a Probably Friendly, and before we could set up a track on the board, the blip faded from sight. Some time later, before the crash site was found, we were asked if we had seen it. The last location was given and in effect, we were the last people to see Rock and Roll, before they and their music died. Willis S. Cole, Jr. A2C (1957-61), 789th AC&W (1959-61). [7]
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 04:21:17 +0000