FOOTLOCKER FOUND 64 YEARS LATER – In 2007, Susan Zaffater of St. Pete Beach, FL bought an old beat up footlocker with a lock still on it. Inside were more than 100 pieces of memorabilia belonging to Lt. Ralph Wildenhaus, killed in a B-25 crash along with a crew of 5 in the Everglades in April, 1943. The unusual cause of the crash was described in the accident report I received from Air Force Historical Research Agency. The early B-25s were built with watertight wings for flotation in case of ditching. The Doolittle Raiders B-25s had this feature. To make them watertight required rivets ½ inch on-center where the aluminum sheets met at the leading edge. The watertight feature was dropped during the war and rivet spacing was changed to 1 inch OC. What the design engineers failed to account for was buffeting at high speed. Lt. Wildenhauss plane was flying at 500 AGL at 250 mph. Wind got under the skin and peeled the top of the wing off. This was the first of several crashes due to wider spacing of wing rivets. Mrs. Zaffater located the pilots sister, Rosemary Braun in Dayton, OH and shipped her the footlocker, complete with some unopened letters.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 18:31:27 +0000
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