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B-25 Rescue Fallen Warrior Lake Murray SC US Army Air Corps NOS hat jacket patch For Sale

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B-25 Rescue Fallen Warrior Lake Murray SC US Army Air Corps NOS hat jacket patch:
$35.00

officially licensed , new old stock , original , N.O.S , Lot of TWO embroidered patches.unused , with hot/melt adhesive on backside or can be sewn-on to a hat or jacket.
older undated patches.
Lake Murray South Carolina is a portion of an article from Sept , 2005.
Sixty–two years after plunging into Lake Murray, one of the last remaining Army Air Corps war planes has been rescued from 150 feet beneath the lake’s surface.
According to the expedition’s leader, Dr. Robert Seigler, the retrieval of the now rare B–25C bomber took several days. Divers worked on mixed gases, at depth, to attach special straps on the aircraft.
The technical team is being led by internationally–known aviation salver, Gary Larkins, who expects the entire operation (which includes the spray–down and disassembly of the aircraft) to take about two weeks. Larkins disassembled, rigged, and raised a P–38 Lightning from beneath 270 feet of a Greenland ice cap several years ago. He is regarded as the premier salver of historic airplanes, with some 68 to his credit worldwide.A model of the B-25 was created to assist in the recovery.
Seigler, who has written a history of the Lake Murray B–25s for Warbirds International , has spent two decades researching, locating, videotaping, and securing sidescan radar images of the aircraft. Divers have been quietly examining and documenting the airplane for the past several years in preparation for the retrieval.
The final day of the airplane is well–known. After flying out of the Columbia Army Air Base on April 4, 1943, the now–rare B–25C Bomber crashed and sank in the man–made lake during a skip–bombing training mission. The military crew escaped the aircraft, which had lost power, and brought it to rest upright, with damage to only the right engine. The crew survived and were rescued.
The US Army Air Corps was unable to salvage the aircraft during WWII because of water depth. It was finally located in 1990, virtually intact, under silt.
With a commitment to keeping the airplane in the South, Seigler’s nonprofit Lake Murray B–25 Rescue Project (501–c–3) has found an appropriate home for the airplane at the Southern Museum of Flight in Birmingham, Alabama. There, the plane will be restored, conserved, and displayed in its public museum.Hodge, an attorney, registered geologist, and airline pilot, and Seigler and Vartorella have collaborated with SCE&G, the SC Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, the US military, historians, and numerous others to prepare for the final stages of this quest.
John Hodge of the Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd Law Firm is also a pilot, diver, and astronomer. He flew the History Channel film crew over the barge to bring their coverage of the B-25 Rescue Project. The History Channel will include the project in their upcoming MegaMovers series.
John Hodge of the Haynsworth Sinkler Boyd Law Firm is also a pilot, diver, and astronomer. He flew the History Channel film crew over the barge to bring their coverage of the B-25 Rescue Project. The History Channel will include the project in their upcoming MegaMovers series.
The upcoming retrieval has not been announced previously due to curiosity–seekers who might disturb the plane’s safe resting area.
The heroism of the pilot, who is deceased, prevented the aircraft’s loss of life. One of the crewmen who escaped is still alive and lives on the West Coast. Due to his health, he may not be able to attend; however, his family may send a representative.
Hodge said, “This is about preserving our history and heritage. The aircraft is WWII authentic as it has only been seen by a handful of people since it sank more than 60 years ago. It is in incredibly good shape. Dr. Seigler has expended countless hours and dollars to preserve our history, and I hope South Carolinians will assist him in this noble other article found from Feb 2020
On Sunday morning, April 4, 1943, the pilots at Columbia Army Air Base, South Carolina, reported the weather as CAVU—ceiling and visibility unlimited. The conditions couldn’t have been better for a day of training missions. At midmorning Second Lieutenant William Fallon revved a North American B-25C bomber’s two Wright R-2600-13 turbo-supercharged engines and guided the Mitchell, with four other crewmen aboard, into the clear South Carolina sunshine.
Their flight plan took them over Lake Murray, just west of a training base. Sunday training missions were not un usual during wartime and were seen as necessary to keep up the rigorous schedule of pilot education.
Lake Murray is a 50,000-acre man-made body of water that resulted from the construction of the Saluda Dam, completed in 1930. Covering 78 square miles, the lake has 649 miles of shoreline. In the early 1940s there were few residents along the lakeshore, making the area ideal for training purposes.
Lieutenant Fallon had just finished a simulated bombing run over the lake when his left engine suddenly began to fail. He ordered the co-pilot, 2nd Lt. Robert O. Davison, to feather No. 1. As the bomber was still very low, Fallon immediately increased the power on the still-functioning right engine. Both pilots then stood on the right rudder pedal to counteract the yaw created by the power from the right engine. As Fallon slowly turned the B-25 to the southeast toward the base, he quickly realized the Mitchell was not likely to make it back home.
Second Lieutenant Henry Mascall, the bombardier, called Fallon on the intercom and suggested they make a water landing. Fallon and Davison agreed and set about preparing to ditch. As Fallon eased the bomber toward the lake, the propeller on the right engine struck the surface. The impact tore the big radial from its mount. It skipped briefly across the surface and then sank into the murky waters.
The Mitchell bellied in a short distance farther and came to a halt. As the bomber bobbed in the water, the crewmen, who had suffered only minor bumps and bruises, scrambled out into a life raft. Within a few moments, the B-25 took on more water and sank.
Fallon had been piloting Bureau No. 41-12634—one of 1,625 C versions built at North American Aviation’s Inglewood, N.J., plant during 1941 and 1942. The bomber was essentially an improved B model with newer de-icing equipment, increased nose armament (a flexible machine gun that could be operated by the bombardier), and the addition of the Wright R-2600-13 radial engines. The B-25C could carry a maximum bombload of 5,200 pounds. The normal crew complement was five. Range was 1,500 miles at a cruising speed of 233 mph with a 3,000-pound payload. Mitchells were used not only by the U.S. Army Air Forces but also by Great Britain, the Netherlands, China, Russia and Canada during World War II.
Fallon and his crew were picked up in a boat by a lakeshore resident, Sewell Oliver, and returned to base dripping wet but happy to have survived. Later that same day another B-25 suffered the same fate as Fallon’s aircraft. That plane was recovered by the Army Air Forces, but Fallon’s B-25 had sunk so far that salvage efforts were abandoned.The plane was mostly forgotten until the late 1980s, when aviation enthusiast and pediatric intensive care physician Dr. Robert Seigler decided to research the crashes that had taken place on Lake Murray during WWII. Seigler had grown up in Columbia, where he spent his summers swimming and waterskiing at the lake. Lakeshore residents told him about the B-25 crashes. “Nobody really knew how many actually went down there,” he recalled. He paid a law school student to go through the local newspapers looking for write-ups about plane crashes in the lake. That research effort turned up reports of five B-25s that had crashed during the war years. Newspaper accounts and government reports documented four of the wrecks, leaving the whereabouts of one aircraft unaccounted for.
In the early 1990s, after a Navy Reserve sonar team found indications of a sunken aircraft, Seigler hired a civilian sonar crew to search that area of the lake. After several attempts, the team found the remains of Fallon’s plane nestled in the silt at the bottom of the lake at a depth of 147 feet. Seigler—along with John Hodge, a commercial airline pilot and environmental attorney, and Bill Vartorella, an international marketing and fundraising specialist—then started planning a method to recover the aircraft.
Jim Griffin, the museum’s director, recalled that once the B-25 reached Birmingham the first task was to clean and determine the condition of the nose and cockpit section. After scooping out more mud and silt, restorers found a treasure trove of WWII artifacts. “When we removed the instrument panel, one of our workers found the co-pilot’s wrist watch with an inscription on the back,” Griffin said. The engraving reads: “Ruth to Bob 3-5-43” (Bob Davison, who had served as the co-pilot).
Other items found in the cockpit included navigation instruments, radios, a pilot’s map case, nylon seat belts and buckles and the bill of the bombardier’s cap. The maps, preserved in the pilot’s case, were still readable and in excellent condition. Griffin explained that some of the B-25’s skin was seriously corroded in places, meaning that cleaning and restoration could only be carried out with plain water, using dental tools.
A particularly significant find was the rare underside machine-gun turret. “This turret was only fitted to a few B-25s,” Griffin noted. The 600-pound gun mount has been removed from the aircraft’s belly and, after restoration, will be displayed in a special case. It is believed to be the only one of its kind in existence.
At present only the nose section of the aircraft is on display at the museum. Plans include stabilizing the rest of the airframe to prevent further corrosion, and then reassembling the remaining parts. Asked about a complete restoration, Griffin said, “We’d have to replace about 95 percent of the parts to restore this aircraft to its original condition. But I don’t think that’s what our visitors want us to do.”
The Southern Museum of Flight is building a new exhibit hall where the reassembled B-25 will eventually be displayed on a specially designed sand base, with lighting to make the aircraft look as though it is still resting on the bottom of Lake Murray. “I think we all want to see this aircraft for what it really is: a fallen warrior,” Griffin said.

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