Archaeological Sleuths Hunt For Site Of Bradley Airport Namesake's Fatal Crash

It's what state archaeologist Nick Bellantoni calls ``a history mystery.''

It starts at Bradley International Airport, a familiar name to millions in Connecticut and New England.

Some may even know the airport is named for Lt. Eugene Bradley, a World War II pilot who crashed his Curtiss P-40 during a practice flight on Aug. 21, 1941. He was killed when the plane plowed into the scrubby woods surrounding the new Army air base.

But somehow, after all these years, the exact location of the crash site has been lost.

Bellantoni and a small group of history buffs have begun some detective work in an effort to pinpoint the site. They've checked old aerial photos, taken soil samples and scanned the earth with metal detectors. In time, they plan to bring in ground-penetrating radar that can probe dozens of feet below the surface.

The result may be the placement of a memorial marker -- or at least a final answer to a 65-year-old question.

``Every now and then, someone approaches me with a project that just intrigues me,'' said Bellantoni, who said he always savors an opportunity to demonstrate the practical value of archaeological research.

He has unearthed Native American sites in the state dating back 10,000 years. He has helped find an 18th-century graveyard for prisoners at Old New-Gate Prison in East Granby. That project took almost two years, Bellantoni said, and solving the mystery at Bradley might take as long or longer.

It is worth the effort ``to resurrect that history,'' he said. ``It's an intriguing story out of our past, and it deserves to be studied. To find the spot, and possibly to memorialize it, would be important to the memory of not only Eugene Bradley, but the Army Air Corps.''

Among Bellantoni's partners in the hunt is Tom Palshaw, who services planes at the Bombardier Corp. hangar on the east side of the airport. Palshaw also volunteers doing historical research at the New England Air Museum. In 1998, he published a detailed history of Bradley Airport's first 25 years.

But missing from the book is a description of where the airport's namesake died.

``This is just one of the questions that have always lingered in the background and never got answered,'' Palshaw said.

Soldiers who served with Bradley recall him as a quiet 24-year-old from Oklahoma who was well-liked and was always eager to fly.

Bradley's fatal accident occurred during a simulated aerial dogfight with Frank Mears, commander of the 64th Pursuit Squadron. The plane Bradley was flying spun out of control as he went into a sharp turn at about 5,000 feet.

Stunned witnesses saw the plane spiral slowly into a grove of trees. Soon a column of smoke arose. They theorize that the young pilot blacked out from the gravitational forces felt during such a sharp aerial turn.

Over the years, conversations with airport officials and a review of state records and aerial photographs yielded some clues about the crash site.

``I asked the [state Department of Transportation], and they said it's off the end of Runway 33 somewhere,'' Palshaw said. Witnesses said the plane dug deep into sandy soil, submerging most of its fuselage ``like a lawn dart,'' he said.

Palshaw has focused his search on that general area, between the current Air National Guard base and the New England Air Museum.

Using an aerial photo taken in December 1941-- four months after the crash -- and comparing it with other period photos, Palshaw was able to pin down four possible crash sites along the airport perimeter road. The sites, labeled A through D, lie within a quarter-mile of one another.

None of the sites shows a hole or depression. One is on an old abandoned dirt road heading north toward Suffield. Another shows up in the 1941 photo as merely a road leading to a clearing in the woods.

Buried metal fragments left after the military's hasty bulldozing of the crash site might offer a clue to its detection, the researchers said. But so far, volunteers using metal detectors have swept the sites and found none. A scientist has drilled soil cores and analyzed disruption of the soil layers at the potential sites without finding anything conclusive.

By early May, when ground-penetrating radar owned by the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service was available to scan the earth, Palshaw had hoped to have a likely crash site identified. But soil tests along the old dirt road proved inconclusive, and nothing approaching strong evidence has been found.

Palshaw said the search is stymied, for now.

About two years ago, through a co-worker, Palshaw was introduced to John Reese of Enfield, who was a 23-year-old sergeant with the flight squadron in 1941. He was watching from a hangar window the day Bradley crashed.

Reese was later assigned to recover Bradley's body from the ruins of his plane, which had plowed about 12 feet into sandy soil, clipping off both wings. Reese, a welder, returned days later to cut up the wreckage and haul it away. Reese and other witnesses told Palshaw that the crash was near a zigzagging fence line and a tobacco barn.

He recalled finding $13 -- a $10 bill and three singles -- in the dead pilot's wallet. ``That's all he had,'' Reese said. ``I gave it to the captain. I don't know what he did with it.''

The recollections of Reese,now 88, prompted Palshaw to be more systematic about collecting evidence.

In typed notes, Palshaw says he expected the December 1941 aerial photo to show the track of a bulldozer that witnesses described as grading the crash site four months earlier. But there was nothing definite. Construction of the airbase, begun earlier that year, made that impossible.

``There was activity everywhere,'' he wrote. ``Which was the crash site, and which was merely construction activity?''

He searched out several among the dwindling number of aging witnesses. Those included Norman Coulter of Suffield, who was a 17-year-old working the family farm that day in 1941. With four co-workers, he watched the plane go down, then saw smoke rising. They rushed to the crash site and were among the first to arrive.

``We could see when we got there there wasn't anything we could do,'' said Coulter, who still lives on the farm on Taintor Hill Road. ``The plane was pretty well submerged in the land.''

In early April, testing of three of the four potential sites failed to turn up any promising evidence. Earlier this month, Palshaw and Paul Scannell, another volunteer, brought soil scientist Donald Parizek of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service to Site D, along a grassy road heading due north toward Suffield. Using a shovel and an augur, Parizek dug several test pits to examine the soil horizons.

There was momentary puzzlement when Parizek found a second layer of topsoil and subsoil atop the normal layers. It was indication of a disturbance, but not the disruption indicative of a diving plane's violent intrusion.

``We have a deposition of sand over the original soil profile,'' Parizek said. He concluded that years ago someone had dumped sand there to shore up a swampy spot on the old dirt road. ``This site doesn't show enough disturbance to indicate a plane crash.''

Ground-penetrating radar has become a powerful tool for archaeologists, even detecting buildings buried 50 feet in the earth, Bellantoni said. He and Palshaw still hope to have the conservation service bring it in eventually to scan for disrupted soil layers and buried fragments from Bradley's plane. The lawn mower-sized apparatus is connected to a backpack computer carried by a technician.

But that won't happen until the search zeroes in on definite evidence. ``You don't go shoot in the dark,'' Palshaw said. ``We can get it back here in six months.''

Meanwhile, he plans to seek out more witnesses in trying to reconstruct the crash scene and match it to the altered landscape.

Michael Speciale, director of the New England Air Museum, said the namesake of the state-owned airport deserves a memorial -- unless the crash site turns out to be in the middle of a runway.

In the early 1990s, Speciale said, he interviewed Mears, the squadron commander, about the day Bradley died. Tears came to the man's eyes as he told of losing a pilot who was one of only a couple of married men in the squadron, and who was expecting his first child.

``So many people witnessed the event, and it's kind of bedeviling that although people saw it, we've so far been unable to pinpoint the site,'' he said. ``This is sort of a missing piece of the puzzle.''

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