Thrift Store Find Yields 99 ABW Historical Treasure Published Feb. 15, 2012 By Scott Stewart 99th Air Base Wing AFSO21 Office NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. -- The phrase, "never leave an Airman behind" is part of the Airman's Creed. Recently, that phrase took on greater meaning for me. It began with a chance find at a Goodwill thrift store a few months ago: an old book published by News Day magazine in 1959 called "Sky Sentry... a SAC Crewman in Service." As a former Strategic Air Command enlisted aircrew member, I was immediately intrigued. The book's forward was written by Col. O.F. Lassiter, commander of the 99th Bomb Wing, a unit whose lineage continues here today as the 99th Air Base Wing so I had to buy it. The book followed Staff Sgt. O'Keefe, an enlisted B-52 tail gunner from the Bronx, through his first four years of service. Although my service in SAC came over thirty years later, I easily related to his experiences and feelings. I was compelled to find out what happened to him. I brought the book to our wing historian, Jerry White, to help me. We soon learned O'Keefe's fate. On Jan. 24, 1963, a B-52C Stratofortress bomber from the 99th Bomb Wing went down in a remote part of Piscataquis County, Maine. The bomber's critical mission - the first test flight of low-level terrain-following radar designed to defeat the newly developed Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missile, a new threat for air crews in Vietnam - went horribly wrong amid fierce winter weather. O'Keefe, by then a Tech. Sgt., was on the crew. Icy gales generated turbulence so powerful it tore off the bomber's entire vertical tail stabilizer, sending the plane into a dive. Only two crewmembers, the pilot and the electronic warfare officer, were able to eject safely before the aircraft impacted the high slopes of Elephant Mountain. The co-pilot also ejected, but hit a tree upon landing and was killed. The remaining five crewmen, including O'Keefe, died in the wreckage. As night fell, the two survivors were plunged into a fight for survival as temperatures dropped to minus fifteen degrees. A rescue team was formed from a mix of Air Force crash team members, Maine Rangers (a group not unlike the Canadian Mounties) and several local volunteers with invaluable knowledge of the terrain. They used dog sleds, private snowmobiles and even snow shoes in their fight to reach the isolated crash site, ultimately rescuing the survivors. After some additional research, I prepared a bio and photos from the book and reached out to the community near the site. I learned that even those who perished weren't truly left behind. Today, though the crash site is extremely remote even with a nearby logging trail added in the mid-1980's, locals from the Maine Air Guard, the Maine Wardens, the local Chamber of Commerce, the Plum Creek Timber Company (which now owns the land) and the Moosehead Riders Snowmobile Club have taken a stake in preserving it. They maintain the site, keep up a small memorial there, and preserve historical displays for future generations at the snowmobile club house. Incredibly, since 1993, the descendants of the original rescuers, various surviving relatives of the crew and other concerned citizens hold an annual memorial service at the crash site. To get to this memorial service, you have to "earn it," climbing the mountain by snowmobile. They described conditions this year, with temperatures around five degrees, as "pretty good." The participants incorporated what I'd sent them in their displays, and sent back pictures of their memorial service for our own wing history. They were excited to exchange information since they'd known little about O'Keefe, and were also glad to know our unit still carries on the legacy of the 99th Bomb Wing and that we still cared. "Never leave an Airman behind" can mean a lot of things. Whether taking physical risks to bring a wingman home or making personal investment to maintain the legacy of those who have sacrificed, what we preserve in the end is who we were, are and will be, both as a service and as individuals. The thread that joins our past and future is one which can be broken, but by preserving it we secure our legacy.
