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Pacific Historian
Airplane debris linked to W.W. II
WATER AGENCY HOPES TO IDENTIFY 2 PILOTS
By Tom Ragan
MediaNews
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:08/ 19/2007 01:50:44 AM PDT
Under clear moonlit skies more than 60 years ago, a pair of pilots
lost control of their U.S. Navy plane during a nighttime training
mission 10,000 feet over Watsonville' s Pajaro Valley.
They crashed and burned on Jan. 14, 1944, the debris from their two-
seater plane with a machine gun in back scattered in all directions.
Seems like old news.
But that was the update this week on what up until now had been an
unsolved mystery into airplane wreckage unearthed by a construction
crew laying pipeline near the Pajaro River in north Monterey County
in early July.
The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency has since collected, then
safely secured the artifacts discovered in the middle of farmland -
including a high school class ring, a can of Spam, bullet casings,
landing gear, spent flares, a singed parachute and, perhaps most
important, the bone fragments from the pilot and co-pilot.
Now the water agency will begin the difficult mission of trying to
track down the living family members of Delbert C. Goodspeed, 21, and
Robert Henry Paulsen, 22, who took to the air with the rest of their
VB-18 squadron from a naval air base in the Central Valley, but never
returned.
"Something clearly went wrong," Jack Green, a historian for the U.S.
Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., said in releasing
details behind the accident and the type of plane. "Toward dawn, it
appeared that the plane just slowly banked off to the left, which
would indicate the pilot was probably unconscious. "
According to Green, the men had been conducting nighttime training
missions "under clear moonlit skies" and learning maneuvers that they
were intended to ultimately use in the Pacific Ocean aboard the
aircraft carrier, Intrepid.
"Their primary targets were going to be surface ships and land
targets," said Green, adding that the model of airplane, known as the
Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless, was famous for its performance in the Battle
of the Midway, where it was successful in torpedoing four Japanese
carriers.
Although the Navy never got to the bottom of what went wrong with the
airplane, Green said military airplane accidents were common at home
during World War II - mostly because the United States was "mass
producing airplanes and mass producing pilots."
"Time was of the essence, as you know," he said. "There were more
airplane accidents from training, in fact, than there were in the war
itself. Accidents were a fact of life back then."
And it was this fact of life that the construction crew happened upon
on July 3 about 6 feet underground, less than 100 yards from the
Pajaro River levee near Trafton Road, just west of Highway 1.
By law, the water agency must preserve any artifacts uncovered during
excavations related to agency affairs, said Mary Bannister with the
water agency.
"We'd like to find the families and return the belongings," she
said. "But it's going to be tough."
She said one Sand City police officer, after reading about the water
agency's dilemma, offered his investigative services.
If all else fails, Bannister said she'd hand everything over to the
Navy.
Richard Hernandez, an assistant archivist with the Pajaro Valley
Historical Association in Watsonville, said a shrine will be erected
at the site of the crash.
Bannister thinks it's a good idea.
"These guys were heroes," she said. "In a lot of ways, they died for
us and our freedom."
WATER AGENCY HOPES TO IDENTIFY 2 PILOTS
By Tom Ragan
MediaNews
San Jose Mercury News
Article Launched:08/ 19/2007 01:50:44 AM PDT
Under clear moonlit skies more than 60 years ago, a pair of pilots
lost control of their U.S. Navy plane during a nighttime training
mission 10,000 feet over Watsonville' s Pajaro Valley.
They crashed and burned on Jan. 14, 1944, the debris from their two-
seater plane with a machine gun in back scattered in all directions.
Seems like old news.
But that was the update this week on what up until now had been an
unsolved mystery into airplane wreckage unearthed by a construction
crew laying pipeline near the Pajaro River in north Monterey County
in early July.
The Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency has since collected, then
safely secured the artifacts discovered in the middle of farmland -
including a high school class ring, a can of Spam, bullet casings,
landing gear, spent flares, a singed parachute and, perhaps most
important, the bone fragments from the pilot and co-pilot.
Now the water agency will begin the difficult mission of trying to
track down the living family members of Delbert C. Goodspeed, 21, and
Robert Henry Paulsen, 22, who took to the air with the rest of their
VB-18 squadron from a naval air base in the Central Valley, but never
returned.
"Something clearly went wrong," Jack Green, a historian for the U.S.
Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., said in releasing
details behind the accident and the type of plane. "Toward dawn, it
appeared that the plane just slowly banked off to the left, which
would indicate the pilot was probably unconscious. "
According to Green, the men had been conducting nighttime training
missions "under clear moonlit skies" and learning maneuvers that they
were intended to ultimately use in the Pacific Ocean aboard the
aircraft carrier, Intrepid.
"Their primary targets were going to be surface ships and land
targets," said Green, adding that the model of airplane, known as the
Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless, was famous for its performance in the Battle
of the Midway, where it was successful in torpedoing four Japanese
carriers.
Although the Navy never got to the bottom of what went wrong with the
airplane, Green said military airplane accidents were common at home
during World War II - mostly because the United States was "mass
producing airplanes and mass producing pilots."
"Time was of the essence, as you know," he said. "There were more
airplane accidents from training, in fact, than there were in the war
itself. Accidents were a fact of life back then."
And it was this fact of life that the construction crew happened upon
on July 3 about 6 feet underground, less than 100 yards from the
Pajaro River levee near Trafton Road, just west of Highway 1.
By law, the water agency must preserve any artifacts uncovered during
excavations related to agency affairs, said Mary Bannister with the
water agency.
"We'd like to find the families and return the belongings," she
said. "But it's going to be tough."
She said one Sand City police officer, after reading about the water
agency's dilemma, offered his investigative services.
If all else fails, Bannister said she'd hand everything over to the
Navy.
Richard Hernandez, an assistant archivist with the Pajaro Valley
Historical Association in Watsonville, said a shrine will be erected
at the site of the crash.
Bannister thinks it's a good idea.
"These guys were heroes," she said. "In a lot of ways, they died for
us and our freedom."
