Warbird Information Exchange

I am once again researching a plane crash that occurred on park property in Montgomery County, MD. This one was a B-57B that crashed on its delivery flight on 2/8/55. The pilot, William Todd, was killed upon ejection when he struck the tail, while the Navigator Masaru "Dick" Uyehara, lost a leg when his leg hit the tail, and the second leg was so badly mangled that it was eventually amputated as well. Uyehara is still with us, retired and living in Colorado.

The Air Force did an extraordinarily extensive investigation, and the full report is 848 pages, which is incredible for the time period. One of the aspects they touch on are all the T.O.s that the Air Force required for the B-57s. I was somewhat surprised on how many T.O.s there were...34 separate T.O.s -- would this be considered a normal number for a relatively new plane? There were fewer than 100 B-57s in service at the time of the accident. With the individual airplane, there were 20 different "squawks" on the quality control sheet, and about a half dozen of those squawks needed to be corrected a second time. Again, is this typical?

It appears it was a fuel management issue the brought the plane down. One of the transfer valves did not work properly, so the plane became incredibly unbalanced and uncontrollable. The ejections seats were faulty as well. Dick Uyehara was the first aircrewman to eject from a B-57 and be able to live to tell about it.

This incident is a reminder that even when the United States isn't involved in active hostilities, there is still sacrifice by the men and women of our Armed Forces who are tasked with maintaining the vigilance that provides peace for the rest of us.