Marker to denote 1943 plane crash
A remote part of Oconee County, the vicinity of a military airplane crash during the Second World War, will become a memorial site—thanks to an effort inspired by county residents. A B-25 Army Air Corps plane crashed into a mountain top at night on March 10, 1943—21 miles north of Walhalla and just one mile south of the Fish Hatchery off highway 107. The crash killed five service members on their way from Meridian, Mississippi to Donaldson Army Air Base in Greenville. Jerry Dyar, Oconee Veterans Affairs Director, says a memorial marker with the names of the servicemen will be placed in an area known as “Burrell’s Place Pull-off” at 2 o’clock Friday afternoon, March 21. “We thought March 21, seventy-one (71) years to the day after the wreckage was found would be a good time to display and dedicate the site,” Dyar said. On March 21, 1943 a 15-year old boy, Seab Crane, was riding his horse along Moody Trail to visit his friends near the Fish Hatchery when his horse suddenly became “spooked” by an unknown foreign object on the riding trail. The object turned out to be one of the plane’s engines. And that’s what led to the discovery of the downed plane.