A Burning Plane, A City: One Man's Sacrifice -- 50 Years Ago, A Spokane Pilot Rode B-25 Down To Avert Disaster
Jun 14, 1999
Tracy Ellig, The Spokesman-Review
SPOKANE - In the rear of a B-25 bomber lumbering through the skies over Tennessee, 19-year-old airman Robert Hamby watched streaks of black oil pour over the left engine, followed by blooms of flame.
An oil line had burst, and flames roared over the shiny aluminum skin.
Moments later, smoke and fire filled the cramped compartment where Hamby and four other men sat. Whipped by the plane's speed, the flames bore down on them like a blowtorch.
Hamby leapt to the hatch, unbolted it and dived after the falling metal door into the blue sky above Chattanooga, Tenn. He pulled the rip cord of his parachute. The white silk ballooned over his head. He twisted in the harness to see the arc of the smoking plane, then a billowing cloud where it crashed.
It was the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1949, and Hamby had just made his first parachute jump.
He and six other men were returning to Fairchild Air Force Base after going to military police training at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga. The group was being shuttled home by the 30-year-old Captain William E. Blair, an Air Force pilot based at Fairchild, and Blair's two crewmen, a co-pilot and crew chief.
Blair never got home. After ordering everyone out of the plane, he was killed guiding the craft past Chattanooga and into an empty lot, where it crashed and exploded.
He was almost instantly proclaimed a hero in Chattanooga, where to this day there are monuments honoring his name and deed. There is even the William E. Blair American Legion Post 95. Chattanooga residents still remember the crash. It's considered one of the most dramatic events in the city's history.
In Spokane, Blair Elementary School is named after him.
But the greatest memorial to Blair is carried in the memory of those he saved, those who grew old thanks to a young man's sacrifice. Hamby is one of those.
Now 70, he's always felt the weight of the debt he owed Blair. This year - 50 years after the crash - he wanted to make some gesture, some small payment on this account in his life's ledger book.
Hamby had hoped to come to Spokane for a Memorial Day ceremony at the school or at Fairchild. But neither held a ceremony.
"Capt. Blair saved our lives. I owe him everything," Hamby said from his home in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.
"I've never been able to do anything or be a part of anything for him. After 50 years, I thought I should show up for a ceremony. I just wanted to sit quietly in the crowd."
In the absence of a ceremony for Blair, Hamby remembered that terrible day and shared the story of the man holding the IOU to his life.
It was a two-day trip from Augusta to Spokane. The plane left in the afternoon, bound for Omaha, Neb., where it was supposed to land for the night.
Right before takeoff, Hamby and his pal, Guy Palladino, took pictures of each other in front of the plane. Those were the last frames on the roll, and Hamby popped the film out of the camera and into his shirt pocket. The camera and everything else Hamby had on the plane was destroyed in the crash.
On the flight, Hamby sat by the window with a view of the left wing. After an hour in the air, he could see oil flowing out of the engine.
"I told the other guys sitting with me to take a look," Hamby said. "They all sat down and sort of shrugged like, 'What's next?' We had no idea how serious it was."
Minutes later, the engine was on fire. Hamby tried to use a headset to warn the pilots, but they already knew and were trying to arrange an emergency landing at a local airfield. Blair labored at the controls, buying a few extra moments of stability for the craft and crew.
Then the fire was inside. Hamby and the other men in back instinctively jumped; fortunately, they had worn parachutes since takeoff. Blair ordered his crew and two other servicemen in the forward part of the plane to bail.
Now, Blair was alone with the dying machine. Below him lay Chattanooga. So many buildings. So many innocent people with tons of scorched metal hurling over their heads.
He stayed at the controls. The left engine ripped free. He hung on. Just a little farther and the plane would be out of the city. Then he jumped. The B-25 plowed into a vacant lot and exploded.
The craft was too low for his parachute to work when Blair bailed out. His body, untouched by the flames, was found 300 yards from the crash.
While drifting down in his chute, Hamby saw the smoke rise from the crash. Then he looked down. A net of electrical lines and trolley car cables spread below him. The sidewalk next to a bank building offered about an 8-foot clearing. He steered for it. On his way down he grabbed the building's rain gutter to break his fall. It came tumbling down as he fell.
"People came running up. I just laid there," he said. "Somebody wanted to know if I wanted a cigarette. I said yeah. I didn't even smoke."
Around the city, men from the plane drifted and fell from the sky. One was snared in a tree, another landed on a school, another in the back yard of a house. Of the eight men who bailed out before Blair, seven made it to the ground alive. The eighth, Cpl. Norman Henson, became separated from his chute in midfall. He landed in the playground of a school.
Of the surviving seven, two were burned so badly they were discharged from the service.
Back in Spokane, Blair's wife, Ruth, waited for the news. She and her husband had just bought a small, white house off the base.
"It wasn't much, but it was home," said Ruth Blair who later remarried. Now Ruth Easley, she lives in Southern California.
She had been waiting for William to come home, calling the base over and over for his arrival time. She wanted to see the father of her two small children.
Then a chaplain and three officers came to the house.
"When I saw them, I knew," Easley said. "I wanted to run out the back door, because I didn't want to face what was happening. But, I did."
Jun 14, 1999
Tracy Ellig, The Spokesman-Review
SPOKANE - In the rear of a B-25 bomber lumbering through the skies over Tennessee, 19-year-old airman Robert Hamby watched streaks of black oil pour over the left engine, followed by blooms of flame.
An oil line had burst, and flames roared over the shiny aluminum skin.
Moments later, smoke and fire filled the cramped compartment where Hamby and four other men sat. Whipped by the plane's speed, the flames bore down on them like a blowtorch.
Hamby leapt to the hatch, unbolted it and dived after the falling metal door into the blue sky above Chattanooga, Tenn. He pulled the rip cord of his parachute. The white silk ballooned over his head. He twisted in the harness to see the arc of the smoking plane, then a billowing cloud where it crashed.
It was the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1949, and Hamby had just made his first parachute jump.
He and six other men were returning to Fairchild Air Force Base after going to military police training at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga. The group was being shuttled home by the 30-year-old Captain William E. Blair, an Air Force pilot based at Fairchild, and Blair's two crewmen, a co-pilot and crew chief.
Blair never got home. After ordering everyone out of the plane, he was killed guiding the craft past Chattanooga and into an empty lot, where it crashed and exploded.
He was almost instantly proclaimed a hero in Chattanooga, where to this day there are monuments honoring his name and deed. There is even the William E. Blair American Legion Post 95. Chattanooga residents still remember the crash. It's considered one of the most dramatic events in the city's history.
In Spokane, Blair Elementary School is named after him.
But the greatest memorial to Blair is carried in the memory of those he saved, those who grew old thanks to a young man's sacrifice. Hamby is one of those.
Now 70, he's always felt the weight of the debt he owed Blair. This year - 50 years after the crash - he wanted to make some gesture, some small payment on this account in his life's ledger book.
Hamby had hoped to come to Spokane for a Memorial Day ceremony at the school or at Fairchild. But neither held a ceremony.
"Capt. Blair saved our lives. I owe him everything," Hamby said from his home in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.
"I've never been able to do anything or be a part of anything for him. After 50 years, I thought I should show up for a ceremony. I just wanted to sit quietly in the crowd."
In the absence of a ceremony for Blair, Hamby remembered that terrible day and shared the story of the man holding the IOU to his life.
It was a two-day trip from Augusta to Spokane. The plane left in the afternoon, bound for Omaha, Neb., where it was supposed to land for the night.
Right before takeoff, Hamby and his pal, Guy Palladino, took pictures of each other in front of the plane. Those were the last frames on the roll, and Hamby popped the film out of the camera and into his shirt pocket. The camera and everything else Hamby had on the plane was destroyed in the crash.
On the flight, Hamby sat by the window with a view of the left wing. After an hour in the air, he could see oil flowing out of the engine.
"I told the other guys sitting with me to take a look," Hamby said. "They all sat down and sort of shrugged like, 'What's next?' We had no idea how serious it was."
Minutes later, the engine was on fire. Hamby tried to use a headset to warn the pilots, but they already knew and were trying to arrange an emergency landing at a local airfield. Blair labored at the controls, buying a few extra moments of stability for the craft and crew.
Then the fire was inside. Hamby and the other men in back instinctively jumped; fortunately, they had worn parachutes since takeoff. Blair ordered his crew and two other servicemen in the forward part of the plane to bail.
Now, Blair was alone with the dying machine. Below him lay Chattanooga. So many buildings. So many innocent people with tons of scorched metal hurling over their heads.
He stayed at the controls. The left engine ripped free. He hung on. Just a little farther and the plane would be out of the city. Then he jumped. The B-25 plowed into a vacant lot and exploded.
The craft was too low for his parachute to work when Blair bailed out. His body, untouched by the flames, was found 300 yards from the crash.
While drifting down in his chute, Hamby saw the smoke rise from the crash. Then he looked down. A net of electrical lines and trolley car cables spread below him. The sidewalk next to a bank building offered about an 8-foot clearing. He steered for it. On his way down he grabbed the building's rain gutter to break his fall. It came tumbling down as he fell.
"People came running up. I just laid there," he said. "Somebody wanted to know if I wanted a cigarette. I said yeah. I didn't even smoke."
Around the city, men from the plane drifted and fell from the sky. One was snared in a tree, another landed on a school, another in the back yard of a house. Of the eight men who bailed out before Blair, seven made it to the ground alive. The eighth, Cpl. Norman Henson, became separated from his chute in midfall. He landed in the playground of a school.
Of the surviving seven, two were burned so badly they were discharged from the service.
Back in Spokane, Blair's wife, Ruth, waited for the news. She and her husband had just bought a small, white house off the base.
"It wasn't much, but it was home," said Ruth Blair who later remarried. Now Ruth Easley, she lives in Southern California.
She had been waiting for William to come home, calling the base over and over for his arrival time. She wanted to see the father of her two small children.
Then a chaplain and three officers came to the house.
"When I saw them, I knew," Easley said. "I wanted to run out the back door, because I didn't want to face what was happening. But, I did."
A Burning Plane, A City: One Man's Sacrifice -- 50 Years Ago, A Spokane Pilot Rode B-25 Down To Avert Disaster
Jun 14, 1999
Tracy Ellig, The Spokesman-Review
SPOKANE - In the rear of a B-25 bomber lumbering through the skies over Tennessee, 19-year-old airman Robert Hamby watched streaks of black oil pour over the left engine, followed by blooms of flame.
An oil line had burst, and flames roared over the shiny aluminum skin.
Moments later, smoke and fire filled the cramped compartment where Hamby and four other men sat. Whipped by the plane's speed, the flames bore down on them like a blowtorch.
Hamby leapt to the hatch, unbolted it and dived after the falling metal door into the blue sky above Chattanooga, Tenn. He pulled the rip cord of his parachute. The white silk ballooned over his head. He twisted in the harness to see the arc of the smoking plane, then a billowing cloud where it crashed.
It was the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1949, and Hamby had just made his first parachute jump.
He and six other men were returning to Fairchild Air Force Base after going to military police training at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga. The group was being shuttled home by the 30-year-old Captain William E. Blair, an Air Force pilot based at Fairchild, and Blair's two crewmen, a co-pilot and crew chief.
Blair never got home. After ordering everyone out of the plane, he was killed guiding the craft past Chattanooga and into an empty lot, where it crashed and exploded.
He was almost instantly proclaimed a hero in Chattanooga, where to this day there are monuments honoring his name and deed. There is even the William E. Blair American Legion Post 95. Chattanooga residents still remember the crash. It's considered one of the most dramatic events in the city's history.
In Spokane, Blair Elementary School is named after him.
But the greatest memorial to Blair is carried in the memory of those he saved, those who grew old thanks to a young man's sacrifice. Hamby is one of those.
Now 70, he's always felt the weight of the debt he owed Blair. This year - 50 years after the crash - he wanted to make some gesture, some small payment on this account in his life's ledger book.
Hamby had hoped to come to Spokane for a Memorial Day ceremony at the school or at Fairchild. But neither held a ceremony.
"Capt. Blair saved our lives. I owe him everything," Hamby said from his home in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.
"I've never been able to do anything or be a part of anything for him. After 50 years, I thought I should show up for a ceremony. I just wanted to sit quietly in the crowd."
In the absence of a ceremony for Blair, Hamby remembered that terrible day and shared the story of the man holding the IOU to his life.
It was a two-day trip from Augusta to Spokane. The plane left in the afternoon, bound for Omaha, Neb., where it was supposed to land for the night.
Right before takeoff, Hamby and his pal, Guy Palladino, took pictures of each other in front of the plane. Those were the last frames on the roll, and Hamby popped the film out of the camera and into his shirt pocket. The camera and everything else Hamby had on the plane was destroyed in the crash.
On the flight, Hamby sat by the window with a view of the left wing. After an hour in the air, he could see oil flowing out of the engine.
"I told the other guys sitting with me to take a look," Hamby said. "They all sat down and sort of shrugged like, 'What's next?' We had no idea how serious it was."
Minutes later, the engine was on fire. Hamby tried to use a headset to warn the pilots, but they already knew and were trying to arrange an emergency landing at a local airfield. Blair labored at the controls, buying a few extra moments of stability for the craft and crew.
Then the fire was inside. Hamby and the other men in back instinctively jumped; fortunately, they had worn parachutes since takeoff. Blair ordered his crew and two other servicemen in the forward part of the plane to bail.
Now, Blair was alone with the dying machine. Below him lay Chattanooga. So many buildings. So many innocent people with tons of scorched metal hurling over their heads.
He stayed at the controls. The left engine ripped free. He hung on. Just a little farther and the plane would be out of the city. Then he jumped. The B-25 plowed into a vacant lot and exploded.
The craft was too low for his parachute to work when Blair bailed out. His body, untouched by the flames, was found 300 yards from the crash.
While drifting down in his chute, Hamby saw the smoke rise from the crash. Then he looked down. A net of electrical lines and trolley car cables spread below him. The sidewalk next to a bank building offered about an 8-foot clearing. He steered for it. On his way down he grabbed the building's rain gutter to break his fall. It came tumbling down as he fell.
"People came running up. I just laid there," he said. "Somebody wanted to know if I wanted a cigarette. I said yeah. I didn't even smoke."
Around the city, men from the plane drifted and fell from the sky. One was snared in a tree, another landed on a school, another in the back yard of a house. Of the eight men who bailed out before Blair, seven made it to the ground alive. The eighth, Cpl. Norman Henson, became separated from his chute in midfall. He landed in the playground of a school.
Of the surviving seven, two were burned so badly they were discharged from the service.
Back in Spokane, Blair's wife, Ruth, waited for the news. She and her husband had just bought a small, white house off the base.
"It wasn't much, but it was home," said Ruth Blair who later remarried. Now Ruth Easley, she lives in Southern California.
She had been waiting for William to come home, calling the base over and over for his arrival time. She wanted to see the father of her two small children.
Then a chaplain and three officers came to the house.
"When I saw them, I knew," Easley said. "I wanted to run out the back door, because I didn't want to face what was happening. But, I did."
Jun 14, 1999
Tracy Ellig, The Spokesman-Review
SPOKANE - In the rear of a B-25 bomber lumbering through the skies over Tennessee, 19-year-old airman Robert Hamby watched streaks of black oil pour over the left engine, followed by blooms of flame.
An oil line had burst, and flames roared over the shiny aluminum skin.
Moments later, smoke and fire filled the cramped compartment where Hamby and four other men sat. Whipped by the plane's speed, the flames bore down on them like a blowtorch.
Hamby leapt to the hatch, unbolted it and dived after the falling metal door into the blue sky above Chattanooga, Tenn. He pulled the rip cord of his parachute. The white silk ballooned over his head. He twisted in the harness to see the arc of the smoking plane, then a billowing cloud where it crashed.
It was the afternoon of Sept. 30, 1949, and Hamby had just made his first parachute jump.
He and six other men were returning to Fairchild Air Force Base after going to military police training at Fort Gordon, near Augusta, Ga. The group was being shuttled home by the 30-year-old Captain William E. Blair, an Air Force pilot based at Fairchild, and Blair's two crewmen, a co-pilot and crew chief.
Blair never got home. After ordering everyone out of the plane, he was killed guiding the craft past Chattanooga and into an empty lot, where it crashed and exploded.
He was almost instantly proclaimed a hero in Chattanooga, where to this day there are monuments honoring his name and deed. There is even the William E. Blair American Legion Post 95. Chattanooga residents still remember the crash. It's considered one of the most dramatic events in the city's history.
In Spokane, Blair Elementary School is named after him.
But the greatest memorial to Blair is carried in the memory of those he saved, those who grew old thanks to a young man's sacrifice. Hamby is one of those.
Now 70, he's always felt the weight of the debt he owed Blair. This year - 50 years after the crash - he wanted to make some gesture, some small payment on this account in his life's ledger book.
Hamby had hoped to come to Spokane for a Memorial Day ceremony at the school or at Fairchild. But neither held a ceremony.
"Capt. Blair saved our lives. I owe him everything," Hamby said from his home in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana.
"I've never been able to do anything or be a part of anything for him. After 50 years, I thought I should show up for a ceremony. I just wanted to sit quietly in the crowd."
In the absence of a ceremony for Blair, Hamby remembered that terrible day and shared the story of the man holding the IOU to his life.
It was a two-day trip from Augusta to Spokane. The plane left in the afternoon, bound for Omaha, Neb., where it was supposed to land for the night.
Right before takeoff, Hamby and his pal, Guy Palladino, took pictures of each other in front of the plane. Those were the last frames on the roll, and Hamby popped the film out of the camera and into his shirt pocket. The camera and everything else Hamby had on the plane was destroyed in the crash.
On the flight, Hamby sat by the window with a view of the left wing. After an hour in the air, he could see oil flowing out of the engine.
"I told the other guys sitting with me to take a look," Hamby said. "They all sat down and sort of shrugged like, 'What's next?' We had no idea how serious it was."
Minutes later, the engine was on fire. Hamby tried to use a headset to warn the pilots, but they already knew and were trying to arrange an emergency landing at a local airfield. Blair labored at the controls, buying a few extra moments of stability for the craft and crew.
Then the fire was inside. Hamby and the other men in back instinctively jumped; fortunately, they had worn parachutes since takeoff. Blair ordered his crew and two other servicemen in the forward part of the plane to bail.
Now, Blair was alone with the dying machine. Below him lay Chattanooga. So many buildings. So many innocent people with tons of scorched metal hurling over their heads.
He stayed at the controls. The left engine ripped free. He hung on. Just a little farther and the plane would be out of the city. Then he jumped. The B-25 plowed into a vacant lot and exploded.
The craft was too low for his parachute to work when Blair bailed out. His body, untouched by the flames, was found 300 yards from the crash.
While drifting down in his chute, Hamby saw the smoke rise from the crash. Then he looked down. A net of electrical lines and trolley car cables spread below him. The sidewalk next to a bank building offered about an 8-foot clearing. He steered for it. On his way down he grabbed the building's rain gutter to break his fall. It came tumbling down as he fell.
"People came running up. I just laid there," he said. "Somebody wanted to know if I wanted a cigarette. I said yeah. I didn't even smoke."
Around the city, men from the plane drifted and fell from the sky. One was snared in a tree, another landed on a school, another in the back yard of a house. Of the eight men who bailed out before Blair, seven made it to the ground alive. The eighth, Cpl. Norman Henson, became separated from his chute in midfall. He landed in the playground of a school.
Of the surviving seven, two were burned so badly they were discharged from the service.
Back in Spokane, Blair's wife, Ruth, waited for the news. She and her husband had just bought a small, white house off the base.
"It wasn't much, but it was home," said Ruth Blair who later remarried. Now Ruth Easley, she lives in Southern California.
She had been waiting for William to come home, calling the base over and over for his arrival time. She wanted to see the father of her two small children.
Then a chaplain and three officers came to the house.
"When I saw them, I knew," Easley said. "I wanted to run out the back door, because I didn't want to face what was happening. But, I did."
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