From;
Gwinett Daily Post
Book recounts 1953 Suwanee plane crash
12/07/2006
By Christy Smith
Staff Writer
christy.smith@gwinnettdailypost.com
SUWANEE — An air crash that occurred 53 years ago in Suwanee caused aircraft engineers to design safer altimeters, possibly saving thousands of lives.
Ex-Marine Ben Cole of Suwanee has written and published a 261-page book documenting the event that was virtually erased from Gwinnett County’s memory.
“Four Down on Old Peachtree Road” was dedicated Wednesday at a ceremony next to the roadside memorial at 704 Old Peachtree Road. In 2003, Cole raised funds to purchase the marker that commemorates the crash’s 50th anniversary.
Just after midnight Dec. 6, 1953, four pilots from the 128th Fighter Bomber Squadron of the Georgia Air National Guard were flying back to Dobbins Air Force Base from a training mission in Miami. The pilots were flying four separate F-84D fighter jets in formation through the cloudy, rainy night. Their lead pilot, Capt. Idon Hodge, had to depend on instruments to guide his men home.
“The lighting was not real good in those jets and the altimeters were hard to read,” said Gen. Joel Paris, commander of the 128th in 1953. “It had a short, skinny needle that only moved one-fourth inch for every 10,000 feet. It could hide behind the other needle.”
James Brooks was 18 years old in 1953. He had just returned home from the picture show when his house brightened.
“We came outdoors, it scared us so bad,” Brooks said. “We hadn’t never been around nothing like that, and they were down so low their lights lit the whole house up.”
The four jets crashed into the rented home of Ernest Brooks, James’ brother, killing all four pilots. The Brooks family was spending the night with an aunt when the crash occurred. Debris scattered across a 500-yard radius and Brooks said he found a jet engine the next morning where his brother’s bedroom had been.
“It killed all five of his rabbit dogs,” Brooks said.
Soon after the crash, the altimeter design was upgraded to include a crosshatch that indicates when the plane drops below 10,000 feet.
Ernest Brooks has since passed away, but back in 1981, he told Cole about the four planes that had crashed into his Vernon Road house and burned it down when he was a young man. The idea piqued Cole’s curiosity, but two decades passed before he began researching the story. In the wake of World War II and the Korean War, Cole discovered the crash had been forgotten. That inspired Cole to raise $2,000 to erect the Old Peachtree Road memorial plaque for the crash’s 50th anniversary.
Cole has spent the past three years turning his research into a book that guarantees the pilots will not be forgotten.
Capt. Hodge was a 30-year-old Georgia Tech student when he died. As a boy in West Virginia, Hodge used his paper route money to pay for flying lessons without his parents’ knowledge. He had returned to school to study aeronautical engineering after serving in World War II and the Korean War. His bride of 41/2 years, Quincy, was left with a 3-month-old son and a 2-year-old daughter to care for.
“I stayed in shock for quite a while, but I had two babies I had to rally for,” said Hodge, a retired registered nurse. “We moved to Cleveland to be near my sister and one night I looked out the window at all that snow and I realized that he was buried out there in that cold and snow. That’s when it really hit me.”
First Lt. Sam Dixon Jr. left behind two small daughters and his wife, Mary, an Army nurse who had served on Omaha Beach.
First Lt. Elwood Kent was married to June McDaniel, the daughter of a prominent Atlanta family.
Second Lt. William Tennent was a handsome blond bachelor. For 20 years, a single red rose appeared on his grave on the anniversary of the crash.
“That accident saved an awful lot of lives,” Paris said.
Cole will donate a copy of “Four Down on Peachtree Road” to any Georgia public school library that wants one. E-mail him at
b_cole@bellsouth.net. Books are also available at Chapter 11 bookstores.
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I have lived in the Atlanta area most of my life & this is the first I have heard about this crash.
Any of you guys ever heard about this?
Robbie
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