Dave,
Thank you for the link to this interesting interview. I have been interested in various wartime RAF flying training programmes in the USA for many years and I immediately recognised name, John Wall.
John Wall and his navigators, J.G. Wright, forced landing in Oklahoma was related in Hugh Morgan's, "By the Seat of Your Pants" published in 1990. Unfortunately, at the time the names of the airmen involved meant nothing to me. Something over ten years later I came across Internet accounts of the February 2000 dedication of the memorial in Rattan, Oklahoma to the four RAF airman who died on that ill-fated cross-country navex from No.1 British Flying Training School, Terrell, Texas to Miami, Oklahoma.
A short while later the event was also reported in a local Grimsby (UK) paper, together with a wartime photograph of LAC Gordon Wright, who like John, had attended the dedication. To my complete surprise I recognised Gordon Wright as one of my secondary school teachers from around 1960. He then lived away from the area but through his sister I was able to meet him again on his next visit to the town. By this time Gordon had suffered a stroke and though he was able to show me his logbooks and photos, etc., he was unable to tell me very much about his experiences at Terrell.
To summarise from the account in Tom Killebrew's, "The Royal Air Force in Texas"...
On the morning of February 20, 1943 nineteen AT-6As and their crews despatched on a low level cross-country flight and when the weather deteriorated and as the aircraft approached the Kiamichi mountains in south-east Oklahoma an attempt was made to recall the flight by radio. Numbers vary slightly in different accounts. Fourteen crews heard the radio recall and returned safely to Terrell. Two crews missed the recall message, but made it through the mountains and landed at Miami - which left three aircraft missing.
Flying under the weather John and Gordon found themselves trapped in a wooded valley. As John executed a very successful forced landing with no damage to AT-6A (school no."185"), no accident report was compiled and therefore there is now no opportunity to identity his aircraft's serial no. At B.F.T. Schools only the aircraft's "school number" is entered in a student's logbook.
From CWGC, RAF and USAAF records...
The four airmen killed that day were:
LAC V.H. Cockman and LAC F.R.W. Frostick were flying AT-6A 41-15867
LAC J.M. Hosier and LAC M.L. Jensen were flying AT-6A 41-17004.
There is a wikipedia page which tells of the accident and the memorial.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT6_Monument.
Thank you, Tony Broadhurst
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