Remembering the 1944 Plane Crash
LAUREL, NE (News Channel Nebraska) - Seventy-five years later and the plane crash that rocked the community of Laurel still remembered.
Only the pilot of one of the planes survived, his son speaking at the celebration.
“The phone rang and it was my dad,”says Keith Honke, son of the pilot who survived the crash. “He said to my mom that he was okay and that he would be coming home soon.”
Members of the community came together to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the B-17 bomber crash. Eighty-eight year old, Floyd Bloom was just thirteen years old when he and his dad witnessed the horrific crash, an event he says he’s never been able to forget.
“We were watching the formation of bombers coming over Laurel, Nebraska and heading east, and all of a sudden we seen two planes crash, touch together, and the one acted like it just blew up in the air and the other went into the ground,” says Bloom.
According to reports, the two planes that crashed into one another were practicing a drill, when all of a sudden, both planes spun out of control.
“My dad walked up the field and we started seeing bodies there,” says Bloom. “ It was a horrific scene, we seen many, many bodies.”
The celebration featured several other witness’ testimonies and memorabilia from the crash scene.
“It means a lot, not only to my father, but to the other gentleman and families that were a part of the bomber group and the whole ordeal,” says Honke. “ To celebrate and to bring families together to talk about what had happened during that day.”