Thank you so much for posting this and the information. God bless Our Service Men and Women. They can't be thanked enough for what many of them have given. My Dad had polio in one of his legs so He was turned down by the military in WWII, so He got a Civil Service job at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. He was an instrument technician and was working on the B-17 Bombers when they were just coming out. He was scheduled for a test flight on the first B-17 at Wright Field but came down with the flu and was replaced on the flight by another technician the day of the test flight. The pilot forgot to take the lock off of the elevator and the Bomber could not rotate and gain any altitude. It crashed just past where the US Air Force Museum is now with the loss of the whole crew. If my Dad had made that flight I would never have known my Dad, I probably would not have been here either. I will have to read the article again, but I think it was a couple years later that I was born.

Within the borders of Guadalupe Mountains National Park lies what remains of the B-24 Liberator flight 41-11769. 5 men lost their lives in the crash, which departed on its training mission from El Paso, TX in the evening of Dec. 31, 1943. Later that night, radio contact was lost, never to be reestablished. With the crash site scattered over several hundred yards, and covered in a few inches of overnight snow, the plane and its crew were not found until May, 1944.

The crash site is in a remote area, away from modern hiking trails, and is slightly over 5 miles from and over 2000 feet above, the nearest paved road. The park was not a protected wilderness in 1944, but even then, the site was very remote, with ranchers and trappers only occasionally venturing so far from the main roads and main grazing areas. Once the site was found by locals and reported to military authorities, the recovery effort centered on recovering armaments and human remains only, leaving the rest of the wreckage as it lay.

Below is an image of 2nd LT. Robert Benjamin, who left behind a pregnant wife and an unborn daughter that he would never know.

LT Benjamin and the others were given an emotional tribute in 2003, when his daughter, nearing her 60th birthday, hiked with rangers the 10 miles round trip to and back from the site. She and the rangers delivered a plaque, which was affixed to one of the largest pieces of the wreckage. This plaque is also shown below.

The whole 2003 hike with LT Benjamin's daughter is documented in an article published at the time. A PDF file of that story is attached, but is a challenge to read because the initial scans lie at 90 or 180 degrees off axis.

As we reach the 76th anniversary of this event, I invite all of you to join me in taking a moment to be thankful for the sacrifices made by men and women like these, whose lives were lost in service of the notion that peace loving, free nations deserved to be preserved and defended.

A special thanks, also, to Ranger Dave Bieri who made the hike in 2003 and who has graciously shared images, files and background information with me over the last few years.

I've taken about 200 documentary photos of the site. A link to those images is provided below, and there is at least one documentary video on YouTube as well. I've included 2 YouTube links. The first is just a visual to put scale to a B-24 Liberator, and the second is a walking tour of the crash site.

https://nasticusphotos.shutterfly.com/gumo/775

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOrqYA0ViAc&t=167s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBLyL-6iVCc&t=1s