SBS - WWII Air Crash Detectives (2014) Part 5 Naper 28 Death on the Great Plains

In the USA alone over 15,000 Airmen lost their lives in training accidents as the WWII Allies scaled-up their Air forces. The relatives of these young men often have no idea what actually happened and typically the official reasons were put down simply to “pilot error”. From 1939 to 1945 thousands of young airmen met terrible ends not at the hands the enemy's machine guns or because of the murderous flak of anti-aircraft fire, but in catastrophic accidents and training crashes. The staggering losses were not just limited to Britain; all over the world training flights, routine sorties and cargo transport journeys all sometimes ended in disaster. Perhaps it's not so surprising that, amid the weight of the human costs of the air war against Germany, these 'hidden' losses have been forgotten; but all the men in the aircraft that never returned signed up for the same war and they were all someone's father, brother or son. The same letters went home to every family. Luckily, there are those who are determined that those brave men should not be a footnote in military history. They've spent years investigating, uncovering, searching, probing and digging the crash sites – and there are hundreds of them. They are the World War II Air Crash Investigators and now, for the first time, they have agreed to let us join them. In this fascinating new series, WWII Air crash Detective, Garth Barnard, re-opens the investigations of some of the most infamous International WWII Air Disasters using modern techniques and fresh eyes to find out what really happened…. and understand if it could happen again now.

Part 5 Naper 28 Death on the Great Plains

August 3rd, 1944 – a C-47 transport plane, with a crew of four, is ferrying 24 trainee P-47 fighter pilots from Nebraska to South Dakotan for advanced training. The pilot is forced to try and find a way through a wide storm front as the weather conditions conspire against him. But the plane is engulthed in a violent storm. There is a lightning flash and witnesses see the aircraft plummet to the ground killing all 28 passengers and crew onboard. This was one of the worse single US plane crashes of the war, but the exact cause of the crash was never fully determined. This season finale follows the work of ex-Korean War pilot David Hughs as he pieces together the clues and evidence to reveal a horrific accident where the power of Mother Nature was no match for a WWII era plane.

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