DUNOON OBSERVER AND ARGYLLSHIRE STANDARD – 06.01.2006

Monday, January 17, 1949 was an exceptionally cold day in Cowal. Snow and ice made travel extremely difficult and those who could, thought it better to stay at home. In Strachur and Lochgoilhead, as the morning fires were lit and the breakfast herring fried there was nothing to suggest a winter'’ day out of the ordinary.

The same morning, 300 miles away at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire, First Lt Sheldon C Craigmyle of the 15th US Air Force was in a good mood. After a tour of duty in England which kept him and his crew away from his home over the festive period, he was conducting the final checks on the B-29 Superfortress which he was to pilot, along with 19 passengers and crew, to the unit’s home airfield at Smoky Hill, Salina, Kansas for some well deserved leave. They were to fly in convoy with another B-29, piloted by Captain Donald E Riggs, which was also returning to the American base.

In Succoth, a farmstead between Lochgoilhead and Strachur, the farmers were preparing to go out on the hill to check on their sheep. It is not unknown for the beasts to freeze to death in sub-zero temperatures so a wary eye needed to be kept on them. There were no quad-bikes in those days, the shepherds and their dogs would head for the hills on foot.

First Lt Craigmyle played saxophone in a jazz band in his home town of Midson, Indianna and was probably planning a few gigs while he was home as his aircraft took to the skies. Their route would take them over Scotland to Keflaviv in Iceland, where a fuel and supplies stop was planned. Conditions were varied that day across the British Isles.

There was a lot of scattered cloud which could reduce visibility but, more alarmingly, the freezing temperatures could cause heavy icing on the wings, making the aircraft heavy and unstable.

In Strachur Doctor Dougie MacLean entered his surgery at 9.00 am to be greeted with a waiting room full of coughs, snee4zes and other seasonable ailments. A normal morning – until the surgery telephone rang just before 10.00 am.

As the two homeward bound B-29s flew over Scotland they began to have problems with icing. Captain Riggs decided that conditions were too bad to continue and turned his aircraft round to return to RAF Scampton. Nobody really knows what happened next, but what is certain is that First Lt Craigmyle’s aircraft crashed into the hillside at Succoth Glen at 9.50 am.

On Loch Goil, meanwhile David McLachlan, a forestry worker on the Glasgow Corporation estate, was in his motor boat when he heard a low-flying plane’s engine labouring, and then an explosion. With Alistair Douglas and Hugh Campbell he climbed over the hills to where he thought the plane has crashed. After a four mile struggle over rough, boggy country they found the wreckage. They tried to get near but were driven back by the heat.

No search and rescue helicopters in 1949 so, after the Succoth shepherd managed to get word to the village the Doctor was summoned to the scene to see if there was anything he could do for the crew. Jock MacDonald of Strachur was a boy at the time. He told ‘The Observer’ "Doctor Dougie drove up as far as he could but had to walk the last few miles. There was nothing he could do. There had been a huge fire and everyone in the plane was dead. I remember the forestry horses going up to bring the bodies off the hill. Man, it was cold.

The wreckage of the stricken aircraft can be seen on the hill above Succoth to this day. Not much is recognisable, a twisted rear-gun turret, a piece of undercarriage and some engine parts can just about be discerned. One of the plane’s machine guns (suitably disabled by the MOD) is kept in the Air Training Corps hall in Dunoon.