On May Day over Kansas
by Shane Timson
For High Plains Public Radio Readers Book Club, I'm Shane Timson and Colby, Kansas. Today we're talking about the book May Day over Kansas: The Worst Military Aviation Disaster in Kansas History written by D.W. Carter. This book is phenomenal.
DW. Carter does a great job of showing you what happened. You can hear all the sounds; you can smell all the smells; you're there. You are there. You may be reading a print book, but you might as well be watching a TV show. It's that real, friends. You have to read this book.
You know, I'm sad to say that I never even knew about this military disaster in Kansas. I don't even remember learning about it in Kansas history. I am glad that I learned about this, and I want everyone to read this book because we all need to know what happened.
So, let's dive into it a little bit. This flight that crashes wasn't even originally supposed to be in Wichita. They were diverted to Wichita last minute to pick up fuel because they were switched to go to the Middle East to fill up planes with fuel to go to Vietnam. But that was not the original mission.
This crew wasn't even supposed to be flying this plane. However, the crew knew how to fly the plane because despite rumors coming out that suggested maybe they didn't know what they were doing, it was determined they knew what they were doing. And it was not human error that caused this crash.
So, let's get into it. Imagine you're on Pyatt Street. You're getting ready for your wedding. You're in your wedding dress when a loud explosion comes and starts fires everywhere. It rips the church apart. Instant death. That's the case everywhere. Instant death. One guy was taking a shower and the next minute he was literally flung out into the lawn and the guy was incinerated.
These flames were 100 feet tall. As the Wichita fire chief put it, “This was hell, because this was the closest you could get to hell on earth. It was 26 minutes of hell,” he said.
They did get the fire out in 26 minutes, but the carnage and the wreckage would last a long time.
Now, let's talk a little bit about the aftermath, because actually there's more about the aftermath than about the actual crash. But what we have here is one of the rumors is that that plane was sent there by the US government to kill African Americans. You do have to remember this is 1965, so race riots were very common in America. Wichita was not immune to racial tensions. You also had the Vietnam War protest going on in 1965. So, there's a lot happening. For people to believe that that is a possibility is not so far-fetched.
However, that rumor was quickly dispelled with findings that this was not a deliberate crash. As stated before, a review of the crew and the plane showed that nobody there was from Wichita. They would have had no idea where to go to create a crash of that magnitude. It took years for the settlements to be dealt with.
In fact, this crash happened in 1965 but it wasn't until 1985 that a that a memorial was even built. And many people said that because this was an African-American community, they drug their feet. I don't know if they drug their feet or not. I wasn't even born in 1965, but I will say this. This is a very eye-opening book. It's one that everyone should read.
And one more thing. The name of the mission that that crew was on, the day they crashed, was “Lucky Number.”
