Site of U. S. Army Air Corps Plane Crash
Sweetwater, Nolan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(0.6 miles east) At 6:05 a.m. on Friday, April 20, 1945, twenty-five Army Air Corps officers and enlisted men left Midland Army Air Field in a C-47 transport plane en route to Berry Army Air Field in Nashville, Tennessee. The flight crew consisted of the pilot, First Lieutenant James A. Bailey; the co-pilot, Captain John R. Rawls; and the flight engineer, Sergeant William H. Edwards. It was Sergeant Edwards' 36th birthday. Included among the passengers were eight officers and fourteen enlisted men. Two Sweetwater cab drivers spotted the plane on fire in mid-air. They notified their dispatcher, who alerted authorities at nearby Avenger Field. A crash landing message came from the plane itself at 6:30 a.m. Another C-47 flying just a few minutes behind the doomed aircraft never encountered a problem. After the crash, parts of the plane were found on a straight line almost two miles from the crash site. By 10:00 a.m. most of the bodies of the victims had been recovered from the smoldering wreckage and taken to funeral homes in Abilene and Sweetwater. The soldiers, whose ages ranged from 20 to 37, were buried in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D. C. Ten days after the crash, the Army Air Corps Aircraft Accident Classification Board met to determine its cause. It was the opinion of the regional safety officer that the craft had encountered a thunderstorm with only one of its two engines running, putting the plane into a roll. The plane's 4,000 hours of flight time, mainly spent towing gliders, probably caused a weakness in the tail and contributed to its disintegration in severe turbulence. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
At dawn on April 20, 1945, a C-47 transport carrying 25 Army Air Corps officers and enlisted men left Midland Army Air Field bound for Nashville, Tennessee. Sweetwater cab drivers spotted the plane afire in mid-air, and it disintegrated and crashed 0.6 miles east of this spot, scattering wreckage along a two-mile line and killing all aboard — men aged 20 to 37 from across the nation. Investigators concluded the aircraft, worn from 4,000 hours of glider-towing duty, had broken apart in a thunderstorm's severe turbulence while flying on a single engine.
Why it matters
The marker memorializes the often-forgotten toll of stateside training accidents during World War II, when thousands of American servicemen died far from the front while preparing for war.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the spring of 1945, the skies over Texas had been busy for years. The wide-open spaces, clear weather, and long flying seasons of West Texas made the region ideal for military aviation, and the government had studded it with training fields during the Second World War. Midland Army Air Field, where this flight began, was one of the great bombardier-training centers of the war.
Nearby Sweetwater was home to Avenger Field, another wartime training installation and a name well known in aviation history. The whole area hummed with the constant traffic of transport planes, trainers, and the young men and women learning to fly and support the air war.
The workhorse of that effort was the C-47 — the military version of the famous DC-3 airliner — used to haul troops, cargo, and to tow the gliders that would carry soldiers into battle. It was one such plane, near the very end of the war in Europe, that came down here on the morning of April 20, 1945.
People & events
At 6:05 on that Friday morning, a C-47 lifted off from Midland Army Air Field carrying twenty-five Army Air Corps officers and enlisted men, bound for Berry Army Air Field in Nashville, Tennessee. At the controls was First Lieutenant James A. Bailey, the pilot, with Captain John R. Rawls as co-pilot and Sergeant William H. Edwards as flight engineer. It was Sergeant Edwards' thirty-sixth birthday.
Behind the crew rode eight more officers and fourteen enlisted men. The flight should have been routine — indeed, another C-47 following just minutes behind reached its destination without trouble. But this one caught fire in mid-air. Two Sweetwater cab drivers looked up, saw the burning plane, and alerted their dispatcher, who called authorities at nearby Avenger Field. At 6:30 a.m. a crash-landing message came from the aircraft itself.
The plane broke apart, scattering wreckage along a nearly two-mile line, and there were no survivors. By ten o'clock that morning most of the bodies had been recovered from the smoldering wreck and carried to funeral homes in Abilene and Sweetwater. The men were young — between twenty and thirty-seven — and their families laid them to rest in Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Washington, D. C.
Its place in the American story
Ten days later, an Army Air Corps accident board sat down to determine what had gone wrong. The regional safety officer's conclusion was sobering: the plane had likely flown into a thunderstorm with only one of its two engines running, which put it into a roll. Worse, the aircraft had logged some 4,000 flight hours, much of it in the punishing work of towing gliders — strain that probably weakened the tail and helped the plane come apart in the severe turbulence.
That verdict points to a truth easy to forget when we remember World War II: not every American who died in uniform died in combat. Thousands were lost stateside, in the enormous, hazardous machine of training and transport that made the fighting force possible. Worn equipment, brutal flying schedules, and unforgiving weather took a steady toll far from any front line.
The men aboard this C-47 came from fourteen states and the nation's capital, and they were buried in all of them — a small map of the whole country's shared sacrifice. This memorial insists that their deaths, though they came in a training accident on home soil, belong fully to the story of the war.
If you visit
The crash site itself lies about six-tenths of a mile east of the marker, so stand here and let the flat West Texas horizon do its work. On a clear morning the sky seems endless and benign; it takes an act of imagination to picture a spring thunderstorm violent enough to tear a transport plane apart. That contrast is the point.
This is a place for quiet reflection rather than spectacle. Read the names — Bailey, Rawls, Edwards — and remember the detail that it was Sergeant Edwards' birthday, the kind of small human fact that turns a casualty list back into people. Think of the two cab drivers who looked up and became the first witnesses, and of the twenty-five men who never reached Nashville.
Sweetwater's deep ties to wartime aviation make this a fitting stop on any journey through the region's history. Give the marker a few unhurried minutes, and you'll leave with a truer sense of how much the home front gave — and lost — in the effort to win the war.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · James A. Bailey
- · John R. Rawls
- · William H. Edwards
Related events
- · World War II
Themes & tags
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