![]() ![]() The reply "Very much alive!!!" came back over the air. Crane - we contacted him and asked whether Crane was alive or dead. A pilot of Wein Alaska Airlines had radioed that he was bringing in a Lt. Army Air Corps, stationed at Ladd Field in Fairbanks, Alaska:Īnother day I will always remember - tonight, at about 6:30 PM, I happened to be out in the hall when Major Kane came rushing over from Operations with some amazing news. Today the tangled wreckage of the B-24 Liberator exists as a poignant reminder of lives lost and of a survival story that will endure for the ages.Ī postscript to the survival story of Lt. The remains were returned to his family and then buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2006 a team from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command traveled to the site at the request of the National Park Service and found bone fragments believed to be those of Lt. Richard Pompeo (thought to have parachuted free of the plane) nor pilot Lt. In October 1944, Crane led a recovery team to retrieve the remains of two of his crewmen, Lt. He was still lost and had to regain his strength and tend to his frostbitten hands and feet. However, Crane’s ordeal was far from over. And, what Crane would later learn was that the Charley River was a popular trapping area for local residents who constructed a string of small cabins along their traplines, some of which were stocked with survival rations. Within minutes he had a fire in the cook-stove and was sipping a steaming cup of hot cocoa.Ī tough old trapper and miner named Phil Berail had built the cabin. Once Crane decided a rescue party was unlikely, be began following the river north, and after a difficult day of struggling through deep snow, he discovered something wonderful, a small snow-covered cabin and an elevated cache which contained a larder of sugar, powdered milk and canned food, a rifle, a frying pan, canvas tents, and a pair of moose-hide mittens. The squirrels he tried to kill skipped away from his makeshift spear, bow and arrow and slingshot, and after nine days of living on nothing but water, he knew his strength would not last. For nine days he huddled in an improvised campsite under a spruce tree where he dreamed of steak, mashed potatoes, and milkshakes and battled feelings of despair. The explosion and fire at the crash site had destroyed any supplies he might use, so Crane took stock of his only survival tools: two packs of matches, a Boy Scout knife, and his parachute that served as a sleeping bag. So, after wrapping himself in his silk parachute, he began descending to the river below. Realizing that he had no idea where he was and no food or sleeping bag, he quickly decided that he must move or freeze to death-the temperature was 40 below zero and would only drop as night fell. He repeatedly called “Ho!” at the top of his lungs but the only response was silence. When Crane landed hip-deep in snow, he was suddenly very alone. ![]() He later recalled the blast of biting cold that struck his hands and face as he floated toward the ground and the “huge blob of red flame” when his plane struck the mountainside. Crane managed to don a parachute before leaping through the open bomb bay doors. ![]() Buffeted by high winds and crushing centrifugal forces, they sounded the alarm to abandon ship. Harold Hoskins struggled with the controls, they could not right the aircraft. Crane’s ordeal began as a routine test flight, but at 25,000 feet one of the plane’s four engines malfunctioned and the aircraft suddenly began to spiral out of control. Leon Crane managed to save his own life by parachuting to earth, his narrow escape from death landed him in an equally perilous situation-for the next 84 days he was alone in the wilderness in the middle of an Alaska winter. The airplane was a B-24 Liberator, a popular heavy bomber for Allied and American forces during World War II, and it carried a crew of five. On Decema high-altitude flight over the Alaskan interior ended in a fiery crash atop a mountain overlooking the Charley River inside what is today Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. I’d unwrap myself, fetch more wood, build up the fire, rewrap myself like a silkworm in a cocoon, and doze off again." ![]() NPS/Josh Spice "The cold woke me up almost every two hours. Flags left to honor the fallen at B-24 crash site. ![]()
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