USAF Korea
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, died on November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2012.
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Mount Gannett, AK Globemaster Crashes, Nov 1952
CLUE SPURS PLANE SEARCH
GLOBEMASTER CARRYING 52 MEN MISSING
Anchorage, Alaska (AP)—A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue Monday to the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemaster which vanished Saturday night over the Gulf of Alaska.
Twenty-four search planes were poised here ready to fan out when weather permits over the 150 miles to tiny Middleton Island, the four-engined transport's last check-point. The weather outlook was poor.
The 41 Army and Air Force passengers and 11 crewmen were listed officially Sunday as missing in the continuing plague of U.S. military air disasters throughout the world.
Third Disaster.
It was the third U. S. military air disaster in Alaska in 15 days, involving 91 men, and the sixth throughout the world during that period. The six planes carried a total of 162 passengers and crew — eight survived and the others are missing.
A limited search Sunday, hampered by fog, light rain and low ceiling, turned up no trace of the Globemaster, which vanished on a 1,400-mile flight from McChord Air Force Base, its home field near, Tacoma, Wash., to Elmendorf Base at Anchorage.
Largest Transport.
The huge, four-engine transport, largest in military use, last reported by radio at 9:47 p.m. PST last night, over Middleton Island, about 150 miles southeast of here in the Gulf of Alaska.
The Globemaster, operated by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), was flying at 9,000 feet altitude on schedule 6 hours and 17 minutes out of McChord and only 46 minutes from Anchorage.
Then there was silence.
From tiny Middleton Island, the big plane's course took it over about 50 miles of water and 100 miles of land described by veteran fliers as among "the most rugged in the world."
To the right of its route is a mountain range studded with towering, glacier-covered peaks of 10,000 feet or more. On course are smaller mountains in an almost impenetrable wilderness.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Washington
November 24, 1952
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The wreckage was found several days later on the South side of Mount Gannett. There were no survivors.
Additional Information On Crew Members:
CAPT. KENNETH J. DUVALL, 37, the aircraft commander, of Vallejo, Cal. His wife is living at Tacoma.
CAPT. ALGER M. CHENEY, 32, first pilot, of Lubec, Me., wife lives at Tacoma.
Airman 2/c CONRAD N. SPRAGUE of Sequim, Wash. His wife and son, DENNIS, 4, live at Tacoma.
------------
Associated Press, June 28, 2012
Alaska Glacier Wreckage Is 1950s Military Plane
The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.
Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done. Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.
The Alaska National Guard discovered the wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier, about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage was spotted soon after the heavy transport plane vanished Nov. 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members, but it became buried in snow and likely churned beneath the surface of the glacier for decades.
The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. An Associated Press report on Nov. 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and the sixth around the Pacific Rim.
Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather. Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the Globemaster.
After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane "obviously was flying at full speed" when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding and disintegrating over two or three acres. Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification.
The debris was discovered June 14 (2012) while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The guardsmen flew over the area several times. Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the area while the military investigation was conducted. An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier. The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the command's lab in Hawaii for analysis.
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Melting Alaskan Glacier Yields New Remains of Decades-Old Crash
On Nov. 22 1952, an Air Force C-124 cargo plane crashed into Mount Gannett in Alaska. All 52 members were instantly killed. But 61 years later, a melting glacier is giving up the secrets of that crash.
The investigation is being conducted by the Alaskan Command and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a division of the Department of Defense that conducts investigations to account for missing Americans..
Doug Beckstead, a historian at Anchorage's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, told ABC News that investigators immediately went to explore the wreckage but by Dec. 1 of that year, all evidence of the crash had disappeared, submerged into the glacier.
The lack of evidence meant that families were not only left without their loved ones but without any answers as to what happened to them.
"My grandmother just received a letter saying, ‘Your husband was deceased in a plane crash — there was no more information," Tonja Anderson Dell told ABC News. Dell's grandfather, Airman Isaac Anderson, died in the crash, and she has spent the past 14 years trying to find out what happened.
But in June 2012, the Alaska Army National Guard's Black Hawk Unit was on a training flight when a crew member noticed a tire, yellow life rafts and oxygen bottles on the glacier.
"We knew it was an aircraft wreck of some size," Officer Bryan Keese, who piloted the helicopter that made the original discovery, told ABC News.
Keese and his crew told their boss what they had seen. The unit returned one more time and found human remains. It subsequently turned the investigation over to Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
It is working with the Alaskan command. The Alaskan Command searches for the debris and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, looks for human remains.
The 2012 recovery effort lasted nearly a week, according to JPAC, and the team collected more evidence and possible human remains.
Additional layers of the glacier melted away this winter, yielding more possibilities of finding remains. JPAC returned to Alaska last month to continue the investigation said Lee Tucker, a JPAC spokesperson. JPAC concluded its investigation on July 9.
So far, said Tucker, the investigation has yielded human remains and material evidence of the crash. The material items have included hockey pucks, a piece of a raft, a camp stove and pieces of the aircraft.
Tucker said the investigators were testing the human remains and hoped to reveal the identities shortly.
Even after all these decades, the families who lost loved ones are still awaiting answers.
Tara Troy, whose great-uncle William Turner was the navigator on the Air Force plane, grew up hearing about the crash. She told ABC News that when she found out remnants of the plane had been found, "I almost had the wind knocked out of me."
"I'm just hoping that someday they will actually find him," she said. "He's family. He should be home, and not on some glacier in the middle of nowhere."
By Alana Abramson
July 12, 2013
------------
No remains of Downing man found in '52 military crash
The first group of remains recovered from a 1952 military cargo plane crash did not contain anything belonging to a former Downing, Mo., resident who perished in the crash while en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.
U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson, then 21, was among those flying in a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II from McChord Air Force Base in Washington to Elmendorf on Nov. 22, 1952. The flight was less than an hour from its destination when it apparently crashed into Mount Gannett and exploded, killing all 52 passengers.
A melting Alaskan glacier is slowly revealing evidence from the crash, and teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made trips last summer to recover remains, belongings and wreckage. DNA testing on recovered remains identified 19 different subjects, but none from Jackson, according to former Downing, Mo., resident Vicky Kelso Dodson.
Dodson grew up across the street from Jackson and his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. Wayne Dean Jackson was 14 years older than Dodson and, she said, was like her "big brother." With Jackson's only living relatives a few cousins, Dodson has led the effort of trying to bring some closure more than 60 years after the deadly flight.
"I'm still praying," she said. "I want to bring him home. I'm not giving up."
The military is planning another search this summer and in summer 2016, but it's a race against time and the elements. While the melting glacier and shifting ice has revealed the crash site, it is also taking the crash site with it into Lake George near Anchorage.
These two summer searches, planned for a time when the weather conditions are decent enough to allow for a safe search, may be the last before all the evidence is lost to the lake.
The crash site was discovered in June 2012.
Dodson said the unidentified remains will be part of a mass burial at Arlington National Cemetery. A date for that ceremony has not yet been set.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
April 29, 2014
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Remains identified of Downing, Mo., Air Force airman killed in 1952 plane crash
Downing, Mo.
"They found my brother," Vicky Kelso Dodson said through the phone, her voice cracking with emotion. "I just found out."
Lost nearly 65 years ago in a military cargo plane crash, remains of U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson were identified Friday by Air Force Mortuary Affairs in Dover, Delaware.
Jackson, of Downing, Mo., was 21 years old when he boarded a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II at McChord Air Force Base in Washington on Nov. 22, 1952. The plane was en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska when it crashed at Mount Gannett, about an hour from its destination, killing 52 people.
In recent years, melting glacier ice began revealing the crash site that had been covered by harsh conditions for six decades. Teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made several trips to recover remains, belongings and wreckage in the hopes of giving family members and friends some level of closure.
Now, closure is finally coming for Dodson, who grew up across the street from Clarence and Hazel Jackson and their son, Wayne. While not a blood relative, the two had such a bond that she then and now referred to him as "my big brother."
Jackson's only living relatives are a few cousins, and together with Dodson had been hoping for something, anything, that could be connected to the fallen serviceman and allow for a proper burial.
The brief phone call Friday was light on details, but Dodson was told it was DNA from a bone fragment that was matched to samples from Jackson. Officials will make a trip to visit Dodson later this month.
"It's just wonderful news," Dodson said. "I just can't wrap my mind around it. We've waited and waited. Every time they'd identified someone and he wasn't one of them; I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen.
"I know his parents are looking down with smiles on their faces," Dodson said through tears.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
March 11, 2016
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Wayne Dean Jackson
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, only son of Clarence and Hazel Drake Jackson (both deceased) was born September 5, 1931, in Schuyler County near Downing, Missouri.
Wayne Dean died November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. After the initial investigation, the plane was not seen again until a crew of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of it at the tip of Colony Glacier June 10, 2012.
Survivors include his sister from the heart Vicki Kelso Dodson (Joe), their children Kendra (Dodson) Breitsprecher and Joseph (J.) Dodson and their grandchildren. 1st cousins Ella B. Lehr Eiffert, Robert Bruner, Max Bruner, Leo Waddle, Barbara Jackson Gravett, Sandra Jackson Granzow, Sue Burns Glass, Donna Burns Whisman, and John Burns. He is also survived by many cousins, classmates, and friends.
Memorials in his memory may are suggested to the Patriot Guard Riders Association and may be left at or mailed to the Payne Funeral Chapel, 202 E. Madison St. Memphis, Missouri 63555.
He will be escorted back to Downing, Missouri by the Iowa and Missouri Patriot Guard from Des Moines Airport late August 3, 2016, Wednesday afternoon. They are anticipating that there will be between 75 to 125 bikes ridden to pay him honor. There will be an Avenue of the Flags 1000 strong from Lancaster to downing placed by the Patriot Guard.
Visitation will be held at the Downing Christian Church Friday, August 5, 2016, from 6 to 8 with the family present to greet friends.
Memorial services for [Jackson] Will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, August 6, 2016, at the Downing Christan Church. Officiating the service will be the Airforce Chaplain assisted by Pastor Larry Smith. Interment will follow with Coming Home Celebration occurring where he will be escorted by the Patriot Guard to the Downing Cemetery and full Military honors presented by the Air Force branch before he is laid to rest in his family lot, being placed in between his parents and he will be "Finally At Rest".
Arrangements were entrusted to the care of the Payne Funeral Chapel of Memphis to assist the family.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
August 2, 2016
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Heartland airman finally makes it home
DOWNING, Mo. — It was a night filled with sadness, but also relief, as the remains of Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing finally returned home to the Heartland.
After a journey that has lasted a little over 60 years a lost Heartland airman finally returned home while a community is getting ready for celebrate his life.
64-years-ago, Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing, Missouri was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into a mountain in Alaska.
That was in 1952, when Jackson was 21-years-old.
On Wednesday, he finally came home.
Around 6:30 p.m., Patriot Guard riders lead his processional from Des Moines, Iowa to Downing, Missouri.
People were on the sidewalks with flags welcoming Jackson home.
The procession ended at the Downing Christian Church where his remains now are.
KTVO talked to long time family friend of Jackson, Vicki Dodson who is finally relieved that her big brother is finally home.
"Very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time. It's lasted four years, now he's here. I'm very thankful for family, friends, his classmates who have supported me and I'm just overwhelmed."
There will be a visitation at the Downing Christian Church on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. with the family present.
On Saturday morning, a Memorial Service will be held at the church under the direction of the Payne Funeral Chapel.
He will be given full Military Honors and interred on the family lot between his parents.
By Vanessa Alonso
August 3, 2016
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DOWNING, MO. — Both a sense of sadness and relief filled the air in one northeast Missouri community as a fallen Heartland hero was finally laid to rest.
"Day is done - gone the sun. From the lakes - from the hills - from the sky. All is well - safely rest."
Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson was laid to rest Saturday morning.
The moving ceremony ended a chapter and provided a sense of closure to those that were close to the Downing, Missouri resident. 64-years-ago, the United States Air Force member was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into an Alaska mountainside about 50 miles east of Anchorage.
Jackson was just 21 years old. The crash in the year 1952 resulted in an avalanche, and because of that, the plane had not been spotted again until 2012.
In June of that year, members of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of the plane at the tip of Colony Glacier. Because of the extreme condition of the glacier, recovery crews are only able to search the area once a year during the summer month of June.
Positively identifying the remains of all 52 individuals involved in the crash took almost four years. This past Wednesday, Wayne Dean Jackson finally came home.
When longtime family friend Vicki Dodson heard the news, she felt a great sense of relief. She says she also felt that Jackson was a part of her family, and looked at him as an older brother.
"I'm very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time."
On Saturday, the sun shined brightly as family, friends and classmates gathered once again to reminisce on the life of Jackson. Although sad, the service was more of a celebration, which reflected on the airman's service of the United States.
Stories of his life as a young man growing up in Downing were also shared. Jackson was described as the type of person that everyone knew and loved. When the news of the crash broke, the small town of Downing was struck with grief.
However, those who knew Jackson held on to hope that he would someday find his way home where he could finally rest in peace with ones he loved. At the Downing Cemetery, Jackson was presented with full military honors by the United States Air Force.
He was laid to rest between his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. In addition to family and friends, members of the Patriot Guard were also at the service to remember Wayne Dean Jackson.
Seventy-five to 152 bikers escorted Jackson's casket from Des Moines Airport to Downing on Wednesday.
By Ashley Hoak
August 6, 2016
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, died on November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2012.
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Mount Gannett, AK Globemaster Crashes, Nov 1952
CLUE SPURS PLANE SEARCH
GLOBEMASTER CARRYING 52 MEN MISSING
Anchorage, Alaska (AP)—A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue Monday to the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemaster which vanished Saturday night over the Gulf of Alaska.
Twenty-four search planes were poised here ready to fan out when weather permits over the 150 miles to tiny Middleton Island, the four-engined transport's last check-point. The weather outlook was poor.
The 41 Army and Air Force passengers and 11 crewmen were listed officially Sunday as missing in the continuing plague of U.S. military air disasters throughout the world.
Third Disaster.
It was the third U. S. military air disaster in Alaska in 15 days, involving 91 men, and the sixth throughout the world during that period. The six planes carried a total of 162 passengers and crew — eight survived and the others are missing.
A limited search Sunday, hampered by fog, light rain and low ceiling, turned up no trace of the Globemaster, which vanished on a 1,400-mile flight from McChord Air Force Base, its home field near, Tacoma, Wash., to Elmendorf Base at Anchorage.
Largest Transport.
The huge, four-engine transport, largest in military use, last reported by radio at 9:47 p.m. PST last night, over Middleton Island, about 150 miles southeast of here in the Gulf of Alaska.
The Globemaster, operated by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), was flying at 9,000 feet altitude on schedule 6 hours and 17 minutes out of McChord and only 46 minutes from Anchorage.
Then there was silence.
From tiny Middleton Island, the big plane's course took it over about 50 miles of water and 100 miles of land described by veteran fliers as among "the most rugged in the world."
To the right of its route is a mountain range studded with towering, glacier-covered peaks of 10,000 feet or more. On course are smaller mountains in an almost impenetrable wilderness.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Washington
November 24, 1952
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The wreckage was found several days later on the South side of Mount Gannett. There were no survivors.
Additional Information On Crew Members:
CAPT. KENNETH J. DUVALL, 37, the aircraft commander, of Vallejo, Cal. His wife is living at Tacoma.
CAPT. ALGER M. CHENEY, 32, first pilot, of Lubec, Me., wife lives at Tacoma.
Airman 2/c CONRAD N. SPRAGUE of Sequim, Wash. His wife and son, DENNIS, 4, live at Tacoma.
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Associated Press, June 28, 2012
Alaska Glacier Wreckage Is 1950s Military Plane
The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.
Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done. Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.
The Alaska National Guard discovered the wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier, about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage was spotted soon after the heavy transport plane vanished Nov. 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members, but it became buried in snow and likely churned beneath the surface of the glacier for decades.
The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. An Associated Press report on Nov. 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and the sixth around the Pacific Rim.
Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather. Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the Globemaster.
After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane "obviously was flying at full speed" when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding and disintegrating over two or three acres. Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification.
The debris was discovered June 14 (2012) while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The guardsmen flew over the area several times. Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the area while the military investigation was conducted. An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier. The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the command's lab in Hawaii for analysis.
------------
Melting Alaskan Glacier Yields New Remains of Decades-Old Crash
On Nov. 22 1952, an Air Force C-124 cargo plane crashed into Mount Gannett in Alaska. All 52 members were instantly killed. But 61 years later, a melting glacier is giving up the secrets of that crash.
The investigation is being conducted by the Alaskan Command and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a division of the Department of Defense that conducts investigations to account for missing Americans..
Doug Beckstead, a historian at Anchorage's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, told ABC News that investigators immediately went to explore the wreckage but by Dec. 1 of that year, all evidence of the crash had disappeared, submerged into the glacier.
The lack of evidence meant that families were not only left without their loved ones but without any answers as to what happened to them.
"My grandmother just received a letter saying, ‘Your husband was deceased in a plane crash — there was no more information," Tonja Anderson Dell told ABC News. Dell's grandfather, Airman Isaac Anderson, died in the crash, and she has spent the past 14 years trying to find out what happened.
But in June 2012, the Alaska Army National Guard's Black Hawk Unit was on a training flight when a crew member noticed a tire, yellow life rafts and oxygen bottles on the glacier.
"We knew it was an aircraft wreck of some size," Officer Bryan Keese, who piloted the helicopter that made the original discovery, told ABC News.
Keese and his crew told their boss what they had seen. The unit returned one more time and found human remains. It subsequently turned the investigation over to Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
It is working with the Alaskan command. The Alaskan Command searches for the debris and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, looks for human remains.
The 2012 recovery effort lasted nearly a week, according to JPAC, and the team collected more evidence and possible human remains.
Additional layers of the glacier melted away this winter, yielding more possibilities of finding remains. JPAC returned to Alaska last month to continue the investigation said Lee Tucker, a JPAC spokesperson. JPAC concluded its investigation on July 9.
So far, said Tucker, the investigation has yielded human remains and material evidence of the crash. The material items have included hockey pucks, a piece of a raft, a camp stove and pieces of the aircraft.
Tucker said the investigators were testing the human remains and hoped to reveal the identities shortly.
Even after all these decades, the families who lost loved ones are still awaiting answers.
Tara Troy, whose great-uncle William Turner was the navigator on the Air Force plane, grew up hearing about the crash. She told ABC News that when she found out remnants of the plane had been found, "I almost had the wind knocked out of me."
"I'm just hoping that someday they will actually find him," she said. "He's family. He should be home, and not on some glacier in the middle of nowhere."
By Alana Abramson
July 12, 2013
------------
No remains of Downing man found in '52 military crash
The first group of remains recovered from a 1952 military cargo plane crash did not contain anything belonging to a former Downing, Mo., resident who perished in the crash while en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.
U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson, then 21, was among those flying in a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II from McChord Air Force Base in Washington to Elmendorf on Nov. 22, 1952. The flight was less than an hour from its destination when it apparently crashed into Mount Gannett and exploded, killing all 52 passengers.
A melting Alaskan glacier is slowly revealing evidence from the crash, and teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made trips last summer to recover remains, belongings and wreckage. DNA testing on recovered remains identified 19 different subjects, but none from Jackson, according to former Downing, Mo., resident Vicky Kelso Dodson.
Dodson grew up across the street from Jackson and his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. Wayne Dean Jackson was 14 years older than Dodson and, she said, was like her "big brother." With Jackson's only living relatives a few cousins, Dodson has led the effort of trying to bring some closure more than 60 years after the deadly flight.
"I'm still praying," she said. "I want to bring him home. I'm not giving up."
The military is planning another search this summer and in summer 2016, but it's a race against time and the elements. While the melting glacier and shifting ice has revealed the crash site, it is also taking the crash site with it into Lake George near Anchorage.
These two summer searches, planned for a time when the weather conditions are decent enough to allow for a safe search, may be the last before all the evidence is lost to the lake.
The crash site was discovered in June 2012.
Dodson said the unidentified remains will be part of a mass burial at Arlington National Cemetery. A date for that ceremony has not yet been set.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
April 29, 2014
------------
Remains identified of Downing, Mo., Air Force airman killed in 1952 plane crash
Downing, Mo.
"They found my brother," Vicky Kelso Dodson said through the phone, her voice cracking with emotion. "I just found out."
Lost nearly 65 years ago in a military cargo plane crash, remains of U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson were identified Friday by Air Force Mortuary Affairs in Dover, Delaware.
Jackson, of Downing, Mo., was 21 years old when he boarded a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II at McChord Air Force Base in Washington on Nov. 22, 1952. The plane was en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska when it crashed at Mount Gannett, about an hour from its destination, killing 52 people.
In recent years, melting glacier ice began revealing the crash site that had been covered by harsh conditions for six decades. Teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made several trips to recover remains, belongings and wreckage in the hopes of giving family members and friends some level of closure.
Now, closure is finally coming for Dodson, who grew up across the street from Clarence and Hazel Jackson and their son, Wayne. While not a blood relative, the two had such a bond that she then and now referred to him as "my big brother."
Jackson's only living relatives are a few cousins, and together with Dodson had been hoping for something, anything, that could be connected to the fallen serviceman and allow for a proper burial.
The brief phone call Friday was light on details, but Dodson was told it was DNA from a bone fragment that was matched to samples from Jackson. Officials will make a trip to visit Dodson later this month.
"It's just wonderful news," Dodson said. "I just can't wrap my mind around it. We've waited and waited. Every time they'd identified someone and he wasn't one of them; I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen.
"I know his parents are looking down with smiles on their faces," Dodson said through tears.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
March 11, 2016
------------
Wayne Dean Jackson
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, only son of Clarence and Hazel Drake Jackson (both deceased) was born September 5, 1931, in Schuyler County near Downing, Missouri.
Wayne Dean died November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. After the initial investigation, the plane was not seen again until a crew of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of it at the tip of Colony Glacier June 10, 2012.
Survivors include his sister from the heart Vicki Kelso Dodson (Joe), their children Kendra (Dodson) Breitsprecher and Joseph (J.) Dodson and their grandchildren. 1st cousins Ella B. Lehr Eiffert, Robert Bruner, Max Bruner, Leo Waddle, Barbara Jackson Gravett, Sandra Jackson Granzow, Sue Burns Glass, Donna Burns Whisman, and John Burns. He is also survived by many cousins, classmates, and friends.
Memorials in his memory may are suggested to the Patriot Guard Riders Association and may be left at or mailed to the Payne Funeral Chapel, 202 E. Madison St. Memphis, Missouri 63555.
He will be escorted back to Downing, Missouri by the Iowa and Missouri Patriot Guard from Des Moines Airport late August 3, 2016, Wednesday afternoon. They are anticipating that there will be between 75 to 125 bikes ridden to pay him honor. There will be an Avenue of the Flags 1000 strong from Lancaster to downing placed by the Patriot Guard.
Visitation will be held at the Downing Christian Church Friday, August 5, 2016, from 6 to 8 with the family present to greet friends.
Memorial services for [Jackson] Will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, August 6, 2016, at the Downing Christan Church. Officiating the service will be the Airforce Chaplain assisted by Pastor Larry Smith. Interment will follow with Coming Home Celebration occurring where he will be escorted by the Patriot Guard to the Downing Cemetery and full Military honors presented by the Air Force branch before he is laid to rest in his family lot, being placed in between his parents and he will be "Finally At Rest".
Arrangements were entrusted to the care of the Payne Funeral Chapel of Memphis to assist the family.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
August 2, 2016
------------
Heartland airman finally makes it home
DOWNING, Mo. — It was a night filled with sadness, but also relief, as the remains of Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing finally returned home to the Heartland.
After a journey that has lasted a little over 60 years a lost Heartland airman finally returned home while a community is getting ready for celebrate his life.
64-years-ago, Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing, Missouri was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into a mountain in Alaska.
That was in 1952, when Jackson was 21-years-old.
On Wednesday, he finally came home.
Around 6:30 p.m., Patriot Guard riders lead his processional from Des Moines, Iowa to Downing, Missouri.
People were on the sidewalks with flags welcoming Jackson home.
The procession ended at the Downing Christian Church where his remains now are.
KTVO talked to long time family friend of Jackson, Vicki Dodson who is finally relieved that her big brother is finally home.
"Very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time. It's lasted four years, now he's here. I'm very thankful for family, friends, his classmates who have supported me and I'm just overwhelmed."
There will be a visitation at the Downing Christian Church on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. with the family present.
On Saturday morning, a Memorial Service will be held at the church under the direction of the Payne Funeral Chapel.
He will be given full Military Honors and interred on the family lot between his parents.
By Vanessa Alonso
August 3, 2016
------------
DOWNING, MO. — Both a sense of sadness and relief filled the air in one northeast Missouri community as a fallen Heartland hero was finally laid to rest.
"Day is done - gone the sun. From the lakes - from the hills - from the sky. All is well - safely rest."
Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson was laid to rest Saturday morning.
The moving ceremony ended a chapter and provided a sense of closure to those that were close to the Downing, Missouri resident. 64-years-ago, the United States Air Force member was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into an Alaska mountainside about 50 miles east of Anchorage.
Jackson was just 21 years old. The crash in the year 1952 resulted in an avalanche, and because of that, the plane had not been spotted again until 2012.
In June of that year, members of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of the plane at the tip of Colony Glacier. Because of the extreme condition of the glacier, recovery crews are only able to search the area once a year during the summer month of June.
Positively identifying the remains of all 52 individuals involved in the crash took almost four years. This past Wednesday, Wayne Dean Jackson finally came home.
When longtime family friend Vicki Dodson heard the news, she felt a great sense of relief. She says she also felt that Jackson was a part of her family, and looked at him as an older brother.
"I'm very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time."
On Saturday, the sun shined brightly as family, friends and classmates gathered once again to reminisce on the life of Jackson. Although sad, the service was more of a celebration, which reflected on the airman's service of the United States.
Stories of his life as a young man growing up in Downing were also shared. Jackson was described as the type of person that everyone knew and loved. When the news of the crash broke, the small town of Downing was struck with grief.
However, those who knew Jackson held on to hope that he would someday find his way home where he could finally rest in peace with ones he loved. At the Downing Cemetery, Jackson was presented with full military honors by the United States Air Force.
He was laid to rest between his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. In addition to family and friends, members of the Patriot Guard were also at the service to remember Wayne Dean Jackson.
Seventy-five to 152 bikers escorted Jackson's casket from Des Moines Airport to Downing on Wednesday.
By Ashley Hoak
August 6, 2016
USAF Korea
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, died on November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2012.
------------
Mount Gannett, AK Globemaster Crashes, Nov 1952
CLUE SPURS PLANE SEARCH
GLOBEMASTER CARRYING 52 MEN MISSING
Anchorage, Alaska (AP)—A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue Monday to the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemaster which vanished Saturday night over the Gulf of Alaska.
Twenty-four search planes were poised here ready to fan out when weather permits over the 150 miles to tiny Middleton Island, the four-engined transport's last check-point. The weather outlook was poor.
The 41 Army and Air Force passengers and 11 crewmen were listed officially Sunday as missing in the continuing plague of U.S. military air disasters throughout the world.
Third Disaster.
It was the third U. S. military air disaster in Alaska in 15 days, involving 91 men, and the sixth throughout the world during that period. The six planes carried a total of 162 passengers and crew — eight survived and the others are missing.
A limited search Sunday, hampered by fog, light rain and low ceiling, turned up no trace of the Globemaster, which vanished on a 1,400-mile flight from McChord Air Force Base, its home field near, Tacoma, Wash., to Elmendorf Base at Anchorage.
Largest Transport.
The huge, four-engine transport, largest in military use, last reported by radio at 9:47 p.m. PST last night, over Middleton Island, about 150 miles southeast of here in the Gulf of Alaska.
The Globemaster, operated by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), was flying at 9,000 feet altitude on schedule 6 hours and 17 minutes out of McChord and only 46 minutes from Anchorage.
Then there was silence.
From tiny Middleton Island, the big plane's course took it over about 50 miles of water and 100 miles of land described by veteran fliers as among "the most rugged in the world."
To the right of its route is a mountain range studded with towering, glacier-covered peaks of 10,000 feet or more. On course are smaller mountains in an almost impenetrable wilderness.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Washington
November 24, 1952
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The wreckage was found several days later on the South side of Mount Gannett. There were no survivors.
Additional Information On Crew Members:
CAPT. KENNETH J. DUVALL, 37, the aircraft commander, of Vallejo, Cal. His wife is living at Tacoma.
CAPT. ALGER M. CHENEY, 32, first pilot, of Lubec, Me., wife lives at Tacoma.
Airman 2/c CONRAD N. SPRAGUE of Sequim, Wash. His wife and son, DENNIS, 4, live at Tacoma.
------------
Associated Press, June 28, 2012
Alaska Glacier Wreckage Is 1950s Military Plane
The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.
Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done. Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.
The Alaska National Guard discovered the wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier, about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage was spotted soon after the heavy transport plane vanished Nov. 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members, but it became buried in snow and likely churned beneath the surface of the glacier for decades.
The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. An Associated Press report on Nov. 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and the sixth around the Pacific Rim.
Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather. Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the Globemaster.
After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane "obviously was flying at full speed" when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding and disintegrating over two or three acres. Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification.
The debris was discovered June 14 (2012) while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The guardsmen flew over the area several times. Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the area while the military investigation was conducted. An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier. The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the command's lab in Hawaii for analysis.
------------
Melting Alaskan Glacier Yields New Remains of Decades-Old Crash
On Nov. 22 1952, an Air Force C-124 cargo plane crashed into Mount Gannett in Alaska. All 52 members were instantly killed. But 61 years later, a melting glacier is giving up the secrets of that crash.
The investigation is being conducted by the Alaskan Command and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a division of the Department of Defense that conducts investigations to account for missing Americans..
Doug Beckstead, a historian at Anchorage's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, told ABC News that investigators immediately went to explore the wreckage but by Dec. 1 of that year, all evidence of the crash had disappeared, submerged into the glacier.
The lack of evidence meant that families were not only left without their loved ones but without any answers as to what happened to them.
"My grandmother just received a letter saying, ‘Your husband was deceased in a plane crash — there was no more information," Tonja Anderson Dell told ABC News. Dell's grandfather, Airman Isaac Anderson, died in the crash, and she has spent the past 14 years trying to find out what happened.
But in June 2012, the Alaska Army National Guard's Black Hawk Unit was on a training flight when a crew member noticed a tire, yellow life rafts and oxygen bottles on the glacier.
"We knew it was an aircraft wreck of some size," Officer Bryan Keese, who piloted the helicopter that made the original discovery, told ABC News.
Keese and his crew told their boss what they had seen. The unit returned one more time and found human remains. It subsequently turned the investigation over to Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
It is working with the Alaskan command. The Alaskan Command searches for the debris and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, looks for human remains.
The 2012 recovery effort lasted nearly a week, according to JPAC, and the team collected more evidence and possible human remains.
Additional layers of the glacier melted away this winter, yielding more possibilities of finding remains. JPAC returned to Alaska last month to continue the investigation said Lee Tucker, a JPAC spokesperson. JPAC concluded its investigation on July 9.
So far, said Tucker, the investigation has yielded human remains and material evidence of the crash. The material items have included hockey pucks, a piece of a raft, a camp stove and pieces of the aircraft.
Tucker said the investigators were testing the human remains and hoped to reveal the identities shortly.
Even after all these decades, the families who lost loved ones are still awaiting answers.
Tara Troy, whose great-uncle William Turner was the navigator on the Air Force plane, grew up hearing about the crash. She told ABC News that when she found out remnants of the plane had been found, "I almost had the wind knocked out of me."
"I'm just hoping that someday they will actually find him," she said. "He's family. He should be home, and not on some glacier in the middle of nowhere."
By Alana Abramson
July 12, 2013
------------
No remains of Downing man found in '52 military crash
The first group of remains recovered from a 1952 military cargo plane crash did not contain anything belonging to a former Downing, Mo., resident who perished in the crash while en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.
U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson, then 21, was among those flying in a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II from McChord Air Force Base in Washington to Elmendorf on Nov. 22, 1952. The flight was less than an hour from its destination when it apparently crashed into Mount Gannett and exploded, killing all 52 passengers.
A melting Alaskan glacier is slowly revealing evidence from the crash, and teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made trips last summer to recover remains, belongings and wreckage. DNA testing on recovered remains identified 19 different subjects, but none from Jackson, according to former Downing, Mo., resident Vicky Kelso Dodson.
Dodson grew up across the street from Jackson and his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. Wayne Dean Jackson was 14 years older than Dodson and, she said, was like her "big brother." With Jackson's only living relatives a few cousins, Dodson has led the effort of trying to bring some closure more than 60 years after the deadly flight.
"I'm still praying," she said. "I want to bring him home. I'm not giving up."
The military is planning another search this summer and in summer 2016, but it's a race against time and the elements. While the melting glacier and shifting ice has revealed the crash site, it is also taking the crash site with it into Lake George near Anchorage.
These two summer searches, planned for a time when the weather conditions are decent enough to allow for a safe search, may be the last before all the evidence is lost to the lake.
The crash site was discovered in June 2012.
Dodson said the unidentified remains will be part of a mass burial at Arlington National Cemetery. A date for that ceremony has not yet been set.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
April 29, 2014
------------
Remains identified of Downing, Mo., Air Force airman killed in 1952 plane crash
Downing, Mo.
"They found my brother," Vicky Kelso Dodson said through the phone, her voice cracking with emotion. "I just found out."
Lost nearly 65 years ago in a military cargo plane crash, remains of U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson were identified Friday by Air Force Mortuary Affairs in Dover, Delaware.
Jackson, of Downing, Mo., was 21 years old when he boarded a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II at McChord Air Force Base in Washington on Nov. 22, 1952. The plane was en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska when it crashed at Mount Gannett, about an hour from its destination, killing 52 people.
In recent years, melting glacier ice began revealing the crash site that had been covered by harsh conditions for six decades. Teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made several trips to recover remains, belongings and wreckage in the hopes of giving family members and friends some level of closure.
Now, closure is finally coming for Dodson, who grew up across the street from Clarence and Hazel Jackson and their son, Wayne. While not a blood relative, the two had such a bond that she then and now referred to him as "my big brother."
Jackson's only living relatives are a few cousins, and together with Dodson had been hoping for something, anything, that could be connected to the fallen serviceman and allow for a proper burial.
The brief phone call Friday was light on details, but Dodson was told it was DNA from a bone fragment that was matched to samples from Jackson. Officials will make a trip to visit Dodson later this month.
"It's just wonderful news," Dodson said. "I just can't wrap my mind around it. We've waited and waited. Every time they'd identified someone and he wasn't one of them; I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen.
"I know his parents are looking down with smiles on their faces," Dodson said through tears.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
March 11, 2016
------------
Wayne Dean Jackson
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, only son of Clarence and Hazel Drake Jackson (both deceased) was born September 5, 1931, in Schuyler County near Downing, Missouri.
Wayne Dean died November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. After the initial investigation, the plane was not seen again until a crew of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of it at the tip of Colony Glacier June 10, 2012.
Survivors include his sister from the heart Vicki Kelso Dodson (Joe), their children Kendra (Dodson) Breitsprecher and Joseph (J.) Dodson and their grandchildren. 1st cousins Ella B. Lehr Eiffert, Robert Bruner, Max Bruner, Leo Waddle, Barbara Jackson Gravett, Sandra Jackson Granzow, Sue Burns Glass, Donna Burns Whisman, and John Burns. He is also survived by many cousins, classmates, and friends.
Memorials in his memory may are suggested to the Patriot Guard Riders Association and may be left at or mailed to the Payne Funeral Chapel, 202 E. Madison St. Memphis, Missouri 63555.
He will be escorted back to Downing, Missouri by the Iowa and Missouri Patriot Guard from Des Moines Airport late August 3, 2016, Wednesday afternoon. They are anticipating that there will be between 75 to 125 bikes ridden to pay him honor. There will be an Avenue of the Flags 1000 strong from Lancaster to downing placed by the Patriot Guard.
Visitation will be held at the Downing Christian Church Friday, August 5, 2016, from 6 to 8 with the family present to greet friends.
Memorial services for [Jackson] Will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, August 6, 2016, at the Downing Christan Church. Officiating the service will be the Airforce Chaplain assisted by Pastor Larry Smith. Interment will follow with Coming Home Celebration occurring where he will be escorted by the Patriot Guard to the Downing Cemetery and full Military honors presented by the Air Force branch before he is laid to rest in his family lot, being placed in between his parents and he will be "Finally At Rest".
Arrangements were entrusted to the care of the Payne Funeral Chapel of Memphis to assist the family.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
August 2, 2016
------------
Heartland airman finally makes it home
DOWNING, Mo. — It was a night filled with sadness, but also relief, as the remains of Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing finally returned home to the Heartland.
After a journey that has lasted a little over 60 years a lost Heartland airman finally returned home while a community is getting ready for celebrate his life.
64-years-ago, Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing, Missouri was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into a mountain in Alaska.
That was in 1952, when Jackson was 21-years-old.
On Wednesday, he finally came home.
Around 6:30 p.m., Patriot Guard riders lead his processional from Des Moines, Iowa to Downing, Missouri.
People were on the sidewalks with flags welcoming Jackson home.
The procession ended at the Downing Christian Church where his remains now are.
KTVO talked to long time family friend of Jackson, Vicki Dodson who is finally relieved that her big brother is finally home.
"Very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time. It's lasted four years, now he's here. I'm very thankful for family, friends, his classmates who have supported me and I'm just overwhelmed."
There will be a visitation at the Downing Christian Church on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. with the family present.
On Saturday morning, a Memorial Service will be held at the church under the direction of the Payne Funeral Chapel.
He will be given full Military Honors and interred on the family lot between his parents.
By Vanessa Alonso
August 3, 2016
------------
DOWNING, MO. — Both a sense of sadness and relief filled the air in one northeast Missouri community as a fallen Heartland hero was finally laid to rest.
"Day is done - gone the sun. From the lakes - from the hills - from the sky. All is well - safely rest."
Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson was laid to rest Saturday morning.
The moving ceremony ended a chapter and provided a sense of closure to those that were close to the Downing, Missouri resident. 64-years-ago, the United States Air Force member was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into an Alaska mountainside about 50 miles east of Anchorage.
Jackson was just 21 years old. The crash in the year 1952 resulted in an avalanche, and because of that, the plane had not been spotted again until 2012.
In June of that year, members of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of the plane at the tip of Colony Glacier. Because of the extreme condition of the glacier, recovery crews are only able to search the area once a year during the summer month of June.
Positively identifying the remains of all 52 individuals involved in the crash took almost four years. This past Wednesday, Wayne Dean Jackson finally came home.
When longtime family friend Vicki Dodson heard the news, she felt a great sense of relief. She says she also felt that Jackson was a part of her family, and looked at him as an older brother.
"I'm very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time."
On Saturday, the sun shined brightly as family, friends and classmates gathered once again to reminisce on the life of Jackson. Although sad, the service was more of a celebration, which reflected on the airman's service of the United States.
Stories of his life as a young man growing up in Downing were also shared. Jackson was described as the type of person that everyone knew and loved. When the news of the crash broke, the small town of Downing was struck with grief.
However, those who knew Jackson held on to hope that he would someday find his way home where he could finally rest in peace with ones he loved. At the Downing Cemetery, Jackson was presented with full military honors by the United States Air Force.
He was laid to rest between his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. In addition to family and friends, members of the Patriot Guard were also at the service to remember Wayne Dean Jackson.
Seventy-five to 152 bikers escorted Jackson's casket from Des Moines Airport to Downing on Wednesday.
By Ashley Hoak
August 6, 2016
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, died on November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. The wreckage was rediscovered in 2012.
------------
Mount Gannett, AK Globemaster Crashes, Nov 1952
CLUE SPURS PLANE SEARCH
GLOBEMASTER CARRYING 52 MEN MISSING
Anchorage, Alaska (AP)—A faint radio signal was the only tenuous clue Monday to the fate of 52 men aboard a giant C-124 Globemaster which vanished Saturday night over the Gulf of Alaska.
Twenty-four search planes were poised here ready to fan out when weather permits over the 150 miles to tiny Middleton Island, the four-engined transport's last check-point. The weather outlook was poor.
The 41 Army and Air Force passengers and 11 crewmen were listed officially Sunday as missing in the continuing plague of U.S. military air disasters throughout the world.
Third Disaster.
It was the third U. S. military air disaster in Alaska in 15 days, involving 91 men, and the sixth throughout the world during that period. The six planes carried a total of 162 passengers and crew — eight survived and the others are missing.
A limited search Sunday, hampered by fog, light rain and low ceiling, turned up no trace of the Globemaster, which vanished on a 1,400-mile flight from McChord Air Force Base, its home field near, Tacoma, Wash., to Elmendorf Base at Anchorage.
Largest Transport.
The huge, four-engine transport, largest in military use, last reported by radio at 9:47 p.m. PST last night, over Middleton Island, about 150 miles southeast of here in the Gulf of Alaska.
The Globemaster, operated by the Military Air Transport Service (MATS), was flying at 9,000 feet altitude on schedule 6 hours and 17 minutes out of McChord and only 46 minutes from Anchorage.
Then there was silence.
From tiny Middleton Island, the big plane's course took it over about 50 miles of water and 100 miles of land described by veteran fliers as among "the most rugged in the world."
To the right of its route is a mountain range studded with towering, glacier-covered peaks of 10,000 feet or more. On course are smaller mountains in an almost impenetrable wilderness.
Walla Walla Union-Bulletin Washington
November 24, 1952
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: The wreckage was found several days later on the South side of Mount Gannett. There were no survivors.
Additional Information On Crew Members:
CAPT. KENNETH J. DUVALL, 37, the aircraft commander, of Vallejo, Cal. His wife is living at Tacoma.
CAPT. ALGER M. CHENEY, 32, first pilot, of Lubec, Me., wife lives at Tacoma.
Airman 2/c CONRAD N. SPRAGUE of Sequim, Wash. His wife and son, DENNIS, 4, live at Tacoma.
------------
Associated Press, June 28, 2012
Alaska Glacier Wreckage Is 1950s Military Plane
The wreckage of a military plane found this month on an Alaska glacier is that of an Air Force plane that crashed in 1952, killing all 52 people aboard, military officials said Wednesday.
Army Capt. Jamie Dobson said evidence found at the crash site correlates with the missing C-124A Globemaster, but the military is not eliminating other possibilities because much investigation still needs to be done. Processing DNA samples from relatives of those on board the plane could take up to six years, Dobson said.
The Alaska National Guard discovered the wreckage and possibly bones June 10 on Colony Glacier, about 40 miles east of Anchorage. The wreckage was spotted soon after the heavy transport plane vanished Nov. 22, 1952, with 41 passengers and 11 crew members, but it became buried in snow and likely churned beneath the surface of the glacier for decades.
The plane went down on a flight from McChord Air Force Base in Washington State. An Associated Press report on Nov. 24, 1952, said the Globemaster was the third big Air Force transport plane to crash or vanish in Alaska that month and the sixth around the Pacific Rim.
Soon after the crash, a 12-member military team tried three times to make it to the site, but was thwarted by bad weather. Days after the Globemaster went down, a member of the Fairbanks Civil Air Patrol, along with a member of the 10th Air Rescue Squadron, landed at a glacier in the area and positively identified the wreckage as the Globemaster.
After returning from the site, he told reporters that the plane "obviously was flying at full speed" when it hit Mount Gannett, sliding down the snow-covered cliffs, exploding and disintegrating over two or three acres. Only the tail and flippers of the craft were intact, but the tail numbers were enough for an identification.
The debris was discovered June 14 (2012) while Alaska National Guardsmen were flying a Blackhawk helicopter during a training mission near the glacier. The guardsmen flew over the area several times. Federal aviation officials implemented temporary flight restrictions over the area while the military investigation was conducted. An eight-man Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command arrived last week, military officials said. It completed its work Tuesday at the glacier. The team recovered materials like a life-support system from the wreckage and possible bones from the glacier. The evidence was being taken to the command's lab in Hawaii for analysis.
------------
Melting Alaskan Glacier Yields New Remains of Decades-Old Crash
On Nov. 22 1952, an Air Force C-124 cargo plane crashed into Mount Gannett in Alaska. All 52 members were instantly killed. But 61 years later, a melting glacier is giving up the secrets of that crash.
The investigation is being conducted by the Alaskan Command and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, a division of the Department of Defense that conducts investigations to account for missing Americans..
Doug Beckstead, a historian at Anchorage's Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, told ABC News that investigators immediately went to explore the wreckage but by Dec. 1 of that year, all evidence of the crash had disappeared, submerged into the glacier.
The lack of evidence meant that families were not only left without their loved ones but without any answers as to what happened to them.
"My grandmother just received a letter saying, ‘Your husband was deceased in a plane crash — there was no more information," Tonja Anderson Dell told ABC News. Dell's grandfather, Airman Isaac Anderson, died in the crash, and she has spent the past 14 years trying to find out what happened.
But in June 2012, the Alaska Army National Guard's Black Hawk Unit was on a training flight when a crew member noticed a tire, yellow life rafts and oxygen bottles on the glacier.
"We knew it was an aircraft wreck of some size," Officer Bryan Keese, who piloted the helicopter that made the original discovery, told ABC News.
Keese and his crew told their boss what they had seen. The unit returned one more time and found human remains. It subsequently turned the investigation over to Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
It is working with the Alaskan command. The Alaskan Command searches for the debris and the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, looks for human remains.
The 2012 recovery effort lasted nearly a week, according to JPAC, and the team collected more evidence and possible human remains.
Additional layers of the glacier melted away this winter, yielding more possibilities of finding remains. JPAC returned to Alaska last month to continue the investigation said Lee Tucker, a JPAC spokesperson. JPAC concluded its investigation on July 9.
So far, said Tucker, the investigation has yielded human remains and material evidence of the crash. The material items have included hockey pucks, a piece of a raft, a camp stove and pieces of the aircraft.
Tucker said the investigators were testing the human remains and hoped to reveal the identities shortly.
Even after all these decades, the families who lost loved ones are still awaiting answers.
Tara Troy, whose great-uncle William Turner was the navigator on the Air Force plane, grew up hearing about the crash. She told ABC News that when she found out remnants of the plane had been found, "I almost had the wind knocked out of me."
"I'm just hoping that someday they will actually find him," she said. "He's family. He should be home, and not on some glacier in the middle of nowhere."
By Alana Abramson
July 12, 2013
------------
No remains of Downing man found in '52 military crash
The first group of remains recovered from a 1952 military cargo plane crash did not contain anything belonging to a former Downing, Mo., resident who perished in the crash while en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska.
U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson, then 21, was among those flying in a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II from McChord Air Force Base in Washington to Elmendorf on Nov. 22, 1952. The flight was less than an hour from its destination when it apparently crashed into Mount Gannett and exploded, killing all 52 passengers.
A melting Alaskan glacier is slowly revealing evidence from the crash, and teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made trips last summer to recover remains, belongings and wreckage. DNA testing on recovered remains identified 19 different subjects, but none from Jackson, according to former Downing, Mo., resident Vicky Kelso Dodson.
Dodson grew up across the street from Jackson and his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. Wayne Dean Jackson was 14 years older than Dodson and, she said, was like her "big brother." With Jackson's only living relatives a few cousins, Dodson has led the effort of trying to bring some closure more than 60 years after the deadly flight.
"I'm still praying," she said. "I want to bring him home. I'm not giving up."
The military is planning another search this summer and in summer 2016, but it's a race against time and the elements. While the melting glacier and shifting ice has revealed the crash site, it is also taking the crash site with it into Lake George near Anchorage.
These two summer searches, planned for a time when the weather conditions are decent enough to allow for a safe search, may be the last before all the evidence is lost to the lake.
The crash site was discovered in June 2012.
Dodson said the unidentified remains will be part of a mass burial at Arlington National Cemetery. A date for that ceremony has not yet been set.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
April 29, 2014
------------
Remains identified of Downing, Mo., Air Force airman killed in 1952 plane crash
Downing, Mo.
"They found my brother," Vicky Kelso Dodson said through the phone, her voice cracking with emotion. "I just found out."
Lost nearly 65 years ago in a military cargo plane crash, remains of U.S. Air Force Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson were identified Friday by Air Force Mortuary Affairs in Dover, Delaware.
Jackson, of Downing, Mo., was 21 years old when he boarded a Douglas C-124-A Globemaster II at McChord Air Force Base in Washington on Nov. 22, 1952. The plane was en route to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska when it crashed at Mount Gannett, about an hour from its destination, killing 52 people.
In recent years, melting glacier ice began revealing the crash site that had been covered by harsh conditions for six decades. Teams from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) made several trips to recover remains, belongings and wreckage in the hopes of giving family members and friends some level of closure.
Now, closure is finally coming for Dodson, who grew up across the street from Clarence and Hazel Jackson and their son, Wayne. While not a blood relative, the two had such a bond that she then and now referred to him as "my big brother."
Jackson's only living relatives are a few cousins, and together with Dodson had been hoping for something, anything, that could be connected to the fallen serviceman and allow for a proper burial.
The brief phone call Friday was light on details, but Dodson was told it was DNA from a bone fragment that was matched to samples from Jackson. Officials will make a trip to visit Dodson later this month.
"It's just wonderful news," Dodson said. "I just can't wrap my mind around it. We've waited and waited. Every time they'd identified someone and he wasn't one of them; I was beginning to think it wasn't going to happen.
"I know his parents are looking down with smiles on their faces," Dodson said through tears.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
March 11, 2016
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Wayne Dean Jackson
A/3C Wayne Dean Jackson, only son of Clarence and Hazel Drake Jackson (both deceased) was born September 5, 1931, in Schuyler County near Downing, Missouri.
Wayne Dean died November 22, 1952, when the C-125 Globemaster of which he was a crew member crashed into the side of Mount Gannett, Alaska. After the initial investigation, the plane was not seen again until a crew of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of it at the tip of Colony Glacier June 10, 2012.
Survivors include his sister from the heart Vicki Kelso Dodson (Joe), their children Kendra (Dodson) Breitsprecher and Joseph (J.) Dodson and their grandchildren. 1st cousins Ella B. Lehr Eiffert, Robert Bruner, Max Bruner, Leo Waddle, Barbara Jackson Gravett, Sandra Jackson Granzow, Sue Burns Glass, Donna Burns Whisman, and John Burns. He is also survived by many cousins, classmates, and friends.
Memorials in his memory may are suggested to the Patriot Guard Riders Association and may be left at or mailed to the Payne Funeral Chapel, 202 E. Madison St. Memphis, Missouri 63555.
He will be escorted back to Downing, Missouri by the Iowa and Missouri Patriot Guard from Des Moines Airport late August 3, 2016, Wednesday afternoon. They are anticipating that there will be between 75 to 125 bikes ridden to pay him honor. There will be an Avenue of the Flags 1000 strong from Lancaster to downing placed by the Patriot Guard.
Visitation will be held at the Downing Christian Church Friday, August 5, 2016, from 6 to 8 with the family present to greet friends.
Memorial services for [Jackson] Will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, August 6, 2016, at the Downing Christan Church. Officiating the service will be the Airforce Chaplain assisted by Pastor Larry Smith. Interment will follow with Coming Home Celebration occurring where he will be escorted by the Patriot Guard to the Downing Cemetery and full Military honors presented by the Air Force branch before he is laid to rest in his family lot, being placed in between his parents and he will be "Finally At Rest".
Arrangements were entrusted to the care of the Payne Funeral Chapel of Memphis to assist the family.
Kirksville Daily Express
Kirksville, Missouri
August 2, 2016
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Heartland airman finally makes it home
DOWNING, Mo. — It was a night filled with sadness, but also relief, as the remains of Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing finally returned home to the Heartland.
After a journey that has lasted a little over 60 years a lost Heartland airman finally returned home while a community is getting ready for celebrate his life.
64-years-ago, Air Force member Wayne Jackson of Downing, Missouri was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into a mountain in Alaska.
That was in 1952, when Jackson was 21-years-old.
On Wednesday, he finally came home.
Around 6:30 p.m., Patriot Guard riders lead his processional from Des Moines, Iowa to Downing, Missouri.
People were on the sidewalks with flags welcoming Jackson home.
The procession ended at the Downing Christian Church where his remains now are.
KTVO talked to long time family friend of Jackson, Vicki Dodson who is finally relieved that her big brother is finally home.
"Very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time. It's lasted four years, now he's here. I'm very thankful for family, friends, his classmates who have supported me and I'm just overwhelmed."
There will be a visitation at the Downing Christian Church on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. with the family present.
On Saturday morning, a Memorial Service will be held at the church under the direction of the Payne Funeral Chapel.
He will be given full Military Honors and interred on the family lot between his parents.
By Vanessa Alonso
August 3, 2016
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DOWNING, MO. — Both a sense of sadness and relief filled the air in one northeast Missouri community as a fallen Heartland hero was finally laid to rest.
"Day is done - gone the sun. From the lakes - from the hills - from the sky. All is well - safely rest."
Airman 3rd Class Wayne Dean Jackson was laid to rest Saturday morning.
The moving ceremony ended a chapter and provided a sense of closure to those that were close to the Downing, Missouri resident. 64-years-ago, the United States Air Force member was killed when a plane carrying him and 51 others crashed into an Alaska mountainside about 50 miles east of Anchorage.
Jackson was just 21 years old. The crash in the year 1952 resulted in an avalanche, and because of that, the plane had not been spotted again until 2012.
In June of that year, members of the Army National Guard spotted pieces of the plane at the tip of Colony Glacier. Because of the extreme condition of the glacier, recovery crews are only able to search the area once a year during the summer month of June.
Positively identifying the remains of all 52 individuals involved in the crash took almost four years. This past Wednesday, Wayne Dean Jackson finally came home.
When longtime family friend Vicki Dodson heard the news, she felt a great sense of relief. She says she also felt that Jackson was a part of her family, and looked at him as an older brother.
"I'm very thankful and grateful. I did not think this day would come. I have been praying for this for a long time."
On Saturday, the sun shined brightly as family, friends and classmates gathered once again to reminisce on the life of Jackson. Although sad, the service was more of a celebration, which reflected on the airman's service of the United States.
Stories of his life as a young man growing up in Downing were also shared. Jackson was described as the type of person that everyone knew and loved. When the news of the crash broke, the small town of Downing was struck with grief.
However, those who knew Jackson held on to hope that he would someday find his way home where he could finally rest in peace with ones he loved. At the Downing Cemetery, Jackson was presented with full military honors by the United States Air Force.
He was laid to rest between his parents, Clarence and Hazel Jackson. In addition to family and friends, members of the Patriot Guard were also at the service to remember Wayne Dean Jackson.
Seventy-five to 152 bikers escorted Jackson's casket from Des Moines Airport to Downing on Wednesday.
By Ashley Hoak
August 6, 2016
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