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Citat:Lake Murray's Mitchell
At about 10:45 a.m. on April 4, 1943, Bryce Lever was looking for fishing worms on the south shore of Lake Murray in South Carolina when he saw an airplane flying low, heading toward the water.
Katherine Townsend Tapp, 23, was strolling on the lake’s north shore when she saw the ailing aircraft, a B-25. She hurried to the home of Sewall Oliver, who had a speedboat that could be used in a rescue. Nearby, Martin Jones Jr., 10, also saw the aircraft descend; he yelled to his brother that one of the engines was out.
Martin had a sharp eye. After the B-25 had taken off from the Army Air Base outside Columbia, South Carolina, on a skip-bombing training mission over the lake’s island targets, its left engine had lost power. The base was a good six miles away, so Henry Mascall, the bombardier, urged pilot William Fallon to land on the lake. The airplane ditched about two miles west of Dreher Shoals Dam.
The crew climbed out onto the wings, then inflated a life raft and set it in the water. Sewall Oliver eventually rescued them all in his speedboat.
About seven minutes after impact, the aircraft began sinking. It finally ended up at the bottom of Lake Murray, at a depth of 150 feet—too deep for the U.S. Army Air Forces to salvage it. It was written off as a loss.
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