A Mitchell B-25 Bomber That Crashed and Sank Into the Monongahela River in the Winter of 1956 Has Never Been Found – Was It Carrying a Secret Cargo or Passenger?

I stumbled upon this story while researching Monongahela’s sea monster. There’s not much information (and a few weird conspiracy theories), but I thought I’d write it up anyways.

Incident

On January 31, 1956, a Mitchell B-25 Bomber crash landed in the Monongahela River near where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers join to form the Ohio River.

The aircraft had six crew and passengers. It was on a routine training flight to pick up airplane parts. This flight originated at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada and destined for Olmstead Air Force Base in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. There had been two refueling stops: the first at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma and the second at Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan.

At 4PM the crew realized that their aircraft was losing fuel and requested a landing at Greater Pittsburgh Airport. Upon realizing they hadn’t the fuel to make this airport, they requested to land at Allegheny County Airport instead.

By 4:11PM the B-25 was out of fuel, and the pilot landed it on the Monongahela River.

Although all six on board survived the landing, two drowned trying to make it to shore.

Ours later, the Coast Guard cutter Forsythia snagged a wing of the airplane with it’s anchor, but the line slipped and the B-25 has not been seen since.

Non-conspiracy Theories

Some believe that the acidity of the highly polluted Monongahela River corroded away the aluminum skin of the aircraft, leaving only the engines and landing gear.

Some say the aircraft floated on the river all the way down to the town of Emsworth, Pennsylvania on the Ohio River.

There are also deep excavations within the river. The B-25 Recovery Group (a non-profit organization formed to find the aircraft) speculates that the aircraft may have sunk into a gravel pit dug by excavators for construction fill.

It’s also possible that the aircraft has been demolished by the decades of passing barges.

Conspiracy Theories

One conspiracy theory is that the military recovered the aircraft in secret.

Some believe that the aircraft was carrying a secret, possibly dangerous cargo. Theories include a nuclear weapon, nerve gas, or even a UFO from Area 51.

Some think the aircraft was carrying Soviet agents. There’s another theory that it was carrying Las Vegas showgirls to entertain senators in Washington, DC.

“Lost 17 Minutes”

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a February 6th, 1997 article (linked below) describing how a twin-engined Cessna was used to reenact the descent of the B-25.

Ray Duquesne, the organizer of this event, said:

there had always been a “lost 17 minutes” mystery about the Air Force’s version of the last leg of the B-25’s flight.

Note: it’s not clear to me from this article if “lost 17 minute” means the Cessna experiment took (1) 17 minutes longer than expected or (2) 17 minutes shorter than expected.

This article claims that some believe that the crash never even happened.

The Lost Locomotive of Kiowa Creek

Is a secret removal even possible?

On the night of May 21, 1878, near the town of Kiowa Crossing, Colorado, a Kansas Pacific Railway train consisting of 25 cars plunged into Kiowa Creek when raging floods washed out the bridge. Engineers Frank Seldon, George Piatt, and John Bacon were all killed.

The cars and the coal tender were all salvaged in the following weeks, but (allegedly) the locomotive was never found.

In 1981 and 1982, Clive Cussler (author and founder of the National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA)) and his son did a cursory search of the area for magnetic anomalies, but found nothing.

In 1989, Clive Cussler organized a more thorough search using thirty metal detectors, magnetometers, and ground penetrating radar. Although small pieces of the wreck were found, no locomotive was detected.

The brief NUMA write up on this search (linked below) says:

Finally, a hunt through railroad archives by Loyd Glasier of Denver turned up a record of the locomotive being dug up in the dead of night and towed to Kansas City, where it was rebuilt and renumbered.

On one hand, it appears that a large vehicle can be recovered secretly (and using 1878 tech).

On the other hand, the locomotive crashed in a fairly remote area; whereas the B-25 crashed in a populated area.

Questions