Summersville, West Virginia — Historians in central West Virginia are planning to commemorate the mysterious crash site of a remarkable military aircraft — a wood-winged biplane sent to bomb miners during the infamous Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921.
The plane, which received little public attention, was also the first U.S. aircraft to drop a bomb on a battleship in a mission led by Brigadier General Billy Mitchell, the father of the United States Air Force.
The remnants of the aircraft may linger among mountains so rugged that the daughter of a Cherokee chieftain fled there in the early 1800s to avoid the Trail of Tears, but the site is now surrounded by one of West Virginia’s largest surface-mine complexes.
“It’s a fascinating history, and we’re hoping to draw attention to the site by placing a historic marker nearby,” says Ken Summers, a member of the Nicholas County Historic Landmarks Commission.
Summers and other commissioners have been working to identify the site and clarify its history, which is little known outside of Nicholas County, where photos of the aircraft, a Martin MB-1, are on display in the courthouse.
According to Summers, Mitchell dispatched three such planes under the direction of President Warren G. Harding to an airfield in present-day Kanawha City, now a Charleston suburb, where the pilots awaited payloads of gas to be dropped on armed miners.
The battle, which pitted more than 10,000 miners against 3,000 state and local law enforcement officers and strikebreakers, remains the largest labor uprising in US history.
The miners surrendered after federal troops arrived to support local forces, and the bombers were returning to Langley airfield, now an air force base, on September 3 when a storm hit.
As far as is known, the ill-fated plane turned too steeply during a wind, causing its pilot to lose control and crash into the forest. Summers said four crew members were killed, and one survived but died from his injuries shortly afterward.
Mitchell used the same plane, Bomber No. 5, to bomb naval ships in July as part of a demonstration.
Mitchell insisted that planes could bomb battleships, and during the demonstration, No. 5 sank the captured German battleship Ostfriesland by dropping a 2,000-pound bomb beneath its fuselage.
Summers claimed that he visited the crash site in the mountains in the late 1960s and discovered debris. A wheel from the aircraft may have been secured by Kanawha Valley historian Richard Andre and donated to the West Virginia Division of Culture and History, but it was later lost.
Other historians and government officials have reported finding remnants at a location described as the second left-hand hollow down from the head of Sugarcamp Branch, a tributary to Twenty Mile Creek. Twenty Mile Creek is said to be the mountain stream where Seaberry Arms Osborne’s body was hidden in the 1830s.
According to legend, Seaberry, a daughter of Chief Running Bear, fled the Trail of Tears in Cherokee, North Carolina, with her husband, Solomon, in 1838, seeking refuge in the mountains near the shared border of Clay and Nicholas counties.
A historical marker near the creek’s mouth states, “Prior to her death, she instructed Solomon to bury her along Twenty Mile Creek and keep the gravesite secret forever.”
Ironically, the upper watershed of the creek became one of West Virginia’s most heavily mined landscapes. Thousands of acres of mountaintop were mined in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and the idea that Solomon’s grave or the crash site would remain seemed unlikely.
“But the crash site is still there, as amazing as that might seem,” Mr. Summers said. “Amid all of that, there’s still a small patch of woods that hasn’t been touched, and that’s where it crashed.”
Summers stated that permission would now be required to access the site, as roads into the area are gated by coal mining companies.
Though the site is unlikely to be easily accessible in the near future, Summers says the commission hopes to collaborate with the state to install a roadside marker to remind visitors that such a seemingly remote area is part of a much larger history.
The crash site is approximately 30 air miles north of the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve.
