After our story got in the papers I got an intriguing call from a man in Yreka. His name is Verne Kendall and he told me the most amazing story:
In June of 1943 Verne and his parents were living in a trailer alongside Highway 99 where Summit Drive now dead ends. There are some homes there now and the Kendall barn is still standing on the site.
Anyway, they were awakened around 2:30am by the roar of airplane engines overhead. "The sound was deafening" Verne says, "it actually rattled our trailer home it was so loud." Running outside in their pajamas the family looked up and saw a huge bomber above them, heading north with very obvious engine trouble.
It disappeared into the night and then, moments later, they heard it coming back towards them and then the crash and explosion perhaps a mile to the north of their home.
Then, not long after going back in the house they heard a knock on the front door. Mr. Kendall opened it to see a man in an olive drab uniform who very politely asked him for a ride into town, saying he had just bailed out of the plane that crashed nearby.
Verne remembers his dad doing just that and seeing the burned crash remains the next morning from the highway. He also remembers finding 50 cal shells right in his yard, saying "they were jettisoning everything they could to keep altitude so there was stuff scattered all over the area."
While we're pretty sure now that part of the impact site now rests under the southbound lanes of Interstate 5 this last remark further supports our hope that local residents may possess such things. I again appeal to any reader(s) who think they might know someone with such an artifact to contact me, Bruce Batchelder, at 938-0385 to discuss loaning it to the museum.
The most remarkable part of the story of course is that Verne actually saw a survivor and is alive and able to tell about it. Verne and his wife run the Coca Cola Shop in the Bottling Works Mall in Yreka and happy to share the memory with others who are interested.
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