By David Kittredge
I recall when I was a young lad sitting at the kitchen table listening to my father and his best friend Eddie recounting aviation incidents which had taken place in and around Claremont. One of the discussions involved the airliner that had crashed into Moose Mountain while trying to land in West Lebanon in 1968, resulting in 32 deaths, which was socked in by fog. Another time Ed told us about the biplane that landed in Freemanâs hay field across from our house in the 1950âs. The plane had mechanical issues and its pilot put the WWI era aircraft down in the six hundred and eighty yard field, which I just measured the length of on Google maps. Luckily for the pilot and plane, the field had been freshly mowed and cleared of hay. The pilot fixed the problem with the help of Eddieâs grandfather Allie Freemanâs farm workshop tools and was able to successfully take off again the very same day. The point of the story was that the craft being a biplane