Some 60 men, women and children gathered at a carved stone monument set near the top of a mountainside Saturday to remember 25 people none had ever met but who died at that spot 76 years earlier.
Remembering the B-17 crash on Mount Tom 75 years on > >Published: 7/4/2021 8:36:49 PM
HOLYOKE On a dark, rainy night on July 9, 1946, about two dozen servicemen aboard a B-17 “Flying Fortress” were returning home from war. They had served in World War II and were flying towards Westover Field from Greenland with their final instructions to “Report for Separation.”
The war was over and they were heading back to their families a journey they never completed. The B-17, carrying 25 servicemen, crashed into Mount Tom in the late hours of the night. The men died upon impact on the side of the mountain, nearly 300 feet below the summit.