Runaway C-47 Chases Pick Off Airstrip





    BURMA - Touring the forward areas, Brig. Gen. Lewis A. Pick, commanding general of the Ledo Road project, recently stopped and chatted with Pfc. Glenn Ballowe, of Chicago, operator of a road grader on the airstrip at Myitkyina.
  "Dangerous business, operating engineering equipment under Jap fire," Pick remarked.
  Ballowe's reply was a hoarse shout, "Look out, general!"
  Pick whirled around and was confronted with a C-47 cargo plane, out of control, careening crazily off the landing strip into the area occupied by the general's personal plane and the road grader.
  Pick and his executive officer, Col. C. S. Davis, and a score of officers and enlisted men suddenly found themselves in the path of the runaway ship. Rank and dignity were forgotten as everyone, to quote the general, "Got the hell out of there."
  The C-47 crashed into the general's plane, crushing it like an egg shell, and caromed off on its path of destruction for another 50 yards, smashing against the grader where the general had been standing.
  Still shaken after his close call, Pick was silent as he sadly surveyed the wreckage of his ship - a brand new, twin-engined plane, fresh from the manufacturer in the States. The shreds of the general's private seat in the plane, ripped to pieces by the propeller of the C-47, were more testimony of the narrow escape. For, had the accident occurred five minutes later, the general would have been seated in the plane, preparing to continue his tour.
  And, as battle-grimed American infantrymen, Chinese soldiers and Chindits milled about the wreckage, Ballowe elbowed his way up to the general.
  "Sir," he grinned, "flying is a dangerous business, too."



Adapted by Carl W. Weidenburner from an article appearing in the August 17, 1944 issue of CBI Roundup

Photos from the collection of Colonel Charles S. Davis    Courtesy of Joe Davis


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