Arthur Paul Wikle

Staff Sergeant Arthur Paul Wikle was killed in a B-24 Liberator plane crash in
Utah during World War II. He was the Assistant Engineer.
Details about the crash:
At approximately 0650, "the group was headed due north
and had leveled off at 12,000 feet (about 3,000 feet above
the mountains). Lembright was dealing with turbulence caused
by up and down drafts from the mountains and engineer T/Sgt
Robison heard him tell the co-pilot that the plane was trying to
skid to the right. To keep his position on #146, Lembright had to
look due east, directly into the rising sun. Robison got the pilot's
sunglasses from storage and was ready to hand them over when
the flight smoothed out. Without any warning, #071 slid toward the
lead ship so that one propeller hit the lower part of #146's tail surface.
Then #071 moved slightly forward, causing even more damage to #146.
The collision knocked the left bomb bay door from Lembright's plane and
tore the entire tail section from Kaspervik's plane (Donald W. Kaspervik was the
pilot of the plane Paul was on).
Both ships veered to the left. 1st Lt Alfred Scarlata, flying lead in
the No.3 element, saw Kaspervik head down in a glide and Lembright
pull his ship up in a steep climb that resulted in a stall. From that point
on, he told the Board of Inquiry, "I don't think they had a Chinaman's
chance of getting out of that plane. They didn't have enough altitude...
and the violent action of the ship just held them in the airplane."
Robinson's plane was down 1,000 feet before he was able to push
himself out of the hole left by the missing bomb bay door only to
discover that his chute was on backward. When he finally pulled the
ripcord with his left hand, he was at about 500 feet. He landed hard,
and by the time he recovered, both planes had crashed. He got to the
crash site as fast as he could, but found no other survivors. Robison was
later diagnosed with a fractured spine. After an extended hospital stay,
he was medically discharged from the Service in 1944. He died in 1971.
Both crews were on their last flight before starting their pre-deployment leave.