The Blaine County Journal News-Opinion - We've Got The County Covered

In early August sixteen Air Force veterans and friends, mostly from the west coast, came to Chinook and Harlem to visit the memorials for the fourteen airmen killed in an air collision north of Harlem. The crash occurred in the early morning hours of November 30, 1992. One of the visitors was a loadmaster (crew member responsible for loading and unloading cargo) on one of the four planes doing a practice refueling exercise in the pre-daylight hours.

November 30, 2023, will be the thirtieth anniversary of the crash. The group contemplated the trip for some time hoping to come to Montana on the thirtieth anniversary. In early August this year they were able to visit the sites where a number of their comrades perished and are memorialized.

They learned about the memorials through internet searches. Arriving on eleven motorcycles and accompanied by two vehicles their plan was to visit the memorial site on US 2 on the west end of Harlem and then ride up to the north memorial near the actual crash site. What they got was not only a visit to the memorials but some insights to how the tragedy impacted the people in this area along the Hi-Line. Here's some of what I learned after talking with these honored visitors and their local hosts.

Why and how the trip developed

Keith Schnug is a retired military airman and currently works for the military as a contractor training future loadmasters (his former military job). Back home he was advocating to his friends to make the ride to the crash site on the 30th anniversary of the crash. He told, "I kept telling the other people," Let's do this.""

Scott Brender, referred to by several co-visitors as the "influencer," laughed and said, "I got that name because I really promoted the idea of traveling to Montana on the thirtieth anniversary of the crash." Brender told about a group of former military colleagues who meet every week back in Washington state, sometimes only a few, for what he called a "safety meeting." Scott described the meetings as a "chance to have a few beers and share war stories and also where I was promoting the trip east to visit the memorials." Brender said he did not fly with all the airmen who were killed in the crash but added, "I interacted with them because of what we all did in the Air Force." None of the visiting group had been the Hi-Line since the crash thirty years ago.

Visiting the memorials

The group arrived in Havre where they would spend their first night. Cindy Bunsfield, one of the first female airmen to join the group years ago, said, "I called Kraig Hansen (Harlem's fire chief when the crash occurred) to figure the best way to plan our visits to the airmen's memorials." Kraig responded, "We'll do you one better than that, we'll show you the special exhibit about the crash set up at the Blaine County Museum in Chinook."

"We were dumbfounded," Cindy said by phone, "when we saw all the notebooks at the exhibit full of information we didn't have." After looking at the photos and studying the notebooks, Cindy added, "There wasn't a dry eye among us." Kraig Hansen noted, "There was one guy who was so emotional recalling the night he couldn't look at the photos of the fourteen airmen killed."

Kraig Hansen left the group in Chinook (he was still combining) and they headed to Harlem to meet up with Darwin Zellmer (part of the original committee that got the two memorials put together). They met at the memorial on US 2 in Harlem. Darwin described how the group studied the plaques at each large stone, fourteen, one each for the airmen (The rocks were quarried at Snake Butte and gifted for the memorial by the Fort Belknap community). After a group photo on the bridge recently added to the memorial, the group left for the ride up to the northern memorial, near the actual crash site. Darwin said later he found a "challenge coin" (used by the military to establish identification of members of a particular unit) at the site on US 2.

Cindy, the only female in the group and nicknamed "Mom," later described the location up north as "out in the middle of nowhere." Another visitor said, "Out in the 'middle of nowhere' in Montana is much different than the middle of nowhere around Spokane where we live." The group was impressed when Darwin Zellmer explained the stones placed at the northern memorial came from the crash site.

The group had the opportunity to look west from the memorial and see parts of the actual crash site. They were surprised when Darwin told them the site was still cared for by locals and had been since the crash thirty years ago.

From the north memorial site the group headed back to Harlem for lunch at Betty and Darwin Zellmer's house.

Later by phone one of the group said, "The visits to the museum's exhibit and the two sites near Harlem were great but the explanations and descriptions of "how these small communities wrapped their arms around our fallen comrades was amazing. We never knew about all the things the communities did in Montana to honor our comrades and keep the memories of them and how they died alive all these years." Words like "amazing, unbelievable and blown away" were used to describe their reactions to the response by the various communities, especially Harlem. Another of the visiting group commented in a later interview, "The memorials are impressive but how the local communities back took a bunch of strangers under their wings is what amazes me."

An eye-witness to the crash shared his memories

As best I could tell Kirt Thompson was the only visitor who was a part of the air crews flying the four C-141s that crashed 30 years ago. He was the loadmaster on Plane #4, Planes #1 and #2 were the ones that crashed. Kirt said it is still very difficult to talk about the crash. I encouraged him to tell the story in a way that was comfortable to him. Here's what he had to say:

"November 30, 1992 started out great for me. My wife was expecting a baby and had an ultrasound that day. We learned we were having a baby boy. I reported for duty around 6pm at McChord Air Force Base (Spokane) and we had our preflight crew meeting at 8pm. We were doing a "late night local" which included a refueling practice in the air along the refueling track that was north of Harlem. Once we were airborne there was a crescent moon visible at 26,000 feet where we were flying, but it was a very dark night with a cloud cover below us."

"When the refueling began I moved up to the cockpit, where the ride was smoother, and was sitting in a seat next to a flight engineer. Suddenly there was a flash that was as bright as a sunrise. The engineer looked at me and said, "Collision." I ran from the cockpit down to the lower level of the plane to look out one of the "port hole windows." I saw a very large fireball and a smaller one falling. They went in to the layer of clouds below us and that was all I saw."

Plane #3 radioed McChord and reported "aircraft one and two would not be coming home." A junior grade controller took the message and asked why they had diverted from the mission. Finally a senior controller realized the meaning of the message (it was assumed other people might be listening to the transmission and the word of a crash might create a lot of calls and visitors to the base)."

A group of sixteen veterans, mostly on motorcycles, are shown at the northern memorial to the Air Force airmen killed in a mid-air collision north of Harlem in November, 1992. Many of the visitors knew and worked with the deceased airmen. One of the visitors, who now lives in Alaska, was a loadmaster on plane #4. Plane #1 and Plane #2 collided and crashed during an air refueling practice run.

Thompson, who was telling the story, said, "That's when the confusion began." He explained that some crewmen were switched among the planes at the last minute before the training mission began. He said, "We didn't know who was actually in the two downed planes until we were picked up after landing. Then we realized who was missing. It was awful to understand some colleagues were dead."

A new set of comrades

The recent visitors to the area all shared how surprised and gratified they were to learn how the these small Montana communities had taken such efforts to honor and remember their fallen comrades and continues to do so.

As one visitor put it, "We thought we were coming just to look at a couple of memorials. Darwin and Kraig added so much to the trip, as did Sam French the museum director (and the exhibit at the museum). In a follow up phone call Kirt Thompson told Kraig Hansen, "Our group were comrades in the Air Force and we came to pay tribute to them. Now you and Darwin are our comrades for honoring our lost comrades." That touched both Darwin and Kraig.

Darwin later said about their new comrades, "Once a stranger, never a stranger." For Darwin and Kraig that was how this visit turned out, they too gained new comrades as a result of the tragedy