ACUFO:

In 1930, for example, a plane carrying businessmen flew into a dark cloud - the only one in the sky. Farmers saw it suddenly fall back, one wing partly torn off. The fuel tanks came loose and fell.

There was no lightning or thunder, and the tragedy took place in silence. Since lightning cannot tear off the wing of an airplane, what happened?

Everything suggests that the plane encountered a solid body inside the dark cloud, struck it, lost a wing and its fuel tanks, and crashed.

1938 Jun/Delaware, Illinois/Gaddis

A midair crash between an airplane and a luminous object was preceded by a flash and then followed by a blaze and explosion. Nine on board the airplane were killed. A similar event occurred on Jul 24, 1938, on the Polish border.

Eight Killed in American Bomber Crash

NEW YORK, June 10. -- A message from Delavan (Illinois) states that a giant United States army bomber crashed in a thunderstorm, killing eight persons on board.

Three were officers and the others Air Force men.

First Lt. Norman H. Ives was at the controls of the Douglas B-18 bomber when it departed Chanute Field in Rantoul. Ives and the crew, which included two other officers and five enlisted men, were returning to Denver after a routine training mission to Chanute.

Ives was a veteran Air Corps pilot. Nine years earlier, he was part of a team that established a world record by using experimental methods in aerial refueling to keep a modified Atlantic-Fokker C-2A airplane in flight for more than 150 hours over California.

Despite his experience, Ives and the crew aboard the new bomber (it had been in service only one year) had their hands full with a flight emergency just 40 minutes after taking off from Rantoul.

Sixty miles away, in a field north of Delavan in Tazewell County, Carey Youle was working on his father's farm. A threatening thunderstorm convinced Youle that he should get his team of horses back to a barn. Before he could get far, he heard the distinctive, heavy sound of the big twin engines on the Army bomber.

“It must have been above the clouds. The storm was gathering then, I searched the sky.

“There was lightning and rain. I got my team and started out of the field toward the house. Then I saw a sheet of flame shooting toward the earth. The ship just dropped, I couldn't see any men jumping.”

Youle said the plane slammed onto the ground just a half-mile from where he sat in the wagon, followed by an explosion.

“The plane bounced high. Parts of it flew everywhere. It came down again with a terrific force. It settled on top of a knoll in the open field.”

Youle jerked his team around and started for the crash. A small fire still burned in the wreckage.

“One man, still wearing a parachute, was in the wreckage. Other bodies in uniform were scattered all over the place. All of them had parachutes attached to their backs,” Youle remembered. “I saw all the men were dead. I rushed back to the house a half-mile away and called the sheriff.”

Youle's neighbor, Floyd Glenn, was also outside working and arrived at the scene of the crash about the same time. He said the wreckage was indistinguishable as an airplane.

“I think I counted four men with parachutes open like the men had tried to jump.”

Youle volunteered the use of his wagon to transport the dead to a mortuary in Delavan.

The investigation began quickly. Thirteen witnesses testified before a coroner's jury that very evening. Youle and other witnesses recalled seeing a flash before the plane plunged from the clouds. One farmer said he saw the wing break off in flight. Another reported the wind had approached tornadic velocity for a minute and a half about the time the plane dropped. Someone else said they had heard the engines sputtering before it fell.

Maj. Roy W. Camblin, an Army investigator, said the next day that the plane had most likely broken apart in the air, either from lightning, rough handling or severe air currents. The bomber carried no bombs or explosives on the fatal flight.

The dead included two from Illinois, Pvt. Max W. Myser, 21, of Villa Grove and Pvt. George L. Huntsman, 23, of Kankakee.

There are few traces in Delavan today that the accident happened. The Delavan Historical Society has some newspaper articles and a few unidentifiable pieces of metal recovered from the field, says Glenn Holmes, president of the society, but, he adds, “it never comes up in conversation.”

“You'd never know it took place.”