𝑶𝑵 𝑻𝑯𝑰𝑺 𝑫𝑨𝑻𝑬 𝑰𝑵 𝑯𝑰𝑺𝑻𝑶𝑹𝒀: 𝐏𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐒𝐁𝐔𝐑𝐆𝐇'𝐒 𝐆𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘: 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁-𝟐𝟓 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐂𝐑𝐀𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐍 𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑

On January 31, 1956, at a few minutes after four in the afternoon, six members of the United States Air Force were flying from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. in a B-25 Mitchell bomber outfitted as a passenger plane. They were supposed to make a stop in Harrisburg to pick up parts of an unspecified nature. Fate rewrote their flight plan and sent the plane crashing into the icy waters of the Monongahela River.

The incident would become Pittsburgh’s greatest unsolved mystery, but it also ranks among the most hair-raising tales in the annals of Western Pennsylvania. Many unanswered questions surround it.

What was the plane’s mission? What was the plane carrying? Why was the plane never found in the waters of the Mon? Or was it? The various answers suggested have ranged from the sensible to the surreal.

The mystery surrounding the crash has eclipsed the remarkable valor of the crew and the rescuers. The pilot, Major William L. Dotson, did precisely what US Airways Captain Chesley Sullenberger did when he famously ditched his plane in the Hudson River in 2009 -- only Major Dotson did it under arguably more difficult conditions.

Likewise virtually forgotten is the unblinking heroism of regular Pittsburghers who risked their lives by diving into the freezing waters of the murky Mon to rescue the men in peril.

So how did a spine-tingling tale of a life and death struggle gradually metamorphose into the grandest of Pittsburgh’s urban legends? Could it be that people see in this incident a massive cover-up by Big Brother because they’re looking at it through a modern lens of skepticism?

There is another explanation: perhaps – just perhaps – the paranoia is justified in this case. Not only are there unanswered questions, there were numerous eyewitness accounts that indicate the government really did not want people to know what was going on, for whatever reason.

In any event, almost 70 years later, the crash of the B-25 bomber in the Mon is still talked about and debated. The following is that story in a nutshell.

𝐇𝐚𝐢𝐫-𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐦

The flight originated out of Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas. At the helm was Major William L. Dotson, 33 years old, he had been shot down off the coast of Sicily in World War II. The plane stopped in Detroit, and from there, it had enough fuel to make it to Harrisburg where the men were supposed “to pick up parts,” as Major Dotson later explained. While they were flying over Butler, Pennsylvania, for reasons the men couldn’t understand, they started to lose fuel at an alarming rate. Major Dotson decided to turn back toward Pittsburgh and make an emergency landing at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. He quickly determined that the airport was too far, and that he’d better head straight for the Allegheny County airport, just minutes away.

He never made it. Without warning, the plane’s fuel gauge registered empty, and to this day no one knows why.

The plane approached Homestead, a heavily populated area where a crash could mean civilian fatalities, so Major Dotson knew he had to ditch the plane in the river. To do that, he had to hit the mark exactly and land it in a thin ribbon of the Mon between two bridges – the High Level Bridge (now the Homestead Grays Bridge that hovers atop the Waterfront) and the Glenwood Bridge in Hazelwood (next to the Sandcastle water park).

Then the engines quit. The co-pilot radioed, “May Day, May Day, B-25 going into river.” Major Dotson switched on the intercom: “Brace yourselves. We’re going in.”

As horrified onlookers on the High Level Bridge watched, the plane floated silently just thirty feet above the bridge.

The plane was coming in so low, it looked as if it was going to crash into the bridge.

The plane never wobbled. It drifted just above the river until it was almost at the Glenwood Bridge. Then, according to an eyewitness who also happened to be a reporter for the Pittsburgh Press, there was a terrific splash and a big cloud of white froth spouted into the air like a huge geyser. Major Dotson had hit the exact spot he had selected. All six aboard the plane were alive, and not a single civilian had been injured.

The plane was momentarily submerged in the water. Then, it bobbed to the surface and floated. The impact had spun it around so that its nose faced south, but the river current was pulling it west. Under the Glenwood Bridge it went, toward South Side, toward downtown. The men climbed out onto the wings. They had no raft or lifejackets. The plane’s nose dipped into the water and the tail rose, so the men moved toward the back of the plane. They removed their bulky boots and jackets despite the fact that it was 27 degrees. No one panicked. To attract attention, the men whistled in unison. An astonished worker near the Glenwood Bridge saw the plane float by with the men standing on the wing. One of the men yelled to him, “You got a boat?” Unfortunately, the onlooker didn’t.

Approaching Becks Run Road, the plane was about to be submerged. Major Dotson spotted a large log and told the crew to plunge into the water and head toward it. Two of the men didn’t follow the Major, and they went under.

A steelworker driving along the river stopped his truck and saw a man in trouble in the icy Mon. He thought to himself that he couldn’t get to the man, but the next thing he knew, he was under water up to his shoulders -- he had plunged into the freezing waters, and rescued him.

In fact, a number of unnamed, now forgotten, Pittsburghers jumped into the treacherous waters to help save the imperiled men.

Private towboats also raced to the scene to rescue the men. In all, four of the six men survived the frigid waters, two drowned. The survivors were rushed to local hospitals to be treated for shock and frostbite. The bodies of the two men who lost their lives washed up months later. In April, one was found near the site of the old Brady Street Bridge, South Side end; in May, the last one was recovered at the parking wharf at Wood Street.

𝐈𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲: 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫-𝐮𝐩

The newspaper accounts in the days immediately after the incident tell the story without any suggestion of a cover-up, and the only mystery afoot was the mystery of why the plane ran out of fuel.

The day after the crash, the police river patrol was out trying to bring the plane up. Local authorities worked with federal authorities to recover the plane. Despite 14 days of searching, the plane was never found.

The Feds didn’t keep the locals out of the search -- something they would be expected to do if they had something to hide.

Nobody kept the onlookers away from the site of the recovery mission. Nobody stopped the men aboard the plane from speaking with the press. Major Dotson spoke freely about the incident, and the press was amazed how calm and matter-of-fact he was about it. Writer Tom Wolfe would have called it “The Right Stuff.”

The one point that Dotson refused to discuss was the identity of one crew member who survived the crash – this was peculiar because it was clear even then that the crew member Dotson refused to discuss was Master Sgt. Alfred J. Alleman of Las Vegas.

𝐅𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬

The day after the crash, according to the Air Force report, a Coast Guard cutter dragging a 350-pound anchor near Becks Run snagged what searchers believe was one of the plane's wings and hauled it to the surface. But the anchor slipped off and the plane sank. The anchor hooked again, but this time the 2-inch tow line snapped. On a third pass, a smaller anchor was also lost.

Thereafter, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Pittsburgh River Patrol, the Coast Guard, and private vessels dragged the river repeatedly to find the plane. A dredging barge swept the river 150 times and found nothing. The Coast Guard, using a specially made grappling hook, dragged the main channel. Nothing. The official government report says that the Air Force searched the waters from February 1st through the 14th to no avail -- the bomber wasn’t found.

In the years that followed, several serious missions have been launched to find the plane. They’ve used side-scan sonar and global-positioning satellite technology – they’ve found cars, trees and a wrecked paddle wheeler – but not the plane.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐲

How could they not find the plane, given that it was 15 feet 9 inches high in a river that averaged just 20-25 feet in depth? The plane would be hard to miss: it was 52 feet 11 inches long, with a wing span of 67 feet 7 inches, and it weighed 28,460 pounds.

Some have speculated that the plane slipped into a gravel pit dug by excavators for construction fill after the Coast Guard snagged and lost it that first day, and that it is buried under ten to fifteen feet of sediment in 32 feet of water 150 feet from shore.

But a lot of people claim that the reason no one has been able to find such a large object in the river is because it was secretly removed.

Many people claim that they witnessed soldiers descend on the Mon and pull the bomber out in the dead of night. Some claim the wreckage was taken to a local mill and melted down. An eyewitness says the plane was pulled to the surface and cut into handily transportable bits that were hauled downriver on a barge. Some people claimed to have participated in the removal of the plane.

A 2007 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette obituary of a tugboat operator who actually witnessed the crash quoted the man’s daughter who said her father saw some wreckage being carted away on barges. But he wouldn't elaborate on the particulars after he received threatening phone calls warning him not to talk about what he had seen. Quote: "He wouldn't talk to anybody about it. He was too scared."

Robert Johns, a Natrona Heights researcher, compiled volumes of accounts from various witnesses. He received many late-night calls from people claiming they saw the government spiriting the plane away. Some of the callers warned Mr. Johns he might fall victim to an official silencing. Mr. Johns’ garbage was stolen for years. When he died in 1991, his widow said it was stress that killed him – making him the third fatality of the crash of the B-25 bomber.

Major Dotson was eventually promoted to colonel, and in the 1990s, Dotson, who had spoken about the incident so freely in the days immediately after it happened, wouldn’t discuss it.

Years after the crash, one investigator searched the photo files of both The Pittsburgh Press and the Post-Gazette for copies of their photos of the mishap, which was extensively covered by the city's papers. The original pictures had been removed.

The official Air Force report of the crash inexplicably contains numerous portions blacked out.

Why the secrecy? The conspiracy theorists claim it was prompted by the plane’s cargo. Some say the plane was carrying an atom bomb or poison gas. Others say, a Soviet defector (thus explaining an extra parachute on board). Some think it was filled with organized crime money, or state-of-the-art communications equipment. Still others say it was carrying Las Vegas showgirls on their way to entertain senators in Washington. And yes, some think Mr. Las Vegas himself, Howard Hughes, was on board. Others say the plane was carrying a UFO.

To this day, the mystery remains unsolved either because the people who could solve it for us have gone to their graves too scared to talk, or because the plane’s wreckage somehow has eluded numerous searches, and it’s still down there.