Travis: It broke up fairly high up in the air and it was\u2026I\nbelieve it was just due to the strong winds and turbulence in the thunderstorm\nthat the plane flew through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Greg: The terrain was very flat, but very wet. It\u2019s basically in a\u2026a sawgrass swamp,\nsawgrass and cypress with a few pine trees mixed in it. So, very remote, probably the closed road was\nprobably half a mile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reporter: According to reports, the crash was witnessed\nby a local man named Abel Strickland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Travis: Abel Strickland, he was on his horse which I\nbelieve was named Daisy. He had his\nhunting dogs with him. And he said he\nsaw the plane crash and he saw a man on a parachute coming down from the\nwreckage and of course he wanted to go help. \nSo he\u2026him, his horse, and his dogs went out to the site and they found\nMarvin Magee\u2026Private Marvin Magee, they found him walking down one of the\ncountry dirt roads in that area. And\nAbel was able to give him a ride to the Saint Marks Lighthouse. At the time, the Saint Marks Lighthouse, the\ncoastguard, the had a presence there at the lighthouse. And so he was able to tie in with the\ncoastguard and they called down the crash rescue team from Dale Mabry Airfield,\nwhich is now Tallahassee Community College on that site. They came down, they did the investigation on\nthe crash. They recovered the bodies and\nthey salvaged what the could from the wreck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reporter: Private Marvin Magee was the sole survivor. Nine of his crewmates died. Now this story was no secret, but like many\nlocal stories, it was soon forgotten to the march of time\u2026until these wildland\nfire fighters stumbled across some debris in the middle of nowhere… And recently, they\u2019ve added a marker at the\nSt. Marks Refuge to commemorate this vignette of local history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Travis: We chose this site, Picnic Pond, it\u2019s not really\nclose to the wreckage. We didn\u2019t want to\nput it too close to the wreckage because you know, we didn\u2019t want people\nlooting the area or stealing stuff. We\nwanted to leave the wreckage intact. But\nwe put it in this area because it\u2019s a very frequented area. Everybody who comes down here to the\nlighthouse or the boatramp, they drive by this area and they\u2019ll stop and\nthey\u2019ll read it. And that\u2019s important\nbecause you know, the gentlemen who perished in this plane crash, their\nstory\u2026they were forgotten over the years. \nAnd I think it\u2019s important to bring the story back to life and to give\nit new meaning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Reporter: So the next time you go to the St. Marks\nWildlife Refuge, stop by the historic marker at Picnic Pond and reflect on the harrowing\nexperience of Private Marvin Magee wandering through that wild place\u2026and the\nterrible fate of nine other young servicemen who fell out of the sky one July\nafternoon in 1944.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For WFSU Public Media, I\u2019m Mike Plummer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Originally Published: December 17, 2020 WFSU’s Mike Plummer shows us the fateful story of a World War II era B-17 bomber that crashed at Saint Marks on a summer day in 1944. The plane went down carrying a crew of ten men…only one airman survived. Long forgotten, the wreckage was rediscovered in 2011. A historic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":7985,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[136],"tags":[645,928,225],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/StMarksBomberPic2-1024x576.png\")
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