Learjet, Beechcraft, Cessna. These names have been synonymous with aviation and the city of Wichita. For more than 100 years, Wichita has been one of the world's leading producers of small airplanes. (Indeed, the most-produced aircraft of all time is the Cessna 172.) Unfortunately, the state is also connected to some of aviation's worst disasters, like the Chase County crash that killed Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne. Commentator Rex Buchanan remembers another airplane crash, the deadliest in state history, which took place in Wichita, some 60 years ago.
(Radio transcript)
Remembering the Deadliest Aviation Disaster in Kansas History
By Rex Buchanan
This year marks the 60th anniversary of one of the worst disasters in the history of Wichita.
On January 16, 1965, a military refueling tanker took off from McConnell Air Force Base. A few miles north of McConnell, over the city of Wichita, the tanker suffered a mechanical failure and lost altitude. The pilot radioed Mayday, then the plane crashed into a largely African-American neighborhood, west of Wichita State University. Twenty-three people on the ground were killed. Seven crew members on the plane died.
I was 11 years old that Saturday morning, growing up out in central Kansas. I was at a friend’s house, probably watching cartoons on TV, just the way some of the young victims were. The Wichita television station came on with scenes of the crash site. The devastation was incomprehensible.
I thought of all that in December when a commercial flight from Wichita collided with a helicopter at Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. Sixty-seven people died in that crash, many from the Wichita area. Kansas may be a big state geographically, but it’s a small place in terms of population, and I kept an eye on the list of the casualties from the Reagan crash to see if I knew any of the victims. I didn’t. But I had several friends who did.
Those two crashes aren’t the only Wichita-related airplane disasters. In October 1970, a plane carrying members of the Wichita State University football team hit a mountainside in Colorado, killing 31 people. I remember that crash too.
It’s ironic, and somehow even more tragic, that Wichita, a city so associated with the airplane industry, has endured tragedies like these.
But of the three, the one least remembered, I think, is the tanker crash in 1965. I’ve talked to people in Wichita who’ve never heard of it. Maybe in part because it was so long ago. But maybe it’s forgotten because the neighborhood it destroyed was largely poor and African-American.
In 2007, more than 40 years after that disaster, Wichita dedicated a memorial to the crash victims. It’s on Piatt Street, a few blocks east of Interstate 135. To be honest, I didn’t know about that memorial until recently. Maybe that reflects the disconnect between Wichita and northeastern Kansas, where I live now.
But I finally went there a few weeks ago on a dreary, rainy day. The memorial sits at the corner of a small park. There are basketball courts and a playground, but when I was there, the park was empty and quiet. Small brick houses lined the blocks around the park.
The monument itself is made of dark granite, black like the burned houses of the neighborhood must’ve been that terrible day.
That memorial did exactly what it was meant to do. Made me try to picture the destruction, ponder the lives that were cut short and the suffering people endured. The pain people in the area must still feel, 60 years later.
Awful things happen in an eye blink. But the consequences resonate for years. The least we can do is remember.
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Commentator Rex Buchanan is a writer, author and director emeritus at the Kansas Geological Survey. He lives in Lawrence.