Telling the Tale

One day, several years ago, my cell phone rang. A voice, loud and strong said, "Are you that boy that tells stories about the history of Summerville?" When I answered in the affirmative, the voice introduced himself by saying, "I'm Sinclair. Sinclair Ferguson. I used to live in Summerville when I was a boy. Now that I'm an old man, I live near my children in Dover, Delaware. I take the Summerville newspaper by mail, that's how I found out about you. I have a story to tell you."

He was referring to a phantom flight over Summerville during WWII. The way the story had always been told to me, and pretty much how I repeated the story to others, is this: Betty Jo Waring was standing in the bell tower adjacent to City Hall on the afternoon of April 4, 1945, dutifully manning her post as a volunteer World War II airplane spotter. She took the job seriously, but didn't really expect to spy anything more than a passing bird.

At about 1 p.m., much to her surprise, there was a loud whine over the sleepy little town. Looking up into the sky, Betty Jo saw that the approaching aircraft was not a German plane, but an American B-24 Liberator Bomber casting its huge shadow across the ground.

There was no need to sound the alarm by ringing the bell; everyone heard the noise and ran outdoors to see the huge aircraft as it came in low from the east, very low. Parachutes popped open as the pilot and crew abandoned the distressed bomber before it disappeared behind the trees near Gahagan Field. The military airmen all came down safely, but there was a terrific crash as the unmanned plane slammed into the woods beyond the field. 

Men came running from their offices and shops, officials darted out from City Hall, and schoolboys went tearing out of their classrooms. They all headed toward the wreckage that lay just beyond the town. There were some flames, but fortunately there was no great explosion. After the fire had been extinguished, some people picked up a piece of scrap metal or a broken instrument to take home as a souvenir of this most unusual and exciting event. After a while, military officials came to survey the damage and took away a few more pieces. The rest of the wreckage was buried by bulldozers. 

For many years after the war, people would tell the story. But that's all that there ever was: just a story.

According to local author and historian Bruce Orr, the United States Air Force does not acknowledge that any such incident ever occurred. They have no record verifying such a tale. No plane crash. Not on that date. Not in the town of Summerville. But people saw it, they collected pieces of the wreckage, they told the story. Things that make you say "Hmmm!"

That's pretty much how the story had always been told to me. That's pretty much how I repeated the story to others. And then Sinclair Ferguson called saying, “I have a story to tell you."

Before I could say, "Let me grab a pencil," Mr. Ferguson began.

"Do you know where the tennis courts are located in Azalea Park?" he asked.

I assured him that I knew the location well.

"Back in the day—the day being the 1930's," explained Mr. Ferguson, "that whole Azalea Park was low ground, known as Pike's Hole. My house was located near where the tennis courts are now. I wasn't nobody special. Just a poor kid. I had a bicycle that I put together from junk and spare parts. I used to ride my bike past the Squirrel Inn and see gentleman sitting out on the front porch smoking cigars. I would think to myself, 'Someday, I'll be rich and I'll sit on the porch and smoke cigars.' But nobody really noticed, because I didn't say anything. I was just a kid and nobody paid much attention." 

Then Mr. Ferguson asked me, "Do you know the houses along the street there? You go down a hill, and there's a big house and a little house and then another big house. Do you know where I'm talking about?" 

I faked it and said, "Yes, I know exactly the house you are talking about."

Mr. Sinclair Ferguson laughed and said, "No you don't. But that don't matter because you ain't supposed to know who used to live there anyway. At least you ain't supposed to know what he did."

"What who did?" I asked. 

"Well, it probably wouldn't hurt to tell you now, but I won't say his name. But I will tell you this. The man that lived in that second big house was high up in the Army Air Force and he flew secret missions from Charleston out over the Atlantic Ocean testing different types of bomber airplanes that might be used to carry the atomic bomb they dropped on Japan. Nobody was supposed to know about that."

"How did you come to know about it?" I asked.

"I played with his boys most every afternoon. We rode bicycles together. I played in their yard and he would talk about it in front of us and didn't really seem to notice. We were just kids and nobody paid any attention. So, when the news came on the radio about the atomic bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, it wasn't news to me."

I pressed him further, but Mr. Ferguson wouldn't divulge any more information. He just thanked me for "keeping the history alive," and ended the call.

Not long after that brief phone conversation, I again came across the story of the mysterious plane crash in Barbara Hill's Summerville, a well-researched and thorough history of the town. I began to put two and two together. I looked up a few interesting facts on the internet. 

The official line basically states that after some deliberation and tests, it was determined that the B-29 was much better suited than the B-24 for carrying the atomic bomb. Where did these deliberations and tests take place? In Summerville, perhaps?

Things that make you say, "Hmmm!"

Storyteller Tim Lowry is a Southern raconteur from Summerville. Visit www.storytellertimlowry.com.