In July 1943, during a training mission, a US Army Air Force B-17 bomber mistakenly dropped its payload on a small town in Oklahoma.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
In the summer of 1943, the Second World War had reached a turning point, and the Allies, after suffering a series of losses, were beginning to reverse all of the German and Japanese gains. In Europe, the Battle of the Kursk began what would become a steady Soviet advance towards Berlin, while American and British bombers were pounding targets in Germany. In North Africa, a joint American and Allied force had landed in Morocco and Algeria and were destroying the Nazi Afrika Korps, while the Allies were also preparing to invade the Italian island of Sicily. And in the Pacific, the Americans had seized Guadalcanal and began a steady drive north towards Japan.
All of this of course resulted in casualties, particularly among the aircrews, and necessitated a steady flow of replacements who had to be thoroughly trained before entering combat. The Army Air Corps had set up a number of training bases in the southern United States, where the constant good weather allowed for year-round training of both fighter pilots and bomber crews. And one of these training fields was at Dalhart Army Air Base. Located not far from from the city of Amarillo TX, Dalhart had been established in May 1942 as a glider training base, but its endless flat empty plains offered a good training ground for new B-17 bomber crews. It would be their last training regimen before being assigned to combat duty in Europe or the Pacific.
On the evening of July 5, then, a flight of four B-17s from the 333rd Bombardment Replacement Training Unit took off from Dalhart for what was supposed to be a routine night training mission. Each plane carried a number of practice bombs, miniature versions of the real thing that contained 100 pounds of sand and 4 pounds of TNT--just enough to be visible and allow the bombardiers to check their aim. The four planes were supposed to navigate their way in the dark to the test range near the little town of Conlen TX and make a series of passes, dropping one practice bomb each time.
At this time in the war, the US did not yet have reliable radar aiming, so for daylight raids the bombardiers depended on the Norden optical bombsight. These were ineffective in the dark, though, so each large night raid over Germany would be preceded by several experienced crews who acted as “Pathfinders”: they would navigate to the objective and drop a series of flares which would mark the target. The rest of the bombers would then use that as their aiming point.
For this practice mission, the small square target area, located about 20 miles from the base, would be marked by four ground lamps, one at each corner. The crews were to fly to the target area, drop their bombs within the marked square, then fly back to base. They would be graded on their navigation and their bombing accuracy.
But something went wrong. Somehow, one of the four bombers got separated in the dark from the others and blundered off on its own, flying north instead of east. It happened to be navigator John Daley’s first night mission, and he had screwed up royally. Within just a few minutes, the errant B-17 had traveled some 50 miles and had inadvertently crossed the state border into the Oklahoma Panhandle. After some anxious moments, Daley sighted a square of four lights on the ground, and, relieved, concluded that was his target.
But it was not. Instead, it was the tiny town of Boise City OK, population 1200. The lights Daley had seen were streetlamps in the county courthouse square. It was 12:30 in the morning and most of the town was asleep.
Over the next half hour, the B-17 methodically dropped a practice bomb, circled around, and dropped another. The bombardment blew up an empty garage, broke windows on the local church, and blasted several craters in the streets and sidewalks. In the town’s 24-hour cafe, a couple of truck drivers hurried to their fuel tankers and drove away from the bombs as fast as they could. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.
At the first bomb, though, the county’s Sheriff, Harris Powell, frantically called the air base and reported that bombs were being dropped on his city. Immediately the message was radioed to all four planes to call off the training mission. In the skies over Boise City, Daley and the rest of the crew were already setting up for another bombing run, and assumed that they were on course and it must have been some other plane—until the lights underneath them were shut off. An engineer at the electric company had cut the power to produce an instant blackout.
At first, the townspeople weren’t sure what had happened, and rumors flew that it really was a German or Japanese attack, perhaps from airships. But back at Dalhart, Daley knew that it had been his mistake. The Army Air Corps fessed up to the press, explaining that it was all just a miscalculation made by a rookie on a practice flight. The crew was reprimanded, but went on to serve in Europe, at one point leading an 800-plane bombing mission to Berlin.
One of the six bombs dropped that night landed in a sandpile and did not detonate. It was found a week later by a railroad worker who kept it in his home until his death in 2019, when it was donated by the family to the Cimarron Heritage Center Museum in Boise City, and is on display there.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)