1948 Butcher Hollow P-47 Thunderbolt Crash

The 1948 Butcher Hollow P-47 Thunderbolt Crash was a non-casualty U.S. military aircraft crash that occurred on March 25, 1948 near Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, a coal-mining community in Johnson County, Kentucky and childhood home of married 15 year-old Loretta Webb (born April 14, 1932), best known as 18-time GRAMMY Award-nominated country music legend Loretta Lynn.

The crash involved famed Tuskegee Airmen combat fighter pilot, Harry Stewart, Jr. who incurred serious injuries but survived.

Background

On March 25, 1948, then-U.S. Air Force Captain Harry Stewart, Jr. took part in a simulated armed reconnaissance with a formation of Tuskegee Airmen combat fighter pilots flying from Greenville, South Carolina's Shaw Air Force Base to their home base in Columbus, Ohio. Suddenly, Stewart's P-47 Thunderbolt fighter began to experience severe engine failure, sputtering at 20,000 feet above the mountainous terrain of Eastern Kentucky during a bad thunderstorm. Fearful of crashing his aircraft into the side of a mountain to his death, Stewart reduced his aircraft's altitude to 10,000 feet, bailing out of the plane. Since the P-47 Thunderbolt lacked an ejection seat, Stewart slid its canopy back, removed his seat belt, and directed the P-47 Thunderbolt's nose forward so that it would dip and safely eject Stewart forward when he released the control stick. However, the slipstream struck Stewart, forcefully propelling him to the aircraft's tail, fracturing his left leg in two between the calf and ankle.

After opening his parachute in the clouds, Stewart coasted to ground, landing on top of a dead pine tree. With Stewart's parachute firmly hooked over the tree top, Stewart's body dangled two-feet above the ground through the tree's dead branches. Possibly going into shock, Stewart noticed that he had lost a shoe on his broken, bleeding left leg. His otherwise white sock was now completely blood-soaked. Stewart cut himself down in the pouring rain, crawled under a rock overhang, and removed his white silk flying scarf, making a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

Connection to Country Legend Loretta Lynn

Unbeknownst to him, Stewart had parachuted into the mountainous forest hills of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, a coal-mining community in Johnson County, Kentucky and childhood home of married 15 year-old Loretta Webb (born April 14, 1932), best known as 18-time GRAMMY Award-nominated country music legend Loretta Lynn. Though Loretta's location at the time of the crash is undocumented, Loretta's younger brother, Herman Webb (September 3, 1934 – July 28, 2018), was riding in the pickup truck bed belonging to Loretta and Herman's father, Melvin Theodore "Ted" Webb (1906 – 1959). Herman heard a massive explosion unlike anything his family had ever experienced despite living in a coal camp accustomed to loud blasts. After Stewart bailed, the vacated P-47 Thunderbolt flew across the Webb Family cemetery, crashed into a hilltop overlooking the Webb Family home, and created a 10-15 foot deep crater. Over the course of several days, local boys and men began to ransack the crash site. One eyewitness saw Loretta's 22 year-old moonshiner husband, Oliver Lynn (“Doolittle” Lynn), driving his Jeep with Stewart's plane propeller attached to its side. One of Loretta and Herman's uncles converted the P-47 Thunderbolt's stainless steel nuts into finger rings.

Post-Crash

One of Loretta and Herman's 9-year-old neighbor, Callie Daniels (now octogenarian and retired elementary school cook, Callie Daniels Johnson of Hager Hill, Kentucky), saw Stewart's white parachute converging to earth, mistaking it for a large white eagle.. Callie notified her father, Lafe Daniels (1910-1969), who hopped on and rode one of his horses into the hills, finding an injured Stewart lying underneath a rock cliff. After a mutually befuddled though benign stare down, Lafe put the injured Stewart on a 2nd horse Lafe had brought along, taking Stewart to the Daniels Family home where Lafe's wife, Mary Daniels, was washing clothes in a large backyard cauldron.

Mary tore up some bedsheets, and disinfected and bandaged Stewart's legs. After giving Stewart "all-purpose" moonshine for pain relief, much to Stewart's chagrin (he had swore off liquor for Lent}, Lafe reloaded Stewart on the horse and took him onto a mud and gravel road towards a local store on the main road. From there, Stewart was loaded into a pickup truck and transported to the local Paintsville Clinic in Paintsville, Kentucky, birth home of then-unborn Brenda Gail Webb (born January 9, 1951), best known as Crystal Gayle, Grammy Award-winning country music singer and Herman Webb and Loretta Lynn's younger sister.

The clinic's physician and his team washed Stewart, placed him in a bed, and administered morphine for pain relief. Stewart recalled being in a hallucinated state as a result of the morphine and moonshine.

As news of the P-47 Thunderbolt crash circulated, local people lined up to the clinic to view the injured African American combat fighter pilot. The town's mayor, Escom Chandler (1946–1949), visited Stewart, followed by the town's police chief, county sheriff and a Paintsville Herald news reporter who ran a story on March 25, 1948. The article omitted Stewart's race.

Around 1:00 AM on March 26, 1948, a U. S. Air Force representative from Columbus, Ohio arrived at the Paintsville Clinic to pick up Stewart. They departed the small rural community without any fanfare or formal sendoff from the community.

Stewart's wife, Dephine, did not find out about her husband's mountainous aircraft crash until Stewart arrived home.

Local Legend

For many years afterwards, local legend, though patently false, held that U.S. Air Force Republic F-84 Thunderjets shot down a B-52 bomber stolen by an African American man conducting a bombing run on the town. In 2005, Danny Keith Blevins, a Johnson County, Kentucky teacher and president of the Van Lear Historical Society,-tracked down Stewart at his home in southern Michigan. Stewart was bemused when Blevins shared the "stolen B-52" rural legend; Stewart knew that the B-52s didn't even exist in 1948.

Stewart's Visit to Butcher Hollow, Loretta Lynn's Birthhome

In 2006, the Van Lear, Kentucky township encompassing Butcher Hollow, Kentucky named Stewart its parade marshal for the annual Homecoming Day parade. During his Kentucky visit, Stewart met the family of Crystal Gayle, Loretta Lynn and Herman Webb, enjoying a tour of Loretta's birth home.

References

Lists of accidents and incidents involving military aircraft

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