On July 26, 1944, a C-54 air ambulance carrying a wounded Lt. Col. Leon Robert Vance, the namesake for Enid’s Vance Air Force Base, back to the United States and to his family disappeared en route from England. Vance, along with several other wounded warriors and medical staff, boarded the plane for the trip home, only to be lost between Iceland and Newfoundland. The plane has never been found.
Enid pastor, writer and historian Wade Burleson told Enid Rotary Club during a presentation Monday that there is a chance the missing plane has been located off the coast of Greenland and possibly could be recovered in the near future.
Burleson said he believes that while people in Enid are very aware of Vance Air Force Base, and that the base was named after Leon Robert Vance, they may not know the whole story.
“Most people around the world may know the story better than people who live in Enid, and that’s really sad,” Burleson said. “It’s important that the people of Enid know this story.”
Vance was born and raised in Enid, graduating from Enid High School in 1933, the son of coach and Longfellow Junior High School Principal Leon Vance. He attended the University of Oklahoma and United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. When he graduated from West Point, he trained to be a pilot. He became an instructor of pilots in the early days of World War II; however, he later was called to lead a squadron for Operation Overlord, the invasion of D-Day.
Vance was flying in a B-24 Liberator during a bombing raid against the Germans in support of the D-Day landings on June 5, 1944, when he took over the pilot’s duties of his crippled aircraft. Despite a mangled foot wedged under the co-pilot’s seat, Vance — believing one member of his crew who had not bailed out of the plane was too injured to parachute — crash landed his wounded Liberator in the English Channel.
He suffered an amputation of his leg, and was looking forward to returning to the U.S. to recover from his injuries. After the air ambulance carrying him home disappeared, Vance was recognized with the Medal of Honor, which was presented to his young daughter in an official military ceremony in Enid in 1946.
Burleson said he received an email Nov. 1 from a man named Alan Hiatt, who believes he has found Vance’s airplane through Google Earth. Although it’s not yet confirmed that it is the actual crash location, Burleson said a helicopter would be required to explore the location. That can’t happen until next summer because the location is currently covered in snow.
“He said Wade, ‘I believe I have found Bob Vance’s plane,'” Burleson said Hiatt told him. Burleson has published some of Hiatt’s Google Earth photographs on his blog at wade burleson.com. “The potential recovery of this plane would be worldwide news, if it actually occurs next summer.”
The photos show an ice-covered ravine off the eastern coast of Greenland with some blurry outlines of what appear to be an airplane tail, some cargo, a life raft and wing sections with a couple of the plane’s numbers visible.
“Alan Hiatt has a ministry of finding crashed planes using Google Earth to notify next of kin of those who were lost in plane crashes,” Burleson said. “As a boy, he said he flew on the exact same route that Bob Vance’s Army Air Corps flight took on the way home from London to the United States.”
Terri Schaefer, chief of public affairs at Vance, was at Monday’s Rotary presentation and said base officials have been in conversations with Hiatt over the last couple of years over this potential discovery.
“I enjoyed pastor Burleson’s presentation on our namesake, Lt. Col. Vance,” Schaefer said. “We have been acting as a liaison between Mr. Hiatt and the Defense POW/MIA Accountability Agency for about two years and look forward to assisting in any way we can in the future.”
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