Ten thousand warplanes flew from or over Maine during World War II. Over the course of the war, a total of 48 aircraft crashed in the state accounting for 143 deaths. The vast majority of those planes made it safely to their destinations, but it was certainly not unheard of for one of the thousands of planes in the sky to fall to earth before they crossed the ocean for the war. But there was a day, a single day, where two bombers crashed within four hours of each other, claiming the lives of 27 people. This day remains the worst day for aviation in the state’s history. Second Lieutenant John Cast Aircraft 1: July 11, 1944 -Just after midnight, an 8th Air Force B-17G Flying Fortress heavy bomber (SN 43-38023) takes off with a 10 man crew from Kearney, Nebraska headed for Dow Army Air Field in Bangor, Maine, and then to Gander, Newfoundland, en route to a base in the English midlands, one of seventeen in a group, though it wasn’t strange for Cast to be flying on his own – it wasn’t actually common practice for pilots to fly in formation while on route, except during a bombing raid. Cast and crew were on their own until they made it to their destination. Everything went according to plan until…well, it will never be known exactly what happened to cause the plane to crash into Deer Mountain in Maine. All we can do is speculate. We have no way of ever knowing for certain what happened to the aircraft to cause the events that happened that July day. We do know that the weather over the Appalachians was foul and the crew must have flown high enough to avoid most of the turbulence. We can imagine that they were tossed and buffeted about with wind, thunder, rain and hail all part of the mix. Anyone who has experienced turbulence knows the feeling of being thrown about like a bb in a can.The plane can be lifted or dropped several hundred feet without any warning. Other planes from the flight group reported these conditions, so we can safely assume that Cast and crew also experienced a similar set of events.  We do know that the radio operator made his last scheduled contact with ground radio operators at around 9:30 and that this was something he did every half hour to help maintain his position. At around 10 AM when the radio operator was scheduled to make radio contact with the ground to help maintain his fix, he found that he couldn’t raise anyone. He may have also found that he couldn’t receive any fixed signals or commercial radio stations. Perhaps they checked the radio equipment and found some smashed tubes, a common occurrence.  Perhaps they even replaced the broken tubes in an attempt to make contact and determine their position. But they never make contact with the ground again. img class="wp-image-552 size-medium" src="https://i1.wp.com/www.strangenewengland.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/B17.jpg?resize=300%2C233" alt="B-17G" width="300" height="233" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/www.st