Lake Martin HistoryLake Martin History Information

1945 - March 25

B-25 Crashes In Lake Martin
The Flight

By March 20, 1945, Victory in Europe was still more than a month away and Adolph Hitler maintained boldly that fighting would continue. Allied troops were poised along Germany’s Rhine River, and half a world away U.S. Marines had returned to the Philippine’s to address pockets of Japanese resistance.

Here in America, drives were continuing for rubber and steel, and what would be the last Victory Gardens were being carefully prepared.

Army Capt. John Glenn Mabry, an East St. Louis, Ill., native, was flying a B-25 across the Southeast United States, without fear of assault from the enemy.

The twin-engine bomber, built in 1943, had left Washington, D.C., about 8 a.m. and was headed for Texas on a training mission. Passengers included Army Staff Sgt. James N. Green, an aerial engineer from Washington, D.C., and Army Capt. Charles P. Oliver, a passenger who lived in Penacook, N.H.

Capt. Mabry performed a routine check-in at an Atlanta airport as he passed over around 10:13 a.m. on that fateful Tuesday morning. The pilot, the only passenger certified to fly, had accumulated 600 flight hours with 400 of those in a B-25. He was bound for Maxwell Air Field in Montgomery, where they were scheduled to refuel before heading on to Texas. But they never made it that far.

The plane was a B-25 bomber enroute from Washington, D.C. to its homebase in New Orleans.

The Crash

Thirty minutes west of Atlanta, the crew encountered a fierce thunderstorm. One of many that day that swept across east-central Alabama, spawning at least two tornadoes in the state and apparently playing a part in the downing of the 22,000-pound plane. The official Army Air Corps report never cited a cause for the crash, but the report, which mainly includes photographs of the crash site and Bolling Field, where the plane took off, did note the weather.

Through the piles of retrieved debris and military records, Mr. Norwood, a former aircraft mechanic and inspector, has pieced together a theory on what happened to the airplane and the crew. It’s only guesswork, he said, but “it’s a lot better guesswork than what they originally had”.

The right engine was out and on fire, the alcohol tank had exploded, the crew had it “as dirty as they could get it to slow it down,” with flaps down, the working engine feathered, and landing gear down. The fire was on the inside as well as the outside due to the lack of insulation.

“It got all smoke in the cockpit… and I believe they got completely disoriented and went straight in,” Mr. Norwood said. “With all that happening fairly quickly, I don’t think they ever had a chance.”

According to newspaper accounts in The Montgomery Advertiser and the Dadeville Record, more than two dozen planes from Gunter and Maxwell air fields combed a 50-mile –wide path from Montgomery to Atlanta in a three-day search before forestry

Officials at Smith Mountain near the crash site reported seeing debris along the lake shoreline.

They managed to retrieve the body of Sgt. Green and several pieces of debris, including charred “Mae West” life preservers that had floated to shore. Attempts by the Air Force to raise the B-25 bomber were eventually abandoned due to the extremely muddy difficult conditions in that part of the lake. The bodies of the other two men were never recovered during the search by the Air Force in 1945.

Childhood Dreams

Bobby Norwood has heard the stories about the crash of the bomber all his life. As a member of a Montgomery-based underwater diving club at the young age of 14, he dove in Lake Martin for the first time. Since that time, the amateur diver has envisioned himself finding the twin-engine plane.

A later interest in World War II aircraft and the idea that if the plane was salvageable it could be used as a display or perhaps become airborne again spurred his interest on. On the lake, Bobby began using magnetic detectors and depth finders. “I used to go riding in my boat up there thinking I was going to find a picture of an airplane under water on my depth finder, but it didn’t work like that”. It wasn’t until he began questioning local residents that the search took a fruitful turn.

There were no witnesses to the crash, but some longtime locals did remember the military’s attempt to retrieve the bodies and were able to provide him with the general vicinity of the recovery activity.

Bobby was still curious about the cause of the accident. After much research, he finally found a small article on the crash on the front page of a 1945 Dadeville Record. That article helped him pinpoint more specifically the area of the accident – which was the Sandy Creek area – and then he started diving. This valuable piece of information allowed him to focus on a 1,000-yard area of the lake floor, where the discovery ultimately was made.

“When I found that article, I knew definitely the airplane was there, I knew it was near Sandy Creek,” said Norwood, who lives and works in Montgomery and has a lake home hear Kowaliga.

“Before that I didn’t really know it was there because nobody could ever tell me they had seen it or seen part of it. That’s when I really started looking hard and requested the crash report. It took me I don’t know how many times before
I finally got the right one. It had a picture of the crash site on it, which was hand drawn, but that didn’t really help much. The problem with the crash report drawing was the shoreline was drawn while the water was 45 feet below full pool. Since the shoreline looked totally different, it didn’t match any known shoreline of the Sandy Creek area. During World War II, Alabama Power Co. generated power at Martin Dam close to full capacity to supply power to industries supporting the war effort, resulting in a lower lake level than today’s operating guidelines.

Rivet Holes

Three years ago Norwood, suited in his scuba gear, slipped beneath the surface of Lake Martin. He and a friend, Jeff Norris of Atlanta, were finally able to actually dive for the plane. Bobby would be reported to authorities many times over for his activities. Although, after painfully extensive research and effort, he had gained all legal and salvage rights to the aircraft through the United States government, Alabama Power, and the Alabama Historical Commission.

At about 50 feet below the surface of beautiful Lake Martin, Mr. Norwood was unable most of the time to see even his hand in front of his face. He swept the cold, murky bottom with arms and legs, and occasionally probed the bottom with a long poker, which sunk into the surface “like butter”.

Plunging down into the depths, he acted out his childhood fantasy of finding the submerged airplane. But still there was nothing. “We had been searching for two years, every weekend, even through the winter,” Norwood said. “It was 35 degrees and we were out there diving. That’s how this whole project has been. Since we started diving I haven’t done anything on the weekends but come up here and work on it.”

Then one day a fellow diver returned to the surface with what he thought was a piece of a discarded barrel. After a thorough cleaning, Mr. Norwood realized that he was looking at something much more than litter - metal drums don’t have rivet holes.

Almost 47 years after the crash, Norris and his team had brought up the first piece of the aircraft, an unspectacular, mud-covered piece of metal with a rivet hole in it. But to them it looked like gold.

“It didn’t look like anything really, but I used to be an aircraft mechanic years ago, and when I saw that rivet hole, I knew what it was,” he said. “I wiped it off and boy, I went crazy. I said, ‘Go back down, go back down!’” And ever since then it’s been the same way. Whenever we bring something up, there’s always excitement.”

The plane hit and probably sunk down in the mud, and over the years the silt has built up over it,” he said. “There was no mound or anything when we found it. It was just a flat surface. We were just lucky enough to have found some pieces sticking above the mud.”

The plane had been discovered completely covered in six feet of thick mud in Sandy Creek at a 50-foot depth. During their previous attempts to raise the aircraft, Navy divers had broken the plane up into tiny pieces. Norwood hoped to be able to “float these up” as his difficult project progressed.

The Project

“The biggest problem is that it’s an expensive project. There’s no money to be made off it. It’s just enjoyable because of the history,” he said.

Norwood realized his boyhood dreams when he found the plane. And the event also ended a two-year search, both in the water and on land - pouring over military records and newspaper files.

“It took a lot of time, a lot of effect and a lot of research work,” said Mr. Norwood, the owner of Import East, a Montgomery auto parts and repair business.

Still, finding the plane created new issues. It was heavily embedded in thick, red silt and muck that becomes easily agitated at the slightest movement.

“The plane hit and probably sunk down in the mud, and over the years the silt has built up over it,” he said. “There was no mound or anything when we found it. It was just a flat surface. We were just lucky enough to have found some pieces sticking above the mud.”

Although lacking visibility, Mr. Norwood and fellow divers have come to the conclusion that the plane is resting upside down. And that the military retrieval efforts of the bodies most likely resulted in the separation of the two engines from the plane’s fuselage.

“We weren’t expecting it to be torn up this bad,” Norwood said. “I originally had visions of putting it back together. But it’s torn up pretty bad. Right now I’ve got most of it in one of my shops and in my basement, and once we get the bigger pieces we may have to put them in a hangar at the airport.”

“I don’t think the crash itself did all that much damage, but when the Navy tried to drag the plane (with a crane), they pulled the engines off. They didn’t care about the airplane. The just wanted to get the people out,” said Mr. Norwood.

The first big piece Norwood and Norris retrieved was the tail section of the plane. After more than a month and a half, they had it successfully excavated and were also able to raise the propeller. A beautiful shiny brass fire extinguisher and a magnesium portion of the wheel now also rest in Mr. Norwood’s dry basement. Other recovered items include one of the two propellers, the instrument panel, a partially charred tire, seat belts, parts of seats, various items from inside the cockpit, and both engines (weighing 2000-lbs. each). These pieces will eventually be joined together with the mass of the plane to complete the puzzle of the crashed bomber.

His favorite piece, says Bobby, is the data plate. It’s the identifying military “label”, which bears a U.S. Army inscription and contains information about the plane.

“We’ve got the piece of the airplane that I didn’t think we would ever find if it wasn’t connected to the airplane,” he said. “We found it laying down in the mud. And if I could have any one piece of the airplane, that’s the piece I wanted.”

Raising the parts up from Lake Martin has taken longer than Norwood expected. He has had to spend a lot of time working on equipment for his boat in order to lift some of the pieces up. For instance, he spent a month and a half building a lift barge to pull up the two engines.

“How long this takes depends a lot on the weather, the visibility and how much help I have,” he said. “We’re always looking for people to help us.”

Still, there is no real time limit. The depth of the wreckage prohibits divers from staying down more than an hour and a half, and then only about 30 minutes is devoted to salvaging. Staying down too long in the high-pressurized environment or coming up too fast could cause air bubbles to build up in a diver’s blood system, causing a painful and sometimes deadly disorder similar to the bends.

“At that depth you can’t stay without decompression, and we don’t want to get into that,” said Mr. Norwood.

Just in case of emergencies, buoys attached by a line to a diver can be sent up to surface as a distress signal. “I’m taking my time. I’m not a professional at this by any means. We’re just trying to make this as enjoyable as possible,” he said.

Regardless of how long the project takes, Norwood said he plans to continue working on it until the mystery is solved.

“We’re still a ways away from finding out what happened, but we’re a lot closer than the military was,” Norwood said. “It can be frustrating sometimes because it takes so long, but I like stuff like this. It’s fun, it really is. It’s hard to explain until you actually see the pieces coming up. The history behind it and all the stuff that goes along with it, it’s really amazing when you think that this stuff hasn’t been touched in 50 years almost.”

“It’s kind of funny, because when I first started this, people laughed at me. They didn’t even believe there was a plane until we have found the really big pieces. And now some of those same people are right there with us, helping out whenever and however they can.”

Norwood dives the site every chance he gets and has accumulated hundreds of hours of dive time on the Sandy Creek site alone. He says that his “labor of love” is dangerous and “not easy”. Many ideas to raise the plane have been suggested, yet the danger element, cost involved, and other issues must be considered. Bobby plans to slowly but surely expose each portion of the aircraft to make it ready to be removed from the depths.

Norwood proposes to “wench” the hulk of the aircraft up, due to the extreme weight of the aluminum fuselage plus the added weight of the mud. The fuselage weight is around 26,000 lbs. He says the first task is the “break the suction” with the help of a crane and then to try to remove as much silt as possible. Norwood says the nose is badly broken and it has not yet been determined if the wings remain connected to the fuselage. But, Norwood has a mission and his desire is to raise the bomber and if feasible, make if “flyable” again.

With numerous other projects underway, Bobby Norwood is a busy man, yet one committed to his mission. His historical research is extensive and his story is extraordinary. He stands to reap only the personal reward of accomplishment by
fulfilling his personal dream of piecing together this bit of history and putting to rest the mystery of the crashed B-25.

People Helping Out

Already, the newly formed Experimental Aircraft Association’s Warbirds Society in Prattville has volunteered to help restore the plane. Norwood has contacted military officials about handling any of the crew’s remains.

“I don’t know what we are going to have when we bring it up. I don’t even know if we will have anything that is… showable. There’s still a lot of work that has to be done,” he said.

There have been unexpected highlights, like when Bobby Norwood was contacted by the son of one of the passengers killed in the crash. Chuck Oliver, who lives in Florida and is a salesman for a food service company, was working at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery and decided to contact Alabama Power Company about the exact site of his father’s crash. Alabama Power then put him in touch with Norwood.

“It was kind of a fluke,” Norwood said. “But when he got my number, he called me at work and we started talking. He came up and he’s been out with us three times. He doesn’t dive, but he works on top, helping us clean the items off and things like that. He’s a real nice fellow, and it’s worked out real well.”

Others who have heard about his obsession and joined him on dives share Norwood’s fascination with the airplane. Those who can’t dive have helped in other ways, from cleaning pieces to providing food and drinks.

“The people in Dadeville have been really great to us,” Norwood said. “They’ve helped out a lot. One time we were diving and we came in, and the folks at Siggers Store had about 40 sandwiches waiting on us. The support has been unbelievable.

He credits the local area for their over-whelming support and assistance for his success this far.

The Aircraft

The B-25 aircraft, which included a series of models, first went into production in August 1939, about two years before the United States entered the war. The light bomber, designed for short-to medium-range missions, won its fame in April 1942 when Army Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle led 16 planes in the first bombing of the Japanese mainland.

The airplane, which normally carried a crew of six, was capable in later models of carrying six 500-pound bombs and was outfitted with several turrets from which guns could be fired. The G-series airplane that crashed in Lake Martin was 52 feet long and had a wingspan of 67 feet. The original data plate, which has been recovered, showed it was built in August 1943.

County: Tallapoosa County

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