What if? Woman who lost father in WWII bomber crash at INL reflects on his life

EDITOR’S NOTE: EastIdahoNews.com is working with Idaho National Laboratory to celebrate its 75th anniversary. Each month, we’ll highlight the history, achievements and trials of the U.S. Department of Energy’s desert site. We’ll explore the INL’s influence on eastern Idaho, and its day-to-day impact on local people.

ARCO — Roberta Armstrong has had a good life but still wonders from time to time how it would have been different had her father lived. 

Lt. Robert W. Madsen of Minnesota died in a training crash 80 years ago at what’s now known as Idaho National Laboratory. It was a training ground for World War II aviators in the early 1940s.  

He was 28 years old when he died.

Armstrong never met her father and grew up hearing stories about him from her mother, Dana. 

Dana had created two scrapbooks of her late husband that are several decades old. 

“She would tell me these stories, and they always had the visual aid of these scrapbooks that she had kept,” Armstrong said. “After her husband died, her plan was to join the Army Corps. But she discovered she was pregnant, and that was me. My name being Roberta is probably pretty obvious. That was my dad’s name, Robert.”

Commemoration event

On June 29, the U.S. Department of Energy Idaho Operations Office hosted a commemoration event at INL to honor seven crewmen who died the night of Jan. 8, 1944.

When Armstrong was invited out to honor the crew on its 80th anniversary, she and her husband looked at each other and said, “We’ve got to go!”

They traveled from New Mexico to attend the event at an INL fire station. There was a moment of silence, a presentation of colors, a background of the crash and a historian who spoke. 

Armstrong talked at the event, shared what she knew about her father, and mentioned her mother had died 10 years ago.

“I’d like to think she is here in spirit,” she said. 

Armstrong brought one big scrapbook about her dad to show people at the event, if they were interested. Inside, there were orders to come to Pocatello, condolence cards, a letter from the chaplain in Pocatello and lots of family pictures. 

“He wanted to be a pilot, but I’m not sure what the story is. He either flunked out of pilot school or something. So, navigator was something that he was put into. He graduated from the navigator school down at Hondo (Texas) in November of ’43 and almost immediately was transferred to Idaho for bomber group training,” Armstrong said.

There was even a flight log in the scrapbook. 

“There’s eight hours in it. Four hours were in a trainer, and another three hours were in two different versions of a B-24, and then an hour and five minutes was in the B-24J, which crashed,” Armstrong said. 

What happened on the night of the crash 

During the height of the war in 1944, bomber groups and fighter squadrons flying out of the Pocatello Army Air Base regularly blasted practice areas on what was then known as the Naval Proving Ground west of Idaho Falls.

On the night of the crash, Madsen was the navigator on a B-24J Liberator (#42-73365) as it attempted a bombing run.

According to the Army’s official report, the bomber left the Pocatello Army Air Base, now known as the Pocatello Municipal Airport, just after 8 p.m. 

Their training was in preparation for their assumed deployment to support the Allied effort in World War II. 

Nicholas Holmer, an archeologist at INL, said it was dark and clear that night. There was a slight southwest wind, which is typical in Idaho. 

He said there were a series of bombing and training ranges that were associated with the air base.

“Two of them are on the INL. They were on their way to one of those for a nighttime training run, and something catastrophic happened,” Holmer said.  

The mission was to drop practice dummy bombs on the Arco High Altitude Bombing Range. This is located on the site. The tower operator reported seeing the plane at 8:50 p.m., and at 9:05 p.m., after the plane made three passes at 20,000 feet, the operator reported seeing a flash and hearing an explosion. 

Sheepherders near Middle Butte saw the plane trying to gain altitude before going into a spin.  

“One of the tail rudders came off of the aircraft, and it just ended up plummeting down, and it was so violent, it burned instantly, and none of the crewmen were able to escape,” Holmer said. 

Although the cause of the crash was never determined, pilot error was not suspected, Holmer told EastIdahoNews.com. 

“Historic documents indicate that the preflight checks by the mechanic found the aircraft to be sound and ready for flight. Standard medical checks of the crew also found them to be well rested, in good health and in good spirits,” Holmer said. 

A crash team from the air base removed the larger pieces of wreckage.

“I think, ultimately, the most important thing is just remembering the sacrifice of these people and anyone who has ever given to their country,” Holmer said. 

Discovering the crash

Marc McDonald is a Pocatello historian with Project Remembrance. The organization began about 20 years ago as a way to unite pilots, archeologists, historians and outdoorsmen who shared an interest in aviation archeology. 

McDonald learned the crash site had remained undisturbed and forgotten for 70 years.

In January 2014, he contacted archeologists at INL and told them he thought there might be a World War II airplane crash site there. A team was assembled in the spring, and McDonald got a copy of the accident report. 

“The Air Force accident report said it was five miles from where we actually found it. So that was a challenge back then. Record-keeping wasn’t good. We used photos from the accident report, which were really bad … photocopies and also old aerial photos that were taken in the ’50s,” McDonald said. 

“We kind of matched up photos with the terrain and picked three likely spots and came out here and checked them out. On the third try, we found it,” he continued. 

There were still pieces left behind. 

“They left a lot of small pieces lying around and some personal effects too,” McDonald said. 

A 1935 high school class ring with initials was found at the crash site. McDonald tried to figure out who it belonged to. 

“In 2014, out of the blue, I received an email from Marc. He was telling me they had been working at this site and they had found this class ring and could I help him identify it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t,” Armstrong had said. 

It was later discovered that it was connected to a crew member named Sgt. George H. Pearce Jr. The ring was returned to Pearce’s daughter Nancy Gavalis of Bristol, New Hampshire. She visited the crash site several years ago. Read a previous INL article about it here.

McDonald got a granite marker made and placed on the site to honor the crew members. 

He told EastIdahoNews.com he was glad to connect with the descendants of the crash victims and was happy to have met Armstrong in person recently.  

“We are here today to remember history, to preserve it, and perhaps to learn from it,” McDonald said at the commemoration event. “We’re here to honor seven good men whose lives were cut short in the service of their country.” 

The memories of her father

Armstrong had never been to the crash site out on the Idaho sage desert. She traveled to it the day before the commemoration event. She saw the granite marker with the following names inscribed on it: 

• Lt. Richard A. Hedges 
• Lt. Lonnie L. Keepers
• Lt. Robert W. Madsen
• Lt. Richard R. Pitzner
• Sgt. Louis H. Rinke
• Sgt. Charles W. Eddy
• Sgt. George H. Pearce Jr.

For Armstrong, seeing the area was more educational and informative rather than emotional. She believes her mother would have had a different reaction than she did. 

“I think they were very deeply in love, and she missed him … I think, all of her life, even though she remarried. In fact, when she died, she wanted to be buried next to him. So they’re buried in a cemetery in Minnesota,” Armstrong said. 

Armstrong described what she saw.

“The site is pristine. The blue glass is still blue, and the orange glass is still orange,” she said. “It was kind of weird to think that a part of my dad’s uniform or something might still be on that site.”

Learning about her dad through history, scrapbooks, the crash site and her mother’s stories, Armstrong said she admires him. 

“(He) came across as a guy who was going to college, and he decided that he needed to serve,” she said. 

Seeing what she saw at INL has given her some closure because she now understands more about how the crash happened and how her father died. But she still asks the question: what if? 

“I mean, we all take a lot of roads in our life. It kind of is what it is. I like where we’re at, but I still would have liked to have known him,” Armstrong said.