—The Daily Collegian Friday, Oct. 20,1978
An Air Force officer watches the burning wreckage of a open area at the end of the runway. The tail piece was
B-52 bomber that crashed just after take-off at March the only piece of wreckage intact. Other pieces of the
Air Force Base, Calif. Five of the six crew members plane disintegrated on impact,
aboard the plane died when the plane went down in an
MOTION
Open Daily 9-5:30
ATQ & T<D B thank the following for
their help with the FALL FLING:
W. R. Hickey
Jay Storch
Winners in Competition
Tails Kappa Sigma
Individual Chug Gary Wagner, 7.3 seconds
Team Chug Theta Chi, 12.1 seconds
Bike Race Men* Paul Cajka
Va Keg Chug Alpha Sigma Phi, 15:55
And thanks to all who participated
UNIVERSITY CALENDAR
Friday-Sunday, October 20-22
SPECIAL EVENTS
Friday, Oct. 20
Sports: J.V.. football, vs. Rutgers, 2 p.m., IM Field; international women’s
volleyball, U.S. National Team vs. National Team of Japan, 7:30 p.m., Rec.
Bldg.
Nelson W. Taylor Lecture. Edward Teller, Lawrence Livermore Lab and
University of California, on “Progress in Controlled Fusion,” 3:50 p.m.,
Room J. 17 Osmond.
Student Alumni Reception, 5-7 p.m., HUB North Lounge.
Homecoming Activities. Parade, 6 p.m., College Ave.; candlelight ceremony
and Glee Club concert (weather permitting), immediately following parade,
Old Main Steps; fireworks' and bonfire, 9 p.m., area south of Beaver
Stadium; radio station WQWK all night broadcast, midnight-dawn, Nittany
Lion shrine.
SFO film. Dark Star, 7,9 and 11 p.m., Room 102 Forum.
Glee Club rehearsal, 7 p.m., HUB Gallery Lounge.
Iranian Student Assn, meeting, 7 p.m., Room 324 HUB.
Interlandia Folkdance class, 7:30 p.m., HUB Ballroom.
Commonsplace Coffeehouse, 8 p.m., Room 102 Kern.
Un-Common Theatre, Dames at Sea, 8 p.m., Room 112 Kern.
Artists Series, Martha Graham Dance Company, 8:30 p.m., Eisenhower
Auditorium.
Saturday, Oct. 21
Wargamers meeting, 1 p.m., Room 101 EE East. Sunday also.
Sports: football, vs. Syracuse (Homecoming), 1:30 p.m., Beaver Stadium.
Un-Common Dinner Theatre, dinner, 6:30 p.m., Dames at Sea,B p.m., Kern
Bldg.
Comp. Lit. GSA film series, R. Allen Kirkpatrick, underground film maker,
shows and discusses some of his latest films, 7 p.m., Room 112 Chambers.
UCC, Van Morrison, and introducing Dave Edmonds’ Rockpile, 8 p.m., Rec
Bldg.
Artists Series, Martha Graham Dance Company, 8:30 p.m., Eisenhower
Auditorium.
Schwab Auditorium Rededication Ceremony and Penn State Glee Club 90th
Anniversary Concert, 8:30 p.m., Schwab.
Black Caucus Dance, 9 p.m., HUB Ballroom.
Sunday, Oct. 22
Pre-Vet Club/Nita-Nee Kennel Club, Fun Match Dog Show, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., fields
south of Beaver Stadium.
ACF, 9:15 a.m., Room 324 HUB; 10:45 a.m., HUB Assembly Hall
SIMS, 10 a.m., Room 319 HUB.
University Chapel Service, Luther Harshbarger, humanities and religious
studies, 11 a.m., Music Bldg. Recital Hall.
Lamb Fellowship, 12:30 p.m., Room 301 HUB.
Blood tests to identify carriers of Tay-Sacks disease, 1-4 p.m., HUB Ballroom
Shaver’s Creek, history walk, “Reading the Landscape,” 2 p.m., Stone Valley.
Artists Series, Martha Graham Dance Company, 3 p.m., Eisenhower
Auditorium.
Un-Common Dinner Theatre, dinner, 6:30 p.m., Dames at Sea, 8 p.m., Kern
Bldg.
Moslem Student Assn. Meeting, 7 p.m., Room 322 HUB
IFC Awards Ceremony 8 p.m., Room 301 HUB.
KINETIC ART
End Result
Women* Tina Ricci
109 S. Allen St.
The Trophy Room
Ryder Olds
ACTION
Mon. & Fri. 9-9
B-52 goes down after take-off
MARCH AIR FORCE BASE, Calif.
(UPI) A B-52D bomber on a Strategic
Air Command training mission crashed
and exploded in flames with an earth
shaking impact yesterday just after
take-off from March Field Air Force
Base. Five of its six crew members wfere
killed.
Harry Durbin, 50, who raises game
birds on a farm near the base, saw the
eight-engine intercontinental bomber
crash and said he feared there might be
a bomb aboard that “was going to blow
half of this county clean off the map.”
The huge plane had the capability of
carrying nuclear bombs, but there was
no weaponry aboard when it plunged
into a farming area about 7:30 a.m. after
an apparent engine failure, an Air Force
spokesman said.
Some wreckage landed in the yard of a
farmhouse but no one on the ground was
hurt.
UPlwirephoto
The B-52, which became the Air
Force’s main strategic plane in the mid
-19505, has a wing span of 185 feet, is 40
-jsrvnL snctnw
feet high and cruises at 650 mph. Each
plane is valued at $9.4 million.
The lone survivor was taken to the
base hospital with urispecified injuries
and was reported in stable condition. He
was not immediately identified.
Don Russell, an employee of the
Riverside City Fire Department, was on
his way to work when he saw the plane
go down into a ground fog. “A couple of
seconds after that,” he said, "there was
a tremendous big ball of fire coming up
out of the fog.”
Russell said he stopped, got out of his
car and found the survivor; whom he
said was- the tailgunner, wandering
around. He had some facial injuries,
Russell said.
The tail section was the only part of
the plane intact after the crash. It landed
in the middle of a rural street. Most of
the plane disintegrated when it hit the
ground between the base and the
community of Sunnymead to the north.
Durvin said theplane crashed with “a
tremendous explosion, a tremendous
; »>
fire, a tremendous noise... I thank Go<r
I’m still here.”
He continued: “It became obvious, to
me from the sound of the engines that it
was in trouble. The pilot realized it,aud
he started a sharp bank and crashed.”, ; •
Durbin said he ran away from .the
crash scene “as fast as I could” and took
cover in a culvert.
.“After the first tremendous ex
plosion,” he said, "there were a number
of explosions' and I hid in the culvert and
I stayed there until I was sure’ there (
wasn’t some weapon on that plane that
was going to blow half of this county
clean off the map.”'
"There was no nuclear weaponry
aboard, no weapons at all,” Maj; Eric
Solander, the base public information
officer, said. ■ •
The Air Force immediately started an
investigation of the crash.
A base security force of some 100 men,
armed with rifles and machine guns,
cordoned the crash site, to keep apy
unauthorized persons away from the.
wreckage. '*