B25 Wreckage in Oconee, SC.. If you've found, please read! What remains & where?

[parawill52]

Hello everyone,

Recently I finally made the trip to find the wreckage of a B25 that crashed on a training flight in Oconee, South Carolina. I was able to find the memorial stone with instructions, but was unable to locate the actual crash site from there. Does anyone have any information on what actually remains of the crash, what would remain after all this time, or where it is from the memorial?

Here's a link about the crash:
Crew killed in 1943 Army Air Corps plane crash honored in Oconee County

Also, how would you interpret the instructions on the stone? Would "to the north" mean magnetic north or north of the stone (straight ahead). We walked into the woods a few different ways but were unable to find anything. I'll post a very rough sketch of the area to give you an idea. (Using MS Paint, sorry for how rough it is!) The rectangle in the middle is the stone with "front" indicating facing the stone while reading. There is a main highway at your back while reading the stone.

[Anderson]

Surely it refers to compass north, so 200 yards in the direction of your arrow. The "across the road" is confusing as the monument is "across the road".

[Bill Grist]

There is also a Navy one in BADIN LAKE, N.C.

WWII bomber lies at bottom of Badin Lake :: WRAL.com

[AZPhil]

So are you using any kind of metal detecting equipment or are you expecting to see top soil ground finds?

I would think that the major parts were removed after the accident investigation, but there could be smaller parts that were missed.

We have a B-17 that also hit the top of one of our local mountains, You used to find O2 bottle, engine jugs from the radials, But after 20 years that place has been picked clean ,now you just have smalls shreds of aluminum and bits of plexiglass.

Semper Fi
Phil

[parawill52]

Thanks for the replies everyone! So we made a second trip out today but still no luck. We tried following compass north but my friend and I pretty well covered over 200 yards when we went out a couple of days ago. We did try some other directions today, including across the highway just to see what was up. I was able to get in touch with the gentleman who headed getting the stone put out there, but his directions weren't very clear either. I'm going to try and contact him again Monday to get some clarification (unfortunately I missed his return call so he left directions in a voicemail). He did say there was a marker, but not what it was or where, so we weren't sure if it was a ribbon or another stone or something.

I did see a comment on one of the articles where someone thought they remembered seeing the fuselage being taken away from the site after the bodies were recovered (he was 11 at the time) so I don't know what to expect to see. Someone said they thought the engine that was discovered was left out there, but it was about 100 yards away from the crash site. I'm hoping that's still out there, but we will see. Even if there's nothing "big" there, we may be able to find something.

As for using a metal detector, we did take one with us. What we were really banking on was finding the remains of the engine to tip us off that we were close. We did make a really interesting discovery, but I'll have to do some research. Believe it or not, the detector actually picked up a little plastic-like bag that was an accessory pack to what is most certainly a military ration... And guess what! You can still read the text on the bag. The really interesting part is it said it contained cigarettes, so that's a little exciting to me knowing that it's at least a little older, and I can't imagine another scenario where a ration accessory pack made it up to that area. Maybe we're on to something! I'll be sure to update once I get more info or if we have any hard proof!