Whereas
during the Second World War, the United States Army Air Corps established rest
and recreation facilities in Mackay, Queensland, Australia;
Whereas
from the end of January 1943 until early 1944, thousands of United States
servicemen were ferried from jungle battlefields in New Guinea to
Mackay;
Whereas
these servicemen traveled by air transport to spend an average of 10 days on a
rest and relaxation furlough;
Whereas
they usually were carried by two B–17C Flying Fortresses converted for
transport duty;
Whereas
on Monday, June 14, 1943, at about 6 a.m., a B–17C, Serial Number 40–2072, took
off from Mackay Airport for Port Moresby;
Whereas
there were 6 crew members and 35 passengers aboard;
Whereas
the aircraft took off into fog and soon made two left turns at low
altitude;
Whereas
a few minutes after takeoff, when it was five miles south of Mackay, the plane
crashed at Bakers Creek, killing everyone on board except Corporal Foye Kenneth
Roberts of Wichita Falls, Texas, the sole survivor of the accident;
Whereas
the cause of the crash remains a mystery, and the incident remains relatively
unknown outside of Australia;
Whereas
United States officials, who were under orders not to reveal the presence of
Allied troops in Australia, kept the crash a military secret during the
war;
Whereas
due to wartime censorship, the news media did not report the crash;
Whereas
relatives of the victims received telegrams from the United States War
Department stating little more than that the serviceman had been killed
somewhere in the South West Pacific;
Whereas
the remains of the 40 crash victims were flown to Townsville, Queensland, where
they were buried in the Belgian Gardens United States military cemetery on June
19, 1943;
Whereas
in early 1946, they were disinterred and shipped to Hawaii, where 13 were
reburied in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, and the remainder
were returned to the United States mainland for reburial;
Whereas
15 years ago, Robert S. Cutler was reading his father’s wartime journal and
found a reference to the tragic B–17C airplane accident;
Whereas
this discovery inspired Mr. Cutler to embark upon a research project that would
consume more than a decade and take him to Australia;
Whereas
retired United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Teddy W. Hanks, of
Wichita Falls, Texas, who lost four of his World War II fellow servicemembers
in the crash, compiled a list of the casualties from United States archives in
1993 and began searching for their families;
Whereas
the Bakers Creek Memorial Association, in conjunction with the Washington Post
and retired United States Army genealogy experts Charles Gailey and Arvon
Staats, located 23 additional families of victims of the accident during the
past two years;
Whereas
Joy Shingleton, Donnie Tenney, Wendy Andrus, and Wilma Post, the family of Army
Air Corps Corporal Edward J. Tenney, of Buckhannon, West Virginia, helped to
bring this recently uncovered World War II tragedy to light; and
Whereas
as of February 24, 2005, the commander of the United States Fifth Air Force
officially had notified the relatives of 36 of the 40 victims: Now, therefore,
be it
That it is the sense of Congress that an
appropriate site to be selected by the Secretary of the Army should be provided
for a memorial marker to honor the memory of the 40 members of the Armed Forces
of the United States who lost their lives in the air crash at Bakers Creek,
Australia, on June 14, 1943, provided that the Secretary of the Army have
exclusive authority to approve the design and site for the memorial
marker.