[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 126 (Monday, July 28, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7576-S7577]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         SUBMITTED RESOLUTIONS

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SENATE CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 95--EXPRESSING THE SENSE OF CONGRESS THAT 
 A 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 WHO LOST THEIR LIVES IN THE AIR CRASH AT BAKERS CREEK, 
                      AUSTRALIA, ON JUNE 14, 1943

  Mr. CASEY (for himself, Mrs. McCaskill, Mr. Specter, Mr. Cornyn, and 
Mr. Cardin) submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was 
referred to the Committee on Armed Services:

       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

[[Page S7577]]

     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 service members 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
       Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives 
     concurring), 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.

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