Memorial service honors victims of 1952 airplane crash
Ralph Boyden (right) prepares to lay roses at a memorial to 87 military service members killed in a 1952 airplane accident at Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake. Boyden is accompanied by his daughter LeeAnne Austin. He was one of the first people on the scene after the accident.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Roses like the base of a memorial to 87 military service members killed in a 1952 airplane crash at Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake. The victims were remembered during a ceremony Monday.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Participants line up to leave a rose in remembrance of 87 military service members killed in a 1952 plane crash at Larson Air Force Base during a remembrance ceremony Monday in Moses Lake.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Ralph Boyden (right) was one of the first people on the scene of a 1952 air crash that killed 87 military service members at Larson Air Force Base. Boyden was among the people attending a remembrance service Monday.
Organizer Larry Godden welcomes attendees to a remembrance service Monday for 87 military service members killed in a 1952 air crash at Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald Attendees observe a moment of silence for 87 military service members killed in a 1952 plane crash during a remembrance ceremony Monday in Moses Lake.
Ralph Boyden (right) prepares to lay roses at a memorial to 87 military service members killed in a 1952 airplane accident at Larson Air Force Base in Moses Lake. Boyden is accompanied by his daughter LeeAnne Austin. He was one of the first people on the scene after the accident.
Casey McCarthy/Columbia Basin Herald
MOSES LAKE — The victims of a 1952 air crash at Larson Air Force Base were remembered with a ceremony Memorial Day morning.
The Dec. 20, 1952, crash killed 87 people, mostly servicemen headed home for Christmas. The victims are listed on the Forgotten Heroes Memorial, just outside the entrance of Grant County International Airport, previously Larson Air Force Base.
Attendees were asked to lay red roses at the memorial for the victims. Ralph Boyden handed his daughter LeeAnne Austin the first rose, saying the sister of his friend Kenneth Bacot had asked him to leave it in Bacot’s memory.
Boyden, now 92, was a military police officer stationed at Larson AFB at the time, and he wrote down some of his memories, which were read by his daughter during the ceremony.
The C-124 was carrying 105 servicemen and 10 air crew. The plane suffered a mechanical problem on takeoff, cartwheeled and burned. Boyden said he had been on duty until 2 a.m. that day and was annoyed to be awakened by one of his men banging on his window.
The man banging on the window was O.C. Smith, later a well-known R&B and pop singer and Grammy winner.
It was, Boyden remembered Smith saying, the world’s worst aircraft disaster, and the captain on duty that morning needed every man he could get.
Boyden “reported to an incredible aircraft crash site just off the northwest runway,” he wrote. Among the victims was Bacot, a member of Boyden’s MP unit.
Smith was right, Boyden said — it was the biggest aircraft disaster in the world up to that time. Other victims died later of their injuries, he said.
Organizer Larry Godden said normally there’s a color guard, a reading of names and a military salute. But the precautions enacted to combat the COVID-19 outbreak canceled those parts of the observance.
