Navy Jet Crash in Hertford – February 21, 1957

This is a blog version of a Facebook posting on June 15, 2025.

Looking back at the close call of all close calls, when a Navy jet fighter crashed within 200 yards of Perquimans County High School in Hertford, NC, on the morning of February 21, 1957. Two people were killed and a third person was injured.

Retrospective is below. Read a few newspaper clippings in this Google Drive folder.

Crippled Plane Plunged

Located on Highway 17 just south of downtown Hertford, the high school had an enrollment of 500 students. And just minutes after the crash, hundreds of students would have been on the baseball field for P.E. And just before the crash, 115 eight graders had been out on the field.

The McDonnell F3H-2 Demon jet fighter was based at the naval air station in Oceana, VA. Witnesses reported that the plane was heading directly for the school buildings on a relatively flat glide angle. It was also on fire. Early impressions were that the pilot was still in the cockpit, but official slater said that trim-tab settings may have caused the “flat glide” instead of a “sharp plunge.”

As the “crippled plane plunged toward the school area,” reported the next day’s Virginia Pilot, it sheared off the tops of small trees about 300 yards from the school’s garage building. It then struck a corn field, then struck a shallow hole, then bounced into the air, and finally crashed into the corner of the garage building.

Dead and Injured

Inside was chief county school mechanic J. Van Roach, 55, and his assistant Preston, Morgan, 26. Roach stumbled out of the building, his clothes burning. Caretaker Raleigh Perry, from the cemetery next door, threw dirt onto Roach to extinguish the burning clothes. Morgan was blown out of the building and over the fence at the baseball field. Both suffered serious burns, and Roach died of his injuries at 7:55 p.m. that night. Morgan was reported in critical condition, with burns over 35 percent of his body.

The pilot was Ensign William W. Bell and his body was found the following night about five miles from the crash site, on the farm of Lee Winslow near New Hope, NC. His parachute had not opened.

The plane was attached to Fighter Squadron 82 at Oceana. It had left at 10:05 a.m. on a “routine training mission.” There had been no distress calls from the aircraft. Noted a retrospective in the Daily Advance on January 7, 2023, it had been making a run at targets at Naval Auxiliary Air Station Harvey Point.

Inside the School

Both students and faculty inside the school saw the crash. Said Science teacher Mrs. Joseph Nowell, “I saw the [plane’s jet engine] flying toward us and yelled ‘run, run’.” While eighth-grader Guy McCracken also saw the plane’s impact and told everyone “to hit the floor and that’s just what I did.” He recalled later “somebody [then] jumped on top of me and then we all scrambled out of the room.”

In his office on the opposite side of the building, Principal E. C. Woodard “felt a tremendous thud and the building shaking.” Leaving his office, he saw students coming down from the second floor, and returned to his office to signal the fire drill alarm. Said another teacher, “the school emptied in less than a minute.” Agreed Mrs. Nowell, “for the first time in a fire drill there was no confusion on the stairs. The kids came out fast and orderly.”

Emergency Response

The first crash report was called into the Coast Guard station at Elizabeth City at 10:58 a.m. Both the Navy and Marine Crops were immediately alerted.

Firefighters from Hertford and Edenton (14 miles) responded. Recounted that day’s Perquimans Weekly, they “doused the area with water” but were instructed “not to spray water on the plane because it cause [the fire] to flare up.”

From news photos, at least one military fire truck responded, either from the Elizabeth City Coast Guard station (20 miles) and the Weeksville Naval Air Station (25 miles). The latter closed as an active facility later that year.

With early reports stating that the school had also been struck, recounted the Daily Advance retrospective, a radio station “put out a call for all available funeral home ambulances.”

From those early reports, the Red Cross Blood Center in Norfolk also “dispatched six units of serum albumin” and “six units of whole blood” to Chowan County Hospital in Edenton. The blood supplies were escorted by Norfolk police.

At the same time, “droves of worried parents in vehicles clogged the roadways trying to check the status of their children,” noted the Daily Advance retrospective.

Within an hour of the crash, Navy and Marine Corp helicopters had arrived and brought military officials to the scene. Navy blimps [!] later lifted off, to search for the pilot. Both an aerial and ground search was conducted.

Added the Perquimans Weekly, “community volunteers provided coffee and doughnuts for the emergency workers.”

Damage Report

The school garage was destroyed, a 125 by 180-foot corrugated steel structure, along with its contents that included six school buses and a half-dozen “other pieces of rolling equipment.” (One activity bus, one gas truck, one pick-up truck, and one “tractor lawnmower” noted the next day’s News and Observer.)

Adding to the explosion of the plane’s impact were oxygen and acetylene tanks in the building as well as a small quantity of gasoline.

Two “private automobiles” parked outside were also demolished. And, as the Perquimans Weekly added, “the area around the bus garage was littered with plane parts and sections of flaming grass.”

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