Ahead of Memorial Day, a small group of veterans and family members made their way up Mount Holyoke in western Massachusetts. They continued an annual tradition of honoring military members lost during a tragic accident over 80 years ago.
Whether they hiked or drove up the mountain, members of a local American Legion Post and a Scout troop paid their respects Thursday, commemorating ten United States Army Air Force members who lost their lives during a training mission gone wrong in 1944.
“Just a few minutes out of Westover Field on a training mission, and nearing midnight, the pilot struggled to get the plane's nose up,” said Brian Willette, post commander of American Legion Post 260 in South Hadley. “Just 75 more feet of altitude, and they’d have made it over the summit.”
Joined by fellow Legionnaires and others, Willette and company stood before a solemn stone marker, overlooking part of the Pioneer Valley, including what was once Westover Field in Chicopee, now known as the Westover Air Reserve Base.
The slab lists the names of ten men who were onboard a B-24 Liberator the night of May 27. As Willette recounted, it was a training mission: one of the crew’s last before the aircraft would head to England and take part in a bombing campaign targeting German forces a year before their surrender.
However, the crew would never make the trip.
“Some residents actually saw it: they heard the plane flying low as they peered out windows and saw the plane struggling to gain altitude - many others who heard the explosion and saw the flames in the mountaintop knew instantaneously what it was: the B-24’s path was evident by the tree tops that sheared off and the trail of burning gasoline left on the mountainside,” he continued.
Citing local reporting and other records of the crash, Willette described how the plane, piloted by 21-year-old Lieutenant Talbot Malcolm Jr. of Westfield, New Jersey, crashed into the mountain, killing all onboard.
Being the home of several military runways during World War II and beyond, the Pioneer Valley saw a number of crashes, both during and after the war.
As Willette tells WAMC, what happened on the mountain range between Hadley and South Hadley captures how it’s often a nation’s youth putting their lives on the line during times of war.
“Lieutenant Talbot Malcolm, I believe, he was 21 at this time, and his copilot is 20: it's basically kids commanding kids with enormous responsibility, and that is what the military is - your squad leaders out in the field today, your service members serving overseas today are really … just kids,” he said. “They're 20-somethings, and they have enormous responsibilities, and I think that these crew members who did this, they were a microcosm of what the whole army was at this point, and what any army is: i's made of young people doing enormous jobs with enormous responsibility.”
Thursday’s service was not the first of its kind: the marker itself was installed in 1989, with memorial ceremonies held every so often. Willette says he and others have been working to annualize the memorials – an effort further helped by George Randall, a U.S. Army veteran like Willette.
“Brian asked me … one day we were at a breakfast at in South Hadley, and he said, ‘Have you ever done any genealogy work?’ I said ‘Yeah, I've researched my family.’” Randall remembered. “He says ‘Well, okay, well, here's 10 people: find their family.”
Eventually enlisting a private investigator, Randall was able to dig up the histories of the fallen crew members. It led in-part to a number of the crew members’ descendants making a pilgrimage to Mount Holyoke for a previous ceremony.
As he learned more about the tragedy, Randall says he also disputes the official crash report issued some 80 years ago, which pinned the crash on “pilot error.”
“I certainly disagree with that, only because as you look out here and you see where Westover is, this plane took off fully-loaded, with a combat load, and … it took off on a short runway and they needed a long runway,” said Randall, pointing out at the hangars and runways at the current air reserve base. “I don't blame the pilot, I blame the navigator… I don't think I'm going to be able to get it changed, not that I want to pin the blame on somebody else, but … I think it's wrong, and I'd like to write the right the wrong.”
Randall says that, in addition to collecting photos, contacting families and other information, he’s been attempting to contact a Discovery Channel producer about possibly making a documentary.
Regardless, veterans like him and Willette say they intended to keep the mountain top ceremony going.
“We made it our mission - the South Hadley American Legion, Post 260 made it our mission to make this an annual event in order to really keep in forefront the meaning of Memorial Day, letting these family members of these lost crewmen know that ... the community in which their family members perish, gave their lives, honors them and will not forget them.”
Another remembrance for a similar crash that occurred on nearby Mount Tom in 1946 is slated for July 11.
—
This piece originally aired on Friday, May 22, 2026
