thedrifter
02-04-09, 07:02 AM
Chester woman recalls crash of hospital plane in Japan—she was on board as a nurse
By Staff Reports
Published: February 4, 2009
TIME CAPSULES LARRY HALL The crash of a U.S. military aircraft near Tokyo on March 6, 1952, could have been much worse for the wounded American soldiers on board.
"A giant Stratocruiser hospital plane carrying 58 patients cracked up on takeoff from Haneda Airport," said an Associated Press report in the next day's Richmond Times-Dispatch. A United Press report in The New York Times said, "Quick action by the pilot, crash crews and three flight nurses saved the passengers from death or serious injury."
One of the flight nurses was Capt. Madeline P. Sebasky, a 28-year-old Illinois native who left the Air Force later that year to marry Edward K. Kirby, a Marine Corps pilot she met in Japan. The couple moved to Virginia after his retirement from the Marines in 1970.
Today, Madeline Kirby lives in Chester and remembers the accident well. "I will always have memories of the sounds of the landing gear breaking and scraping," she said. "Had the weather been dry, we would have caught fire. But it had been wet, and that saved us."
. . .
As the evacuation plane was taking off, the right landing gear collapsed, sending the plane into a sharp skid toward Tokyo Bay. "It pivoted into some mud beside the runway, only a few feet from a seawall," the United Press said.
The plane stopped parallel to the seawall, Kirby said. The pilot had reversed the propellers and used the nose wheel to swing the aircraft to the right. Crash crews sprayed the plane with fire-retardant foam.
"All patients were off the plane three minutes later under direction of the flight nurses," the United Press reported. "Brig. Gen. Aubrey L. Moore, commanding general of the air transport wing at Haneda, credited the pilot and nurses with saving the lives of the patients."
The incident was typical of Kirby's experiences as a military nurse. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 inspired her to study nursing and join the Army Nurse Corps. She left the Army in 1947, but after a few months of civilian life as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines, she joined the Air Force.
When the Korean War erupted in 1950, Kirby combined her nursing skills and her love of flying to serve as an Air Force flight nurse.
A 1951 report in The Richmond News Leader described a flight nurse's job of providing emergency care to injured soldiers while in transit from combat zones to hospitals: "All night long, these flight nurses walk up and down the plane with flashlights, changing dressings, giving sedatives, watching for hemorrhages, injecting penicillin, cleaning up, administering plasma."
Kirby said doctors usually were not on evacuation planes, and often one flight nurse was expected to handle the severest cases without supervision or assistance. "We had sucking chest wounds, head wounds and psychiatric patients," she said.
. . .
Kirby, who learned to fly but never obtained a pilot's license, was reminded of her flying experiences while shopping recently at a local bookstore. She discovered a 2009 calendar called "Women's Wit," published by Graphique de France.
Above the month of August was a 1947 photo of Kirby and other young women enrolled in a Kansas City, Mo., school for flight attendants. The students were using "balancing boards" to practice maintaining their equilibrium on rough flights.
The photo first appeared in the Dec. 8, 1947, issue of Life magazine. "I had that TWA smile. They told us to keep smiling," Kirby said of the photo.
Kirby worked as a flight attendant for four months before returning to military service. Frequent labor strikes at TWA in the late 1940s made the job impractical.
"I had bills to pay and food to eat," she said. She also had the lives of soldiers to save.
Contact Times-Dispatch librarian/researcher Larry Hall at lhall@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6076. Time Capsules features items from the archives of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Richmond News Leader.
Ellie
By Staff Reports
Published: February 4, 2009
TIME CAPSULES LARRY HALL The crash of a U.S. military aircraft near Tokyo on March 6, 1952, could have been much worse for the wounded American soldiers on board.
"A giant Stratocruiser hospital plane carrying 58 patients cracked up on takeoff from Haneda Airport," said an Associated Press report in the next day's Richmond Times-Dispatch. A United Press report in The New York Times said, "Quick action by the pilot, crash crews and three flight nurses saved the passengers from death or serious injury."
One of the flight nurses was Capt. Madeline P. Sebasky, a 28-year-old Illinois native who left the Air Force later that year to marry Edward K. Kirby, a Marine Corps pilot she met in Japan. The couple moved to Virginia after his retirement from the Marines in 1970.
Today, Madeline Kirby lives in Chester and remembers the accident well. "I will always have memories of the sounds of the landing gear breaking and scraping," she said. "Had the weather been dry, we would have caught fire. But it had been wet, and that saved us."
. . .
As the evacuation plane was taking off, the right landing gear collapsed, sending the plane into a sharp skid toward Tokyo Bay. "It pivoted into some mud beside the runway, only a few feet from a seawall," the United Press said.
The plane stopped parallel to the seawall, Kirby said. The pilot had reversed the propellers and used the nose wheel to swing the aircraft to the right. Crash crews sprayed the plane with fire-retardant foam.
"All patients were off the plane three minutes later under direction of the flight nurses," the United Press reported. "Brig. Gen. Aubrey L. Moore, commanding general of the air transport wing at Haneda, credited the pilot and nurses with saving the lives of the patients."
The incident was typical of Kirby's experiences as a military nurse. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 inspired her to study nursing and join the Army Nurse Corps. She left the Army in 1947, but after a few months of civilian life as a flight attendant for Trans World Airlines, she joined the Air Force.
When the Korean War erupted in 1950, Kirby combined her nursing skills and her love of flying to serve as an Air Force flight nurse.
A 1951 report in The Richmond News Leader described a flight nurse's job of providing emergency care to injured soldiers while in transit from combat zones to hospitals: "All night long, these flight nurses walk up and down the plane with flashlights, changing dressings, giving sedatives, watching for hemorrhages, injecting penicillin, cleaning up, administering plasma."
Kirby said doctors usually were not on evacuation planes, and often one flight nurse was expected to handle the severest cases without supervision or assistance. "We had sucking chest wounds, head wounds and psychiatric patients," she said.
. . .
Kirby, who learned to fly but never obtained a pilot's license, was reminded of her flying experiences while shopping recently at a local bookstore. She discovered a 2009 calendar called "Women's Wit," published by Graphique de France.
Above the month of August was a 1947 photo of Kirby and other young women enrolled in a Kansas City, Mo., school for flight attendants. The students were using "balancing boards" to practice maintaining their equilibrium on rough flights.
The photo first appeared in the Dec. 8, 1947, issue of Life magazine. "I had that TWA smile. They told us to keep smiling," Kirby said of the photo.
Kirby worked as a flight attendant for four months before returning to military service. Frequent labor strikes at TWA in the late 1940s made the job impractical.
"I had bills to pay and food to eat," she said. She also had the lives of soldiers to save.
Contact Times-Dispatch librarian/researcher Larry Hall at lhall@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6076. Time Capsules features items from the archives of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Richmond News Leader.
Ellie