Cranston, Rhode Island – April 11, 1944
Updated December 27, 2024
On the evening of April 11, 1944, the officials of Cranston and navy authorities were faced with a mystery. According local residents, an unknown navy airplane was observed to pass very low over the Edgewood section of Cranston. It was reportedly low enough to rattle dishes in cubbards and was said to have nearly hit the the Rhodes School on Shaw Avenue. Afterwards, pieces of the aircraft’s tail section were discovered in the yard of a home at 79 Strathmore Road. The parts consisted of a horizontal stabilizer and pieces of an elevator.
Navy officials from the Quonset Point Naval Air station arrived and confirmed the parts belonged to a naval aircraft, but said that they had no reports of any damaged or missing planes. They further determined that an aircraft loosing these necessary pieces could not remain airborne, but no plane crashes had been reported.
Police contacted the Hillsgrove Army Air Field in Warwick to see if any emergency landings were made but there hadn’t been any.
The newspaper report stated that the investigation would continue, but research has not been able to determine if the mystery was conclusively solved. One possible explanation comes from information obtained from the now defunct Quonset Air Museum. Records show there was a navy plane that crashed in Narragansett Bay on April 11, 1944, fives miles off Runway 23 at the Quonset Point Naval Air Station. The aircraft belonged to VC-12 squadron, and was a TBM-1C Avenger, serial number 25472. No details of that crash, are known at this time, or even if the aircraft that crashed in the bay is the one seen over Edgewood.
Update: a news item that appeared in the Providence Journal a few days after this incident revealed that the airplane parts that fell in Cranston belonged to a navy Hellcat fighter that, despite severe damage to the aircraft, was able to return to the Quonset Point Naval Air station safely. The details as to how it sustained the damage, and how the parts came to fall in Cranston, were not given.
U.S. Navy Grumman Avenger
U.S. Navy Photo
F6F Hellcat
U. S. Navy Photo
Source:
Providence Journal, “Navy Plane Parts Fall In Edgewood”, April 12, 1944.
Providence Journal, “Airplane Mystery Solved”, unknown date.
