Gertrude Tompkins and Marie Mitchell Robinson
Page available since 7/21/98 - last updated 5/18/2002
Site Visited times since 5/98
| The following is provided by an accident investigator at Edwards AFB. |
| I'm Walt Witherspoon and am involved in aircraft accident research in the Edwards AFB / California High Desert area. I ran across your site while chasing down some information and found it interesting. I checked your entries for Gertrude Tompkins and Marie Mitchell. I have Mitchell's crash listed in a crash index I keep on file at the Edwards AFB History office. |
| Mitchell's crash was a spin, but according to a P-39 pilot who witnessed the entire event it was not flat, more of a spiralling conventional spin. It spun all the way down from about 6000 ft., nobody bailed out. The other crewmen were pilot Lt. George D. Rosado, and SSgt Gordon L. Walker. The crash site has been located by local "wreckchasers" and is still visible on the desert today. The plane was a B-25D. The accident report lists Marie N. Mitchell's service number as 104498. |
| Concerning Gertrude Tompkins I have a section of the accident report filed for her disappearance. The search was very extensive but obviously fruitless. A prominent "wreckchaser" in the So. Cal. area is interested in finding her , and there was even a brief spot on a local TV news show about his interest in her disappearance. He believes her P-51 spun into the ocean just after takeoff from Mines Field. The crash report does have an interesting witness statement in it as follows: |
| "Line foreman for North American - C. L. Laido reported that three P-51s including subject aircraft took off together on runway 25, but only two seen to circle back across field on course to Palm Springs. Ocean approximately 1 1/2 miles off end of runway 25, delay in discovering aircraft was missing resulted from fact that flight plan did not reach airway traffic control center." |
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