Pilot Gets Recognition

Jack Shriver

The plane dropped from the clouds, skimmed over the treetops of downtown Pratt, and narrowly missed the school Dyerly attended before it crashed in a farm field outside of town.

Even as a junior high student, Dyerly knew the plane was in trouble when he heard it pass over the building.
After school, he and his buddies rode their bicycles to the site of the crash, saw the blackened earth around the site, and searched for a few keepsakes to carry home in their pockets.
In a visit to his hometown for a school reunion in October 2001, Dyerly learned from classmate Jack McCauley of plans for a veterans memorial at the site of the old air base.
"I might be able to help you out by learning something about that plane crash," Dyerly told McCauley.
Dyerly's father was a firefighter and one of the first to arrive at the crash site. Three airmen, including Jack Shriver, died tragic deaths that day, but little else was known about the crash. Still, Dyerly, who now lives in Dune Acres, Ind., said he carries vivid memories of the day Shriver's plane crashed.
"I can still hear the roar of the plane as it barely missed my school and continued its flight path to a farm field near the edge of town."
And the mystery of that day had always weighed on his mind.
With only his memories and a local newspaper story, Dyerly embarked on a six-year research project that evolved into a book, "The Final Flight of a B-26 Bomber," and a posthumous award of the Air Medal to Jack Shriver, whose last action saved Pratt and the children at Dyerly's school.
'Many lives were spared'
The flight that claimed the lives of Shriver and his crew started as a round-trip, nonstop training mission between Wichita and Pratt. After the plane circled Wichita, the crew headed west into a developing low-cloud cover.
In a rush of events, the crew was ordered to proceed to Walker Field, near Gorham, because of the low visibility at Pratt. Without warning, the left engine failed, and the aircraft swerved off course and plunged downward.
"Instead of being near the air field or even over farm fields ... one can only imagine their shock and horror to see the downtown area of Pratt and three schools in the middle of their descending flight path," Dyerly wrote in his book.
Neither the Pratt airfield nor the B-26 was equipped with navigation systems capable of guiding a landing in inclement weather, and radar technology wasn't as reliable as it is today. Reports at the time of the accident placed the cloud ceiling at between just 300 and 500 feet.
The official cause of the crash, according to Army Air Force headquarters, was "estimated engine failure aggravated by weather conditions and low ceiling."
After 64 years, the U.S. Air Force awarded the Air Medal to 1st Lt. Jack Shriver, originally from Indiana, for his heroic action on Sept. 23, 1943.
"His piloting experience and skills kept the B-26 flying over the downtown district and three schools, which contained over a thousand students," the award declaration states. "The City of Pratt escaped devastation and many lives were spared due to his courage."
But the Air Medal was not the end of the story. To get there, Dyerly had to reach back to a time before the crash, before the war, and before Holly Hollister met Jack, her future husband, in a Hawaii officers' club.
'God was in charge'
The last time Holly saw her husband was the early morning hours of Sept. 23. He was dressed in his flight uniform when he stood in front of the bed in their small upstairs loft bedroom.
"He leaned over and gave me a kiss and whispered, 'Miss Holly, don't forget about our party, and be careful.' "
Later that day, Holly Shriver was preparing a special dinner to celebrate the two-month anniversary of their July 23, 1943, marriage. She worried about what she would cook; she knew how to make only two dishes - pumpkin chiffon pie and Hawaiian butter-horn rolls.
But there was another reason to celebrate: Two days earlier, Holly had awakened with nausea.
"Since this wasn't normal for me, we were pretty sure we were expecting a baby," she said. "Both of us were delighted. Jack talked about a boy and naming him Paul after his brother, who had been killed just nine months before. We figured God was in charge as we knelt in prayer. We felt thankful for how blessed we were."
Before leaving, Jack laid out $25 for her to buy meat and other food for dinner.
While shopping in downtown Pratt, Holly noticed that people were gathered in groups and talking quietly. She overheard something about a pilot from Indiana.
"I didn't have time to find out why they all looked so sad," she wrote in her missal to Dyerly.
She hurried home to begin the meal preparation, ignoring the officer walking near her home. She had just set the sack of groceries down when she heard a knock on the door.
"I turned the knob, and I knew the pilot from Indiana was Jack," she said.
'I never really recovered'
For Jack Shriver, the love story ended the day his plane crashed.
For Holly and her then-unborn son, the memories have continued for a lifetime.
"I was unable to shed a tear when Jack died and didn't until our son was born eight months later," she told Dyerly. When the doctor said she had a son and asked what his name would be, the tears "came and came."
Jack Graham Shriver II was born on May 5, 1944.
But to get to this day, Holly wore a party dress so she could dance with a handsome pilot named Jack.
She bought a cream-colored wedding dress that didn't cost too much, and she waited while Jack spent 21/2 years in overseas combat.
She followed him to Pratt, where he continued his flying career by training young pilots.
And she returned to Jack's hometown in Indiana for her husband's funeral after the 1943 crash took his life.
Eventually, Holly and her son returned to her native Minnesota, where she worked as a hospital nurse. Feeling that her son needed to grow up with a father, she married an old friend, Herb Benike, and they had two more children.
"I had been a widow for six years, and it was lonely," she wrote.
"I could have accepted his death in battle much better than as it happened," Holly wrote. "It was an enormous shock to me, and I never really recovered. Life goes on, and I learned that I could stay in this state or try to make it better."
Author's Life:
Rodney B. Dyerly, a retired U.S. Air Force Reserves major, served in the Air Force during the Korean War. After his release from active duty, he returned to the University of Kansas, where he earned a law degree. He retired after practicing law for 35 years and now lives in Dune Acres, Ind.
The book was printed in a limited number of copies and is not for sale. It is available for check-out at the public libraries in Hutchinson and Pratt and at the Pratt school libraries.
In connection with "The Final Flight of a B-26 Bomber," Dyerly has written a second book, "Plane Crashes, Pratt Army Air Field, World War II 1943-1945."
Nine crashes claimed the lives of 58 Pratt airmen. Four crashes were in B-29s and four were in twin-engine B-26s. In August 1945, shortly before the end of the war, a twin-engine B-25 based in Pratt crashed one mile off the runway at the Hutchinson Naval Air Station, killing three crewmen.