The date of the crash was November 7th 1963, both Pilot 1LT Eugene J

The date of the crash was November 7th 1963, both Pilot 1LT Eugene J. Taylor assigned to Co B, 503d Aviation Battalion and observer SP5 William F. Collins assigned to Co B, 503d Aviation Battalion were killed. It happened north of Hanau which is east of Frankfurt. The Mohawk flew full bore into an oak tree on top of a mountain. As I recall the only whole piece of the aircraft was one wing, don't know which one, what was left of the bodies where removed before the battalion got there. It was a terrible mess, both individuals left widows and multiple children.

I was the 503rd's Information Specialist at the time of the crash. We were on a field problem, and I was taking pictures at the airfield. I took a picture of the Mohawk taking off, not knowing that the next day I would be helping to police up what was left.

I've been trying to track down the names of the casualties since I joined the association… Vickie Hendrix, FOIA Officer, USASC spent countless hours searching through microfilm records to find the names for us.

She deserves a very special THANK YOU.

Otto Machacek.

PS: 16 May, 2001
Here is the whole 9 yards on what happened that day. Col. Perrin was also my boss then. Besides being the information specialist I was also his S-2 clerk. thanks Otto

Otto:
On that morning, I was the S-2 of the battalion and was leading the ground convoy back to Hanau. The weather was drizzling light rain at the forward airfield where the Hawks were. There were low clouds in the mountains between the forward airfield and Hanau. I suspect that some of the pilots were going to try to make it back to Hanau VFR if possible and if they ran into real weather, file an Instrument Flight plan in the air and go on into Hanau IFR. Lt. Taylor was flying VFR when he encountered the low visibility and the mountain area about the same time. He flew down a valley and ran into reduced visibility and made a 180 degree turn to come back out of the valley but entered into IFR conditions. He cleared a hill top by 10 feet but ran directly into a grove of large hardwood trees that he could not see. The Hawk disintegrated as it went thru the trees. I have wondered all these years why, when he went IFR, he didn't add full power, pull back on the stick and climb up until he broke out into VFR conditions? On that day the low clouds were such that he would have broken out at 1500-2000 ft. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, he may have been afraid that if he did climb, he might have a collision with one of the other aircraft going back to Hanau. That same thing happened to me in Vietnam. Without hesitation, I pushed in full power and climbed up thru the low clouds and broke out into bright clear sunshine at less than 2000 ft, and flew back to Anke VFR. Lt. Col. Davenport, our Bn. CO, was in another Jeep in the convoy behind me. I called him and asked if he had been monitoring the FM traffic about and OV-1 crashing in the mountains? He replied that he had. We made several calls and determined that one Hawk was indeed down. He asked for my recommendation as to who the accident investigation office should be? I replied, Capt. Drexel E. Sanders, who at that time was the ASTA Plat Ldr. in B Company.
Thanks for all your work on this case.

HORNET-6.