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fighter planes would dive bomb the B-17s shooting at the mesh targets pulled behind them. As a safety measure, the Army established an Air Rescue Service, leasing the Old Marco Inn and grounds as their headquarters during the war. Army barracks were constructed and a large Army pier built into the Marco River for their five vessels: an 83’, a 63’, and three 22 footers, all known as “Crash Boats.” In addition the military built themselves a source of water in the center of the Island (a well that is now located in one of the lakes at the Island County Club).

Thelma Heath, a school teacher on Marco Island, recalled that many of her students were at a birthday party on Sat-urday, January 22, 1944 when they saw planes going over. The students stopped and looked north, watching as a fighter plane never came out of its dive, crashing into one of the wings of the Flying Fortress, causing it to also drop from the sky. The last verbal contact of the Flying Fortress with the Naples control tower had been to obtain permission to proceed northward along the coast back to Buckingham, with only one more attack on it by an AT-6 to complete the day. That AT– 6 was piloted by Lieutenant Joseph O’Flaherty flying alone doing figure eights when, “Sud-denly, something went terribly wrong. The two planes collided mid-air and sent pieces of planes exploding in a macabre pattern of grease, metal and fuel. The noise was deafening.”1 Lt. O’Flaherty was able to jump from his plane and parachute to safety, while the B-17 with a full crew of 10 broke apart and fell into the Gulf of Mexico killing all aboard.

The crash boats from Marco respond-ed and were able to rescue Lt. O’Flaherty, who was taken to the hospital and soon re-covered. But, after the first day of search-ing, only two additional bodies were re-covered from the B-17, leaving both the air base at Buckingham, where the B-17 was

stationed and the Naples air base, where Lt. O’Flaherty was stationed at a loss to understand the cause of the crash. It took much longer for the Army to retrieve the rest of the bodies and the crash debris.

Lt. O’Flaherty’s luck did not hold out that much longer; about six weeks later on March 4, 1944, he was the bombardier on board an AT-6 piloted by Lt. Devenport on a ground attack mission. As they dived down, their plane burst into flames and both were killed. Lieutenant Bornmann was assigned the duty of accompanying the body of Lt. O’Flaherty back to New York. Joseph O’Flaherty is listed on the New York Fire Department’s Honor Roll as a “Fireman, Ladder 105” having died “Mar 4, 1944, Naples, Fla, Plane Crash, Killed in Action, WWII”.

In the 1960s, Henry Lowe from Marco Island spotted an engine and a propel-ler from one of the two airplanes that crashed in 1944 off the coast of southern Key Island (Keewaydin) due west of Little Marco. Today this is the area of Hurricane Pass and one of the busiest beaches on weekends in Collier County. One is left to wonder how many, if any, of the beach partiers realize that they are standing near the location where ten airmen bravely died in 1944: the single greatest loss of life of any accident in Collier County’s history? As we celebrate Veteran’s Day we need to remember the thousands of military who served in Florida during WWII both in training and in surveillance of our coast-line.

1Information for this article came from “Pilots, Pinballs & Politics” by Nancy B. Fessenden, PhD. a book highly recom-mended to those with interest in the history of the Naples Municipal Airport, as well as from interviews with pioneers done by Virginia Carlin in her book “I Remember Marco” as well as discussions of the author with Henry Lowe, Dick Bergmann and Bill Blair.

2011 Salvation Army Canned Food Drive

Tommie Barfield Elementary School’s Student Council, along with its sponsors, Kathy O’Brien and Jen-nifer Jewette, worked hard all month long promoting, assembling boxes, and counting cans for the Salvation Army Canned Food Drive. “The students are very eager and willing to help others,” said Kathy O’Brien. “The excitement is school wide.”

TBE Morning Show provided daily publicity for the food drive and reported on individual classroom participation. Students vied in an eager competition to increase their classroom tallies. On the final collection day all classes were tuned in as Mrs. Reinke’s class was an-nounced as the 2011 winner!

“I am really happy that it is going to a good cause and to help people who can’t afford to pay for food,” exclaimed fifth grade student, Gianna Orlando.

During the summer months alone, over 40,000 pounds of food have been distributed to hungry families in Collier County. The shelves have been depleted

and, once again, the students at Tommie Barfield Elementary School were excit-ed to take part in restocking the Salva-tion Army pantries.

Tommie Barfield staff and students in Kindergarten through Fifth Grade demonstrated their support for the community by collecting nonperishable food items through the months of Oc-tober and November. TBE has been in first place collecting canned food items in the Collier County elementary school system for the past few years. This year, students gathered 6,190 cans with some individual classes bringing in more than 500 cans of food.

“If people really understand what it is doing for other people, they will want to help even more,” stated Chloe Nel-son, fifth grade student.

By Coastal Breeze News Staff