Mission into history

His four-wheel-drive truck rocked as it groaned up a deep-rutted road on a rugged, hilly ranch five miles inland from the Sonoma Coast above Jenner.

At last, Pedrazzini's host, ranch owner Ellen Richardson Epperson, pointed down to the grassy clearing.

Pedrazzini took only a few steps before he spotted and picked up a torn patch of aircraft aluminum. Then an engine piston, and a pulley wheel with a tangle of cables.

Then he made one of the most bittersweet discoveries of his life. Pedrazzini stooped before the mostly buried propeller of the U.S. Army Air Corps B-24 bomber that was practically new when it crashed, with his uncle at the controls, on the cloudy morning of Dec. 6, 1942.

"Well, it took 66 years to get here," said Pedrazzini, the first member of his longtime Sonoma-Marin-Lake family to find the spot where Lakeport-born 2nd Lt. Donald "Shorty" Pedrazzini and his five-man crew perished exactly one year into World War II. "Well worth the time."

The late bomber pilot's nephew has been intrigued all his life about the circumstances and location of the horrific crash. The four-engine heavy bomber had been loaded up with gasoline and bombs when it lifted off with three others from Novato's Hamilton Field.

A yellowed copy of a 1942 Press Democrat intensified Pedrazzini's curiosity about the fateful flight. Just days ago, his own tenacity -- and the magical research capabilities of the Internet -- brought his quest to fruition near Stewarts Point.

Pedrazzini, a resident of Bennett Valley, was born just as WWII was ending, so he never met his uncle. As Pedrazzini came into the world as of one of the first Baby Boomers in August of 1945, his father, highly decorated bomber pilot and future Air Force colonel and Travis Air Force Base commander Harold Pedrazzini, had only returned from the air war in Europe.

Harold Pedrazzini spoke only generally about the death of his kid brother Shorty, who was 21 and engaged to be married at the time of the crash. Don Pedrazzini was interested to know more about his uncle, but for decades he let the issue idle as he followed more urgent pursuits, including an inherited yearning to fly.

After his graduation from Novato High School in 1963, Don became a military pilot and served in Vietnam. He flew 33 years for Delta Airlines and retired in 2005 to Bennett Valley, where he now grows grapes and digs into his family history.

He recalls that it was 1972 or '73 when he traveled to Tampa to visit his father, who'd retired to Florida after a three-decade career in the Air Force. They were sitting beside the pool when Don, who'd begun delving into genealogy, asked his dad to tell him more about the crash that killed Shorty.

"I remember him getting up from his chair and going into the house, and bringing The Press Democrat newspaper out of the house," Don said.

The paper was dated Tuesday, Dec. 8, 1942. The headline across the top of Page One proclaimed, "Six Killed as Bomber Crashes in County."

The secondary headlines added: "Bombs Explode as Army Plane Hits Plantation Ridge" and "Shattered Bodies Found Scattered on Remote Hillside Off Skaggs Springs-Stewarts Point Road."

The story quoted neighboring rancher Theron "Roy" Hedgpeth as saying he and his wife were awakened about 7 a.m. on Dec. 6 when the great plane -- its wingspan was 110 feet -- roared in low over their ranch, circled, flew out of sight and seconds later crashed amid a terrific explosion.

Hedgpeth was a tool inventor, industrialist and entrepreneur who'd built Santa Rosa's Topaz Room restaurant and in the 1950s would partner in the creation of the Flamingo Hotel and help usher in Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He was familiar with aviation and, according to the news article, told county and U.S. Army authorities the B-24 appeared to be having engine trouble.

Don Pedrazzini was fascinated by the article. He thought, how sad and ironic it was that his young Uncle Shorty had left the North Bay to become a combat pilot and had perished only a few air minutes from his hometown of Lakeport.

Pedrazzini learned little more about the crash until just last year. His big break came when he discovered a Web site that could provide copies of aircraft crash reports. The report on his uncle's crash arrived last fall. It was a gold mine.

Pedrazzini learned that in '42, U.S. bombers made routine patrols along the West Coast to watch for possible attacks or invasions by the Japanese. His Uncle Shorty was part of a squadron of B-24 pilots who'd been sent from their base at March Field in Riverside to Novato's Hamilton Field.

At about 6 a.m. on Dec. 6, Shorty Pedrazzini was at the controls of one of six new Consolidated B-24 Liberators that prepared to take off from Hamilton for a routine patrol. Also aboard 2nd Lt. Pedrazzini's plane, fourth in line for takeoff, were a co-pilot, navigator, engineer and two radio operators.

"The weather that morning was awful, but the launch proceeded anyway," Don Pedrazzini said. After his uncle's plane lifted off, the weather deteriorated enough for the tower to send the two remaining B-24s back to the flight line.

Shorty then confronted his own personal Perfect Storm. First, one of the four engines failed, and its propeller stopped.

"He was picking up ice and couldn't climb," Pedrazzini said. "Hamilton Tower instructed him to tune in to the Fresno radio beacon but he responded that the radio was not working either."

Shorty Pedrazzini couldn't see the ground through the clouds and, to make matters worse, he'd had less than an hour of instrument training in that particular plane.

Don Pedrazzini said the tower ordered Shorty to return to Hamilton, but apparently, because of the blinding conditions, the B-24 flew over the field and continued to the northwest at perhaps 200 mph.

Minutes later, Roy Hedgpeth jumped from bed to see the crippled bomber buzz his ranch. And then, the crash.

The accident report said the plane hit a hillside on what was then a 5,000-acre ranch owned by Andrew and Eleanor Richardson. Their family first settled in the Stewarts Point area in 1856.

With some research, Pedrazzini found late last year that crash site is on a smaller ranch still owned by Andrew and Eleanor's granddaughter, Ellen Richardson Epperson. Pedrazzini connected with her early this year.

Though Epperson wasn't born until after the war, she grew up aware that pieces of the B-24 were still on the property -- but in such a rugged spot that she had never ventured there.

"I knew where it was, and I could point it out to you," she said.

When Don Pedrazzini asked her if he could come up and look around at the spot where his uncle and the other five aviators died, she said absolutely. Epperson decided recently that the ranch's steep and deeply rutted roads had dried out enough from the winter rains that four-wheel-drive trucks might be able to reach the site.

Pedrazzini ventured up not knowing if time and scavengers had covered or removed every trace of the B-24. But moments after he left his truck, he connected with Lt. Pedrazzini and with history as he reverently gathered a piston, a fragment of cowling, a valve and nearly a dozen other pieces of the B-24.

Examining the embedded propeller, which he assumes is connected to a buried engine, he said, "This propeller was not spinning when it hit the ground, you can tell."

He presumes he was looking at the prop attached to the engine that had failed. He gazed about and shook his head.

"You can tell that the impact was amazing," he said. "I can tell you this, the military didn't carry anybody's body out of that accident."

Ellen Epperson invited him to take what he'd found. He asked if he might return later this year and place a simple memorial for his uncle and the crew. Of course, she said.

Mission completed? Perhaps not.

Pedrazzini learned through the course of his quest that one other of the B-24s that left Hamilton that Sunday morning in '42 did not return, and its wreckage was never found. How he'd love to know what happened to that plane and that crew.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.