B-52 crash survivor celebrates 83rd birthday
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on August 19, 2016 1:46 PM
JACKSONVILLE -- Former Lt. Adam Mattocks was lucky to survive Wayne County's B-52 crash in 1961, and he is fortunate to be the last remaining survivor at age 83.
Mattocks celebrates his birthday today, but his wife, Ann, says he still talks about the crash that nearly destroyed eastern North Carolina 55 years ago.
However, he remains silent when he thinks about his three friends who died in the crash and the four who have passed away since.
"Sometimes he gets very melancholy," Mrs. Mattocks said, whose husband suffers from mild memory loss after undergoing open-heart surgery early August.
"I take him to a doctor for it, and he says when they talk about his friends dying, he changes and gets melancholy," she said.
Mattocks sat in the B-52 Stratofortress, heading back to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base on Jan. 24, 1961.
While he and seven other airmen flew 9,000 feet above Goldsboro, the plane started falling after the crew noticed leaking fuel.
The plane's two Mark 39 nuclear bombs fell with them.
Four airmen ejected, but only three landed safely on ground -- one died during the ejection. Two airmen died in the crash after Mattocks jumped from the plane.
The bombs miraculously avoided detonation.
"The wind blew him, but when the plane hit the earth, he said it looked like to him the whole earth was on fire," Mrs. Mattocks said.
Her husband transferred from Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Ariz., as a fighter pilot to Seymour Johnson as a bomber pilot four years before the horrific crash -- a day Mrs. Mattocks remembers clearly.
"They put him in the hospital because they thought he was having a breakdown," she said. "When I got there, they told me he was in shock. He kept telling the same story over and over.
"(And) even though he tried to be a good person and everything, he was hung up on how short life is."
She said her husband dedicated his life to God, his wife and his five children after he approached death, but the memory of the crash never escaped his thoughts.
"Even to this day, when he talks about that flight, he gets very emotional," Mrs. Mattocks said. "He feels like the young men lost their lives, and it should've been him."