LOCAL ANGLE: A piece of debris from a Zippo lighter belonging to
a Navy pilot was found on an Alabama beach nearly 50 years to the
day after the crash of a Blue Angels jet, according to a newspaper
account.
Debbie Harris, 56, of Fort Morgan, Ala., found a military dog
tag and the Zippo debris, a fire-scorched metal emblem of a Navy
fighter squadron belonging to the pilot, nearly 50 years to the day
from the Oct. 14, 1958, crash.
The dog tag was bent but clearly showed the pilot’s name – Cmdr.
Robert Nicholls Glasgow – and his birthday, Feb. 17, 1922, the same
date Debbie was born.
Her search for more led her to the Pensacola, Fla., home of the
National Museum of Naval Aviation, where museum director is Bob
Rasmussen, a retired Navy captain who himself was once a member of
the Blue Angels.
“I said to myself, ‘Isn’t that a coincidence,'” Rasmussen mused.
“Of all the people that they might have brought this to, it
happened to be the person who was flying with him the morning he
was killed in that crash.”
Glasgow had reported for duty at Pensacola Naval Air Station as
the Blue Angels new leader just a few days before his first flight
in one of the team’s F-11 Tigers.
Rasmussen, one of the team’s most experienced air show pilots,
took Glasgow on an orientation flight. They took off in separate
jets on a clear, cloudless day and headed for the practice area
over the Gulf of Mexico.
The radio identification device on Rasmussen’s aircraft had just
been replaced, and he needed to fly to a higher altitude over
Mobile, Ala., to test it.
“I dropped him off at the site and said, ‘Just orbit here until
I get back. I’ll be back in three or four minutes. I went up there,
checked out the equipment, came back on the radio, called him and
he was already gone.”
Rasmussen didn’t see Glasgow’s jet crash into a vacant house at
Fort Morgan and then explode – only the aftermath.
Harris, who grew up knowing about the crash, thinks hurricanes
that swept through the area in recent years may have uncovered the
items. She said she found the squadron emblem no more than 200 feet
from the crash site, now covered with sand and sea oats.
