Remembering the lives and history lost after Merriam’s bomber crash of 1944

On July 26, 1944, a bomber plane took off from Lincoln, NE.

“Their mission was to calibrate their compass flight 7,000 feet within about 100 miles of the airfield. If everything was working well, they'd deployed to Europe,” said Andrew Gustafson from the Johnson County Museum.

That’s not what happened.

The pilot Kenneth Keech had family in the Merriam area. Keech decided to ‘buzz’ his family. Buzzing was a common occurrence then. It usually meant flying low, fast, and even doing some tricks over an area.

This caused the plane to crash.

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“It ultimately destroyed several homes. The bomber was completely destroyed. There was a pretty large fire. Three people in the bomber were injured, three people in the neighborhood were injured, and three people in the bomber died in the crash,” said Gustafson.

The neighborhood where the plane crashed no longer exists. It’s the land where Cinemark and a Merriam strip mall sit today. Though the homes were out of sight, Gustafson says the crash was never out of mind for Keech.

“He was interviewed and said that the crash haunted him, people losing their lives, the damage that was caused and the sort of senselessness of it. The recklessness of it haunted him and he had a really hard time living with that,” said Gustafson.

There’s no one involved in the crash alive to tell the story, so to commemorate what happened, the city of Merriam put up a plaque. However, Gustafson says the crash is hardly talked about.

"As part of World War Two history, as part of Merriam specific history, I think it's a pretty important episode to learn and to think about what happens in your neighborhood or in the area you may be walking, driving or shopping,” said Gustafson.

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The plaque shares the story of what happened and can be found near a park bench on 55th and Antioch, just as you enter the Cinemark parking lot.