Thursday June 20, 2013 – Thursday June 20, 2013
113 Harbor Way, Suite 190
Description:
by Bob Burtness
Where: Santa Barbara Maritime Museum, 113 Harbor Way, Santa Barbara, California
What: An inexplicable and practically unknown series of three tragic events left 16 people dead along the California Coast
When: Thursday, June 20, 2013 at 7 pm
Members only Reception at 6:15 pm
Cost: Free (members), $5 (non-members).
Register Below or call (805) 962-8404 x115
(please register for tickets early to guarantee admittance)
On July 4, 1943, a B-24 Liberator on maneuvers over the Pacific ran low on fuel. The Army Air Corps crew parachuted out, two into the ocean, and the unmanned heavy bomber crashed near Santa Barbara. A second B-24, assigned to the search-and-rescue mission over the ocean, literally vanished. That plane’s remains and those of its 12 airmen were found eight months later on San Miguel Island. The Coast Guard cutter carrying Air Force investigators in 1954 to wrap up details of the San Miguel disaster rammed a yacht, killing two others. Author Robert A. Burtness recreates this tragic trilogy of errors in this painstakingly researched volume.
Bob Burtness has lived in Santa Barbara all his life, except for a few years spent serving in the Air Force and at graduate schools. He made a 30-year career of teaching English, mostly at San Marcos High School. His outside interests include helping to rebuild the Arlington Theatre pipe organ, driving trains at the Goleta Depot, re-roofing a back country landmark cabin, teaching wood refinishing to adults and other subjects in public and private schools, conducting oral histories with World War II aviators, photographing sunken Japanese vessels, including a submarine like the one that shelled Ellwood, and aircraft in the South Pacific, rafting the Colorado River with an underwater camera, visiting retirement residents as a Raggedy Andy, working in scout camps, playing with toy trains, writing camping guides and histories … and the list goes on with his past and present interests.

