Tragedy Over Somerset
By William F. Hanna
The newest publication from the Old Colony History Museum, Tetiquet to the Sea: A History of the Taunton River by Katie MacDonald and William F. Hanna, is filled with fascinating stories drawn from centuries of life along this historic waterway. But the river holds more stories than any single volume can contain. One remarkable event that didn’t make it into the book is the dramatic World War II crash of two P-47 fighter planes over Somerset — a tragedy witnessed by thousands and remembered for generations. Historian William F. Hanna recounts the gripping tale below. (You can order your copy of Tetiquet to the Sea here.)
As William O’Brien drove through the village of Assonet, Massachusetts at around 4:15 on the afternoon of Saturday, July 17, 1943, a man wearing a parachute suddenly dropped to the ground about thirty yards in front of his car. O’Brien stopped and went to the man’s assistance. While helping to unharness his parachute O’Brien learned that the flyer was suffering from an injured shoulder as well as from burns on his neck. The pilot told O’Brien that he had been flying his P-47 fighter in formation with another plane at about 29,000 feet when suddenly the aircraft caught fire forcing him to bail out.¹
The injured flyer was Lieutenant Thomas J. Harding, of Gypsum, Kansas, a member of the U.S. Army Air Forces 310th Fighter Squadron posted to Green Field at the Hillsgrove Army Airfield at Warwick, Rhode Island. Harding was soon attended to by a nurse who was passing by the scene as well as by an off-duty sergeant assigned to the Medical Detachment at Camp Myles Standish, in nearby Taunton. Before leaving in a civilian ambulance on his way to Truesdale Hospital in Fall River, Lt. Harding asked a bystander to call army authorities at Green Field (now T.F. Green International Airport) to report his whereabouts. He said that the other
P-47 pilot flying in his formation would have already returned to base and could provide further details on the mishap.²
Lt. Harding was yet to learn that the other pilot would be of no assistance. He was Lieutenant Benjamin Norris, Jr., of Denver, Colorado. A few moments earlier, as Harding’s parachute was carrying him across the river toward Assonet, Lt. Norris’s plane, in the throes of a high speed dive, slammed into the waters of the Taunton River and rapidly disappeared. Norris was killed instantly.
According to The Somerset Spectator, this was a tragedy witnessed by thousands of people in that town and its environs. Some were running errands in the central village while others were enjoying a summer afternoon at one of the beaches along the river. Many had observed the two planes performing high altitude maneuvers in the moments before the disaster. With wartime mobilization in full swing, the presence of military aircraft above the waters of Mount Hope Bay was an everyday occurrence.³
Within hours of the tragedy the army had a three-man crash investigation team in Somerset. Its members were responsible for determining exactly what had happened to the two planes, and why. With the help of local officials the investigators began identifying and interviewing those who had seen some part of the disaster.
The Somerset newspaper speculated that the P-47s must have collided in mid-air because as they came down they “scatter[ed] torn [airplane] parts over the northern section of town.”⁴ This was a notion, however, that was flatly denied by Lt. Harding. In his statement, given to investigators one week after the crash, Harding reported that the training mission had started from Green Field as a four-plane formation, led by Lt. Norris. Mechanical problems forced two of the pilots to return to Green, but Norris and Harding continued with the exercise. After flying for about ten minutes at an altitude above 25,000 feet, Lt. Harding said he noticed smoke in the cockpit. He opened the canopy hoping to clear the air, but as he adjusted his controls he saw “flames leaping up from the floor,” so he prepared to bail out. Within seconds, recalled Harding, “the flames in the cockpit were burning me,” so he exited the plane quickly, injuring his shoulder as he jumped.⁵
Harding dismissed speculation that his plane collided with Lt. Norris’s P-47. “At no time while at altitude,” he stated, “did I come within two hundred feet of Lt. Norris and am positive I did not hit his ship while at altitude.”⁶
As prevailing winds pushed Harding eastward across the river toward Assonet, his airplane crashed in flames into the woods on the Preston H. Hood farm on County Street in Somerset. The scene was quickly overrun by sightseers and this, according to the Spectator, caused serious problems for the local police. A week after the crash the newspaper reported that the downed P-47 had been carrying ammunition and that several men from Somerset and Swansea, including army men home on furlough, risked their lives while removing ordnance from the burning plane.⁷
As this spectacle was unfolding on County Street, another was taking place just to the southeast, where Lt. Norris’s P-47 crashed into the Taunton River. Of all the eyewitness accounts collected by the army investigation team, those of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Singleton were judged to be the most reliable. They and their two children were on the family’s boat, which was anchored in the river about seventy-five yards from the Somerset shore. They had seen Lt. Harding jump from his burning plane but had lost sight of the aircraft in the distance when it fell below the tree line. “At about this time,” stated Mr. Singleton, “we saw another plane traveling at a very high rate of speed coming almost directly at our boat. I called to my wife and two children to ‘Hit the deck’ as the plane passed over our heads.”⁸
Gladys Singleton estimated that the plane passed about thirty feet above them before crashing approximately one hundred yards away. Her husband quickly launched a skiff and rowed to the site of the crash. He saw only oil, mud and scattered debris on the water, and he also noticed that air bubbles came to the surface for a few seconds after he arrived.⁹
Coast Guard vessels were dispatched shortly after the crash and began the grim work of dragging the river in search of the plane. The operation was centered in water opposite Harrington’s Switch, located off Riverside Avenue and a short distance south of today’s Somerset Marina.¹⁰ Although the water in that area was less than fifteen feet deep, locating the plane was a difficult task that had officials searching throughout a long Saturday night and well into Sunday. On Monday, July 19, a U.S. navy vessel arrived on scene from the Quonset naval base equipped with machinery capable of raising the wreckage of the plane. The Somerset newspaper reported that no large sections of the P-47 were found; the plane had been torn apart by the impact of the crash.¹¹
The remains of Lt. Norris were recovered with his plane and even in the midst of a world war his story was a sad one. Just twenty-one years old and the son of a career army officer, the young pilot had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in the Class of 1943. His bride of nineteen days received the awful news at their home near Warwick, Rhode Island.
Although the accident had been witnessed by thousands, the army’s crash team was unable to pinpoint a specific cause. However, its members reported that even in the absence of definitive evidence, a “possible likely cause” was that Lt. Norris, while attempting to observe Harding’s burning P-47 as it hurtled toward the ground, had gone into a “compressibility dive,” and that upon recovering from this he may have “blacked out.” That would have caused him “to stall and go into a spin,” from which he would not have had enough altitude to recover. His plane, reported the crash team, had hit the water at a thirty-degree angle and at high speed.¹²
Several days after the tragedy The Somerset Spectator reported that townspeople were “still breathless” over what they had seen.¹³ They would have their stories for the rest of their lives, but in July 1943 the world at war continued to turn. The men of the 310th Fighter Squadron finished their training and then shipped out to the Pacific Theater of Operations, where they served for the duration of the conflict. Closer to home, Lt. Norris’s body was returned to West Point, where he rests today in the U.S. Military Academy Post Cemetery.¹⁴
End Notes
1. Statement of William O’Brien, Jr., 18 July 1943. Eric Wiberg has compiled several official army documents, including witness statements, relating to the crash over Somerset and has shared copies with the Old Colony History Museum. For the purposes of this article, we will state the subject and date of the document being cited and note that it is found in the Wiberg Collection at the OCHM.
2. William O’Brien statement, 18 July 1943. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
3. The Somerset Spectator, 22 July 1943; hereinafter cited as Spectator; see also “Somerset, MA. — July 17, 1943” in New England Aviation History, an online source found at: https://newenglandaviationhistory.com/tag/somerset-massachusetts-plane-crash/ and retrieved on June 1, 2025.
4. Spectator, 22 July 1943.
5. Statement of Thomas J. Harding, 24 July 1943. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
6. Thomas Harding statement, 24 July 1943. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
7. Spectator, 22 July 1943.
8. Statement of Frank. E. Singleton, 17 July 1943. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
9. Statement of Gladys E. Singleton, 17 July 1943. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
10. Placing the exact location of Harrington’s Switch has been problematic. At least two online sources generated by AI provide conflicting information. One places the location on the east side of the Taunton River in Freetown, while another puts Harrington’s Switch in the south end of Fall River. We are relying on Mary Ann McDonald, ed., Somerset, Massachusetts: Portrait of the American Experience in a New England Town (Somerset, Mass.: Somerset Historical Commission, 1981), as our source. This is found in the “Somerset Historical Tour,” p. 152 n.1 with enclosed map.
11. Spectator, 22 July 1943.
12. U.S. Army Air Forces Report of Aircraft Accident. Accident №44–7–17–55. Wiberg Collection, OCHM.
13. Spectator, 22 July 1943.
14. For information on Lt. Norris’s burial see: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/12388987/benjamin-norris
