Name/Title
Airplane CrashEntry/Object ID
CCHSA-K-120 to 125Description
On July 17, 1947, two local WWII veterans died when their airplane crashed in a corn field just north of the Clinton Co. line in Gratiot Co. They were Nathaniel G. Dean, Jr., aged 27, and Leslie Jolls, age 30. Dean was the pilot instructor, flying the government-surplus BT-13 trainer with his student, Jolls. They had taken off from the airport east of Maple Rapids when, just eight minutes later, the plane spiraled out of control, crashed, and burned. The plane had been purchased two weeks earlier and had been used as a training vehicle at the Capital City Airport in Lansing. The crash site was on the farm of Orin White, about 1 1/2 miles from the airport where Dean was the manager.
