Re: This week marks sad anniversaries for the music industry
The pilot was the only one in the plane,still belted in his pilot's seat.Buddy Holly and Richie Valens bodies were outside the wreckage of the Bonanza.J.P.Richardson was thrown farther away near a fence.They took xrays of his well embalmed body in its casket after exhuming him for reburial in a new grave.Every bone in his body was fractured.No one could survive that crash.The Bonanza had turned end over end,rolling on that frozen Iowa cornfield.Buddy Holly chartered that plane and probably trusted the charter company to have good pilots,a misplaced trust he couldn't have realized.He wouldn't have thought that the pilot might be less than fully qualified. As for Jim Reeves,a combination of a sudden summer thunderstorm he was unaware of until he got to the Nashville area low on fuel,and his following his instincts rather than the air traffic controller's instructions,and a possible tampering with his plane all may have contributed to his crash.It was not his poor judgement.Even a professional pilot can crash in bad weather.
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Anita L. Cooper