RetroSimba

A helicopter ride late on a winter night gave Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver a closer look at a mountain than he would have cared to experience.

The helicopter carrying McCarver in January 1968 veered in time to avoid a collision with Big Savage Mountain, about 20 miles west of Cumberland, Maryland, near the Pennsylvania border.

Four years earlier, the mountain was the site of a deadly crash involving a massive military aircraft carrying two nuclear bombs.

Air disaster

On Jan. 13, 1964, a U.S. Strategic Air Command B-52 left an Air Force base in Massachusetts and headed to its home station near Albany, Ga. The eight-engine plane had a five-person crew and carried two 24-megaton nuclear bombs.

At about 2 a.m., the B-52 flew into a snowstorm near Big Savage Mountain and experienced severe turbulence. The violent shaking caused the plane’s vertical stabilizer to break off and the aircraft became uncontrollable. The pilot, Major Thomas McCormick, ordered the crew to bail out into the blizzard.

The B-52, the biggest plane in the Strategic Air Command, crashed near the base of Big Savage Mountain on its western slope.

The two nuclear bombs onboard were unarmed, meaning safety mechanisms prevented the weapons from exploding. An unarmed nuclear bomb is designed not to explode until a crew member activates it, an Air Force spokesman told the Associated Press. The bombs were found intact in the wreckage, the Cumberland Evening Times reported.

Two of the crewmen survived. Three didn’t. Snow drifts were waist high, the Associated Press reported, and the temperature was at or below zero.

Major McCormick parachuted safely to the ground. “It was real rugged where I came down and the snow was several feet deep,” he told the Cumberland News.

After daybreak, Major McCormick trekked several miles, found his way to a farmhouse near Grantsville, Maryland, and called authorities to report the crash.

Rescuers found the co-pilot, Captain Parker Peeden, who survived by using his parachute to provide a shelter, the Cumberland Evening Times reported.

Two other crewmen, Major Robert Payne, the navigator, and Sergeant Melvin Wooten, the tail gunner, parachuted to the ground but died of exposure. Major Robert Townley, the radar bombardier, didn’t eject and was killed in the crash.

Catcher in the wry

Four years later, Tim McCarver was in Cumberland, Maryland, to speak at its Dapper Dan Club dinner. The Dapper Dan Club, founded and operated by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports editor Al Abrams, raised funds for charities in Pittsburgh and other towns. Proceeds from the Cumberland dinner benefited the Allegany County League for Crippled Children.

McCarver was a prize catch for the dinner at St. Mary’s Church hall on Sunday night, Jan. 21, 1968. Glib and personable, he was the catcher for the Cardinals, who three months earlier had won the World Series championship. His appearance helped draw a sellout crowd of 700 to the Dapper Dan banquet.

After McCarver agreed to be the guest speaker, he learned he needed to be in St. Louis by noon on Monday Jan. 22, the day after the dinner, for Army reserve duty. Abrams arranged for a private helicopter to take McCarver from Cumberland to Pittsburgh immediately after the banquet to catch a flight to St. Louis.

Tight schedule

Others on the dais included Orioles pitcher Pete Richert, retired big-league players Dick Groat and Jerry Lynch, University of Maryland head football coach Bob Ward and West Virginia University head football coach Jim Carlen. Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince was toastmaster.

The dinner started at 6 p.m. and McCarver was a hit with the audience. In his remarks, McCarver made special mention of Groat, the shortstop who was his Cardinals teammate from 1963-65. “Dick taught me how to conduct myself both on and off the field,” McCarver said. “I learned a lot of baseball from him.”

When the dinner ended at 9:40 p.m., McCarver, Abrams and Prince left immediately for the helicopter ride to Pittsburgh.

“That wasn’t soon enough,” the Cumberland Evening Times reported. “The weather won the race.”

Sharp turn

The helicopter had been airborne for about five minutes when “a huge mountain, completely shrouded by dark clouds, loomed ahead,” Abrams reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Big Savage Mountain, 2,986 feet at its peak, barely was visible in the icy fog.

Listening to a warning from air traffic control crackle into his earphones, pilot Dick Jarrard “suddenly made a 180-degree turn” and headed back to the Cumberland airport, Abrams reported.

“Don’t worry, men” Jarrard told his passengers. “I received orders to turn back. It’s too soupy here. That big, black blotch you saw ahead of us was Big Savage Mountain. I didn’t want to put a dent in it.”

Jarrard later told them, “The weather ahead was socking in fast.”

Abrams recalled, “By the time the helicopter touched the cold, cold ground, Tim McCarver’s face had turned ashen white.”

According to Abrams, McCarver said to no one in particular, “Let me out of here. You guys can ride this thing, not me.”

Four days earlier, McCarver and his wife Ann had become parents for the second time when Ann gave birth to a girl, Kelly.

A private plane was chartered to take McCarver from Cumberland to Washington, D.C., where he got a flight to St. Louis in time to report for military reserve duty the next day.

Abrams, Prince and the pilot stayed overnight in Cumberland and flew in the helicopter to Pittsburgh the next morning.

Years later, recalling the helicopter adventure, McCarver told Abrams, “I’ll never forget that ride.”