IV 
109TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. CON. RES. 106 
Expressing the sense of Congress that a site in Arlington National Cemetery 
should be provided for a memorial marker to honor the memory of 
the 40 members of the Armed Forces who lost their lives in the air 
crash at Bakers Creek, Australia, on June 14, 1943. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 17, 2005 
Mrs. CAPITO submitted the following concurrent resolution; which was referred 
to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs 
CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 
Expressing the sense of Congress that a site in Arlington 
National Cemetery should be provided for a memorial 
marker to honor the memory of the 40 members of 
the Armed Forces who lost their lives in the air crash 
at Bakers Creek, Australia, on June 14, 1943. 
Whereas during the Second World War, the United States 
Army Air Corps established rest and recreation facilities 
in Mackay, Queensland, Australia; 
Whereas from the end of January 1943 until early 1944, 
thousands of United States servicemen were ferried from 
jungle battlefields in New Guinea to Mackay; 
Whereas these servicemen traveled by air transport to spend 
an average of 10 days on a rest and relaxation furlough;
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Whereas they usually were carried by two B–17C Flying For-
tresses converted for transport duty; 
Whereas on Monday, June 14, 1943, at about 6 a.m., a B– 
17C, Serial Number 40–2072, took off from Mackay Air-
port for Port Moresby; 
Whereas there were 6 crew members and 35 passengers 
aboard; 
Whereas the aircraft took off into fog and soon made two left 
turns at low altitude; 
Whereas a few minutes after takeoff, when it was five miles 
south of Mackay, the plane crashed at Bakers Creek, kill-
ing everyone on board except Corporal Foye Kenneth 
Roberts of Wichita Falls, Texas, the sole survivor of the 
accident; 
Whereas the cause of the crash remains a mystery, and the 
incident remains relatively unknown outside of Australia; 
Whereas United States officials, who were under orders not 
to reveal the presence of Allied troops in Australia, kept 
the crash a military secret during the war; 
Whereas due to wartime censorship, the news media did not 
report the crash; 
Whereas relatives of the victims received telegrams from the 
United States War Department stating little more than 
that the serviceman had been killed somewhere in the 
South West Pacific; 
Whereas the remains of the 40 crash victims were flown to 
Townsville, Queensland, where they were buried in the 
Belgian Gardens United States military cemetery on 
June 19, 1943;
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Whereas in early 1946, they were disinterred and shipped to 
Hawaii, where 13 were reburied in the National Memorial 
Cemetery of the Pacific, and the remainder were returned 
to the United States mainland for reburial; 
Whereas 15 years ago, Robert S. Cutler was reading his fa-
ther’s wartime journal and found a reference to the trag-
ic B–17C airplane accident; 
Whereas this discovery inspired Mr. Cutler to embark upon 
a research project that would consume more than a dec-
ade and take him to Australia; 
Whereas retired United States Air Force Chief Master Ser-
geant Teddy W. Hanks, of Wichita Falls, Texas, who lost 
four of his World War II buddies in the crash, compiled 
a list of the casualties from United States archives in 
1993 and began searching for their families; 
Whereas the Bakers Creek Memorial Association, in conjunc-
tion with the Washington Post and retired United States 
Army genealogy experts Charles Gailey and Arvon 
Staats, located 23 additional families of victims of the ac-
cident during the past two years; 
Whereas Joy Shingleton, Donnie Tenney, Wendy Andrus, and 
Wilma Post, the family of Army Air Corps Corporal Ed-
ward J. Tenney, of Buckhannon, West Virginia, helped 
to bring this recently uncovered World War II tragedy to 
light; and 
Whereas as of February 24, 2005, the commander of the 
United States Fifth Air Force officially has notified the 
relatives of 36 of the 40 victims: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 
concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that an ap-
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propriate site in Arlington National Cemetery should be 
provided for a memorial marker to honor the memory of 
the 40 members of the Armed Forces of the United States 
who lost their lives in the air crash at Bakers Creek, Aus-
tralia, on June 14, 1943, provided that the Secretary of 
the Army have exclusive authority to approve the design 
and site for the memorial marker. 
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