What appears to be Steuben County’s worst air crash is surprisingly hard to find information on — and what you find is often confused. This concerns a B-17F on a test flight from Rome Air Depot.

The fact that the crash took place in a wooded part of a small town (Troupsburg) may contribute to the problem. So may the fact that it was an army crash, taking place at the height of World War II. Security was probably (if pointlessly) demanded. The dead were strangers, having no connection to Steuben County. The war was all-consuming by 1944, and each family was preoccupied with the fate of their own loved ones.

The contemporary Farmer’s Advocate (Bath newspaper) says that the crash took place on Monday, November 6, 1944. The U.S. Army Air Forces listed the date as November 7, 1944, while the 1976 History of Troupsburg states it was November 9, but adds that it was election day, which would have been the seventh.

The History says that seven men were aboard, of whom six died. The Advocate quotes the commander of the Rome base as saying that six were on board, of whom three died, and names all six. The official army list of crashes for the month says that four were killed. (It’s possible, of course, that one man died later from injuries, raising the total from three to four.)

Both the History and the Advocate agree that at least some of the men attempted to parachute out, but were too close to the ground. (The History says six, the Advocate says two). The Advocate, which has the most detailed report and apparently on the authority of an official statement, says that an army captain (the pilot) and two civilian workers were killed, while an army captain and two civilian workers survived. The army list names the pilot as Capt. Arthur R. Faiesz, while the Advocate spells the name as Freisz, and adds that he was 27 years old and lived in Rome.

The History says that the crash took place about a mile north of Troupsburg Center, and the Advocate describes it as taking place at 4:10 PM on the Delbert Potter farm, adding that the aircraft exploded on impact and scattered wreckage over a wide part of the hill. Stories are passed down of people rushing out of the polling place, and in one instance of a family leaving an extremely annoyed mother in childbirth with only the midwife.

The 1944 records have been declassified, meaning that we could for a fee obtain a copy of the accident report, and perhaps nail down some of the details, but we imagine that this would run to quite a few pages and would include a lot of technical analysis that wasn’t relevant to us. Perhaps some day someone will examine that document and report to us, or maybe we’ll find letters, diaries, or more extensive newspaper reports — though the Canisteo paper has only a short notice with no details.

While this seems to be the worst airplane crash, the worst helicopter crash apparently took place immediately after the 1972 flood. Three men were surveying damage for the Army Corps of Engineers when their helicopter struck power lines near Hornell, then went down into the Crosby Creek, killing all three. Nineteen people in Steuben County died directly from the flood (out of 24 statewide), but these three indirect deaths would raise the county total to 22.