captured Focke-Wulf Fw 190F FE-113 (coded 10) from Newark Army Air Base in New Jersey, where it had been offloaded from to Freeman Field in Indiana for testing. During a refuelling stop in Pittsburgh, a faulty electrical horizontal-trim-adjustment switch went to the full-up position and could not be manually overridden. The pilot saw a small dirt strip (Hollidaysburg Airport, south of Altoona, Pennsylvania), and made an emergency landing. The right brake failed; the fighter pivoted left, the landing gear collapsed and the propeller ripped away. The pilot was uninjured, but the Fw 190 was hauled to the Middletown Air Depot in Pennsylvania; the propeller ended up on the wall of a local flying club. The press never heard about this accident or the 19 August Messerschmitt Me 262 crash-landing in Pittsburgh. 14 September A hurricane destroyed three wooden blimp hangars at Naval Air Station Richmond in Florida, southwest of Miami, with winds. The roofs collapsed, ruptured fuel tanks were ignited by shorted electrical lines, and fire consumed twenty-five blimps (eleven deflated), 31 non-Navy U.S. government aircraft, 125 privately-owned aircraft and 212 Navy aircraft. Thirty-eight Navy personnel were injured, and a civilian fire chief was killed. Air operations were reduced to a minimum after the storm, and NAS Richmond was closed two months later. 15 September USAAF Douglas C-47B-45-DK Skytrain 45-1011 (c/n 17014/34277) of the 561st Base Unit, Ft. Dix AAF in New Jersey, piloted by James E. Wuest, crashed on take-off one mile west of Kansas City killing 23 of the 24 aboard. "KANSAS CITY, Sept. 15 (AP) - Only one of 21 homeward-bound European war veterans, passengers aboard a military air transport plane which crashed early today remained alive tonight - and his condition was critical. A crew of three died in the craft which crashed and burned only a few seconds after it took off from Fairfax airport. Three of the veterans were alive when rescue parties reached the charred wreckage on the north bank of the Missouri river. Of these, Sgt. Bernard C. Tucker, Etna, California, and Cpl. Fred Ebert, Pasadena, died later at a local hospital. Sgt. Ora DeLong, whose papers indicated he had relatives at Fort Scott, Kan., Winfield, Kan., and San Bernardino, California, remained alive this afternoon but his condition was described as critical. The big Douglas C-47 plane had just left the runway at the local airport after refueling to continue its flight