ARMED FORCES: Grounded in Iowa

On a crisp morning in March 1968, Clarence McCarville was busy feeding a flock of turkeys on his northeastern Iowa farm. Suddenly, a Wisconsin Air National Guard F-102 jet fighter dropped like a buzz bomb from the sky and piled into the McCarville farmhouse, destroying it and several nearby sheds. Nine months later, by implausible coincidence, an F89 Iowa Air National Guard plane exploded when it plowed into the ground 100 ft. from Peter Tjernagel's farmhouse in the central part of the state. About 12,000 Ibs. of flaming jet fuel spewed from the...

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