History & local legend
Pittsburgh’s missing “ghost bomber” was a B-25 Mitchell that ditched in the Monongahela River on January 31, 1956. Running out of fuel, pilot Major William Dotson brought the aircraft down near the Glenwood Bridge in Hays. All six men aboard survived the landing, and the plane remained afloat for about eleven minutes before sinking.
Four men were rescued from the 34-degree water. Captain Jean Ingraham and Staff Sergeant Walter Soocey drowned. During the search, the Coast Guard cutter Forsythia appeared to snag a wing with its anchor, but the line slipped and the aircraft was lost again. The Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers searched for two weeks without recovering it.
The unanswered question has sustained decades of searches and speculation: how did an aircraft roughly fifteen feet tall disappear in a stretch of river only about twenty feet deep? The Heinz History Center has gathered records and eyewitness accounts, but the bomber’s resting place remains unknown.
