Brothers solve mystery airplane crash

Noland and Roland Breaux know exactly how a plane crashed into Airplane Canal in Bayou Des Allemands because the aircraft nearly knocked one of them over more than 50 years ago.

The twins will be 77 years old on Wednesday, but they still vividly remember the crash.

Roland was duck hunting one early morning in the winter of 1956 when he heard a sound coming from the north.

When he turned, he saw something he would never forget.

“I spotted that plane and it was coming down pretty fast and it was coming right toward me,” Roland said. “If I had stood up and held my gun up, it would have hit my gun – that’s how low it got on me.”

He saw the Air Force jet just a few feet above his head before bouncing off the water and crashing about ¾ of a mile into the marsh.

“I covered my ears when it hit – I thought it would explode,” he said. Instead of exploding, the crash sent a sheet of mud and water into the air before settling under the marsh grass.

After checking to see that no one was in the plane, Roland returned home and told Noland about it.

Noland said that when he told the Hahnville Courthouse about the crash, they called him a “crazy man” and did not believe him.

Later, when the ejected pilot and co-pilot, who landed in Killona, came to the area looking for their plane, the St. Charles Parish Sheriff’s Office went looking for the Breaux brothers.

Roland took the pilots and other Air Force officials on his boat to see the wreckage.

They found out that the plane was from Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi.

Leroy Matherne, 75, who lives in Paradis, said that he heard about the crash when it happened and thought that the plane was an F-14 fighter jet. The Breaux brother agreed that the plane was definitely a jet of some kind. But F-14 planes did not fly until the 1970s.

The Breaux brothers said they were tasked with guarding the plane for the military until it could be lifted up and something very important could be retrieved from the wreck. They never knew what was so important that the Air Force wanted from the plane.

After three days and nights of guarding, the brothers said the Air Force took what they needed from the plane and left the remains in the marsh.

“They didn’t have a canal at that time,” Noland said. He said that an oil company came in later and dug the canal around the plane to start a well.

For all of their hard work in finding the plane and guarding it, the brothers said they were promised compensation from the military.

Unfortunately, they say they never received it.

 

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