C-47 Crash at Blue Mound, 1944

On the night of November twenty-fifth, nineteen forty-four, an Army cargo plane was flying through the night when it flew into a winter storm over southern Wisconsin. The storm brought the aircraft down over Blue Mound, the highest point in southern Wisconsin. The plane struck the ridge a short distance north of where this memorial now stands, killing those aboard.

The aircraft type, a Douglas Skytrain known by its military designation, was the workhorse of the wartime skies. It hauled cargo, dropped paratroopers, and towed gliders across every theater of the war. The crew flying that November route had no way to know how quickly the storm would build. The memorial here honors those men, lost on a routine mission far from any front line, on a hill most Midwesterners know only for its scenic views.