28-02-2025
Search to be launched for Air Force jet that carried Muncie pilot to his death in 1968
MUNCIE, Ind. — It has been 57 years since a B-52 bomber carrying eight Air Force personnel crashed into the Gulf of Mexico during a training mission.
One of those on the jet when it disappeared — on Feb. 29, 1968 — was Thomas D. Childs, an Air Force captain from Muncie who had flown combat missions in Vietnam.
Project Recover, a citizen-led nonprofit organization, is planning an extensive search of the Gulf — particularly near Matagorda Island, Texas, where the plane is believed to have gone down. (The Gulf of Mexico is now referred to as the Gulf of America by the U.S. government.)
Organizers, using "the world's most sophisticated sonar technologies," hope to find the aircraft and "bring all eight of these Cold War aviators home to their loved ones," according to a news release.
For more information on the recovery effort, and to donate to the cause, go to the project's website at B-52 Bomber Down.
Thomas Childs was born in Muncie in September 1941, the son of James and Dorothy May Childs. He was a 1959 graduate of Center High School, where he was on the school's basketball team, and a 1963 graduate of Ball State University, where he earned a degree in accounting.
He entered the Air Force through an ROTC commission earned at Ball State. As a pilot in Vietnam, he had flown 19 combat missions, earning the Air Medal.
Childs was listed as "navigator-instructor" on the February 1968 training flight that was to involve a "simulated bombing drop." The flight had departed Carswell Air Force Base in Texas.
There were apparently no witnesses to the crash. Efforts by the Coast Guard and the Air Force to find the jet were unsuccessful.
Childs was survived by his wife, Karin, and their infant daughter, Tiffany, who would be raised in her mother's home state of Texas.
Childs' parents lived in the southeastern Delaware County community of Mount Pleasant, and a memorial service was held at Pleasant Hills Baptist Church a month after the crash.
His father, James, died in 1980, and his mother, Dorothy, died six years later.
Their tombstone, at Elm Ridge Memorial Park, also bears their son's name and the dates of his birth and when he was "lost in flight."
Thomas Childs' brothers, Larry and Norman, are also deceased.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter for The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Group to search for crashed military jet that carried Muncie pilot
