Pages past - July 25

On this date ...

1958: Two F-100 fighter planes from Cannon Air Force Base crashed about seven miles south of the base, killing two pilots.

A third man ejected from one of the planes and survived after landing in a field.

Witnesses said the planes did not collide, but crashed seconds apart.

Cannon officials said one of the planes, a single-seat supersonic jet, was monitoring the other, a two-seater, for signs of trouble before the crashes.

Rancher E.M. White said he was spraying for grasshoppers on a tractor when the crashes occurred moments after he heard an explosion.

"White said he looked up and saw the two-seater plane on fire and watched it crash. He said he didn't see the second plane until it crashed into the ground seconds later in an adjoining field of deep sand," the Clovis News-Journal reported.

Another witness said she saw a man eject from the two-seater plane, make a safe landing, "then got up and ran most of the way to the scene of the crash."

The victims were identified as Lt. Harvey Hudson, 24, who lived at 124 E. Tierra Blanca, and Lt. Charles Carey, 26, of 208 E. Plaza.

Both men were married and Hudson had a 21-month-old son.

Pages Past is compiled by David Stevens. Contact him at:

[email protected]