LC-85 was a P3B Orion built in 1965 by Lockheed and was lost on Sept. 22, 1978, in the sky over the town of Poland. Lori-Suzanne Dell photo

On Sept. 22, 1978, just after noon, eight men of the United States Navy Patrol Squadron VP-8 boarded their Lockheed-built P3-B Orion (designation LC-85) and taxied to the tarmac of the Brunswick Naval Air Station runway and lifted off. Although their intended destination was an air show in Ontario, Canada, neither the plane nor its crew ever arrived.

In 1930, a small airfield was created to serve the air travel needs of the Midcoast. Thirteen years later, that small civilian airdrome off of Gurnet Road was taken over so the Brunswick Naval Air Station could be built to meet the military demands of World War II.

In the following years, the base served and supported the many missions and military operations of America’s national defense during the Cold War.

With their primary missions traditionally centered around the Cold War military activity of tracking and pursuing enemy submarines, the specific mission on the day for this particular Tiger Squadron was one of international public relations.

Squadron VP-8 was assigned to Brunswick Naval Air Station in July 1971 and the plane “LC-85,” was eventually assigned to the squadron.

The P3B-Orion was manufactured in 1965 and had a wingspan of almost 117 feet and the body of the aircraft was nearly 100 feet long. Each wing held two Allison turboprop engines and corresponding fuel tanks that combined to allow for nearly 2,400 miles of continuous flight.

LC-85’s journey to Canada that morning was expected to take approximately one hour before it would land for an air show at the Royal Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ontario. As the LC-85 crew took to the sky over Brunswick on that beautiful September day, there was no sign of any mechanical difficulties or worries with the aircraft. But that was all about to change.

Just minutes after takeoff from Brunswick, alarms suddenly began ringing in the cockpit. The plane was experiencing a strong vibration and then likely began bucking, shaking and making loud banging noises.

As most of the crew could only grab onto something and hang on, the scene through the windows of the plane became befuddled and threatening as the view of the horizon rolled, pitched and yawed before the pilot’s eyes.

Suddenly, there was a lurch and loud crackling sounds emanated as the outer-left engine violently sheared away from the wing. Immediately, hydraulic lines ruptured and broken petroleum lines spewed aviation fuel. The wing, from where the engine had fallen away, was now engulfed in flames.

As the crew struggled to gain control, and as the plane began to tumble, spiral and plunge, the flames continued to be fueled by the leaking lines. Within moments of the first indication of trouble, the plane suddenly exploded in the air and disintegrated over Poland Spring. There were no survivors.

Much of the plane’s fuselage fell in the woods just off Route 11, as one of the plane’s engines fell onto the paved roadway and “punched a foot-deep hole” into the street. When the fire department arrived, crews had all they could do just to keep the fires from spreading through the woods.

Some wondered if the cause of the crash was a mid-air collision with a second plane, but no evidence of a second aircraft was ever found. Wreckage of LC-85 was eventually recovered by the Navy.

Before this tragedy, the last time one of Brunswick’s P3B-Orions was lost to a critical event was on the afternoon of Thursday, March 15, 1973, when another P3B aircraft — belonging to Patrol Squadron 10 — was lost at sea while on a training mission.

That crash took place approximately 40 miles off the coast of Maine, over the Atlantic Ocean, and it claimed five Navy souls. The wreckage, later located by the U.S. Coast Guard, came to rest on the ocean floor at a depth of nearly 700 feet.

The memorial to VP-8’s LC-85 sits before the entrance to the Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum on the former Brunswick Naval Air Station. Lori-Suzanne Dell photo

On Sept. 22, 2018, seven years after the closure of the Brunswick Naval Air Station and four decades after the crash of the LC-85, United States Navy personnel gathered with members of the community at the Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum to remember the eight men of LC-85 Tiger Squadron who died in the air over Poland, Maine.

A reproduction of LC-85 is placed at the corner of Admiral Fitch Avenue and Pegasus Street at P3-Park on the former base as a memorial to these eight men of the Tiger Squadron, and others, who died while serving the United States of America and the State of Maine.

And today, we, too, can remember LC-85’s Tiger Squadron as one of the more tragic of our honored Stories from Maine.

Lori-Suzanne Dell is a Brunswick author and historian. She has published four books and runs the “Stories from Maine” Facebook page.