On June 16, 1944, Lieutenant Robert G. Chute was killed in a training accident. He was the instructor in a B-25 medium bomber that crashed into a mountain outside of Bakersfield, California in bad weather. The two student pilots aboard, 2LT Glen Willard Edwards, and Lieutenant Normal Leonard Bruner were also killed in the crash.
We had quite a blow Fri. night. Two of our boys and their instructor were killed down by Bakersfield. Here it is the first accident we have had in our group since we have been here and it had to be in our squadron. The two boys have been in my outfit since we were at basic. They don’t know what happened, they were on a night instrument navigation trip and supposedly hit a mountain down by Bakersfield. We were on the same trip and heard it reported over the radio but didn’t know it was one of our ships. We were late in getting back to Mather as we were suppose to have landed at 2:30 but didn’t get back till 3:000. All the big shots were waiting for us, the C.O., sqd. commander, group commander, because our ship and the other one was the only one out. The weather down there wasn’t any too good, had about a 4,000′ ceiling which we had to fly under and about 20 mi. east of Bakersfield there are some 7,000′ mountains, so I think they got off course alittle and hit them. Oh yes – a friend of mine across the hall, Lt. Cheely is taking one of the bodies home. He lives in Iowa close to where they boy lived, and I think he might call you while he is there as he won’t be far from Chicago. The other boy lives in Galena, Ill. His name is Bruner the other Edwards. They were both in the graduating class at Luke.
Tom later wrote (June 24, 1944):
The accident that I told you about in my last letter letter, we got the report back and it is really a mystery. They ran smack into the side of a mountain at about 7,000′ up. They can’t figure it out as the instructor had been here for over a year and knew the country well, and they were about 50 mi. off course. Their parachute harness wasn’t buckled so they probably never knew what happened.
A Memorial in the Find a Grave website reads in part:
In 1943 Bob married his wife Eleanor Jean Wiles at High St. Presbyterian Church near their former home in Melrose, east Oakland, and the young couple settled five miles to the southeast, in Crow Canyon on the eastern edge of Castro Valley.
During WW II in 1942, Bob became a First Lieutenant. In 1943, he was transferred and recommissioned to the U.S. Army Air Force, as an aviation instructor on the B25 Billy Mitchell bomber. By early 1944 Bob was stationed at Mather Field AFB in Sacramento. Bob and his pregnant wife were then living at 2022 13th St. in Sacramento.
A week after D-Day, in June 1944 Bob was on a training flight over the Greenhorn Mountains in the southern California wilderness when his plane went down. Tragically, Bob was killed ten days after the birth of his only son.
“Flyer Killed
SACRAMENTO, June 17.-
(AP)- Mather Field officers announced today that First Lieutenant Robert G. Chute was killed and two student fliers are missing as the result of a crash of a B-25 near Glennville, thirty miles northeast of Bakersfield, on Friday night. The wreckage was not found until today.”
“Hayward Flier Killed in Crash
SACRAMENTO, June 19.-(U.P.)-
First Lieut. Robert G. Chute, 23, of Sacramento and Hayward, was one of three men killed Friday night in the crash of a B-25 bomber in the mountains near Glennville, 30 miles northeast of Bakersfield, Mather Field officials announced today.
“He received his commission at Officers’ Candidate School in 1942 and transferred to the air corps, being recommissioned in that branch last year. For several months he had been attached to Mather Field as an instructor in instrument flying.”
After the war, Eleanor remarried Albert Anthony Montero and they had two children. Eleanor died in 1991, and Albert in 1995.