Plane wreck discovered, pilot identified 60 years after crash years ago
Lt. Kenneth Ambrose grew up in Marion
and Lincolnville
By ROWENA PLETT
Staff writer
A Marion and Lincolnville native who became a U.S. Army fighter pilot was missing in action for 60 years after his plane crashed during World War II in the North Cascades in Washington.
The plane wreck was discovered in 1997, but a positive identification of the plane and its pilot were not made until earlier this year.
A story about the entire 60-year episode was published in the Sept. 1, 2003, issue of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was written by reporter Mike Barber.
The story identified Lieutenant Kenneth W. Ambrose as a farm kid from Lincolnville, Kan., who loved music.
The 24-year-old pilot was returning to the states on furlough from Alaska on Nov. 28, 1942, when his plane disappeared.
It being war time, the crash was kept secret except for a brief paragraph which appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Dec. 3, 1942, under the headline "Army Plane Lost."
It read, "Army officers disclosed yesterday that a P-38 fighter plane had been missing in the Bellingham area since late Saturday night, and expressed the belief that it was down somewhere in the Mount Baker region."
Heavy snows and winter storms prevented a search-and-rescue operation, and no more was said or done about it.
Kenneth was married and had a wife, Marguerite, and a two-month-old daughter, Kathleen. They were waiting for him in Berkeley, Calif., but he never arrived.
In Kansas, Kenneth's mother, Dolly, was sure the Army would find him.
Kenneth's disappearance took the song out of Marguerite's life. A professional singer, she never sang again after her husband's death. She concentrated, instead, on taking care of her little daughter.
Marguerite remarried five years later and had a son. Kathleen didn't know she had a different father than her brother until eighth grade.
When she found out, Kathleen wondered about her father, but her mother was hesitant to talk about him. He was still unaccounted for and Marguerite didn't know for sure what had happened to him.
Progress finally was made on that score when, in September 1997, two 23-year-old cross-country hikers, Chad Norris and Ben Lynch, stumbled upon the plane's wreckage in thick underbrush.
They took pictures and noted an oil pressure gauge, two engines labeled "Allison" and .50-caliber machine guns bent at right angles, with live rounds in the chambers.
Back in Seattle, when the young men shared the facts with Chad's father, Steve, he said the plane had to be a P-38. He was curious and decided to find out more about it.
He spent five years trying to get information about the plane. His laborious search was tracked by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In September 2002, Chad and Steve Norris and a friend braved the rugged terrain and unpredictable weather and returned to the site. They noted details about the parts and checked for remains and military weapons.
They found signs of a small fire at the point of impact. Parts of the cockpit were intact, but no seat or parachute were found. Neither was any evidence of human remains.
The most revealing thing they did was to photograph a tail fragment with a number, which later led to identification of the plane.
It took several more months to track down the history of the plane and find the pilot's family.
Steve Norris enlisted the help of a man whose hobby is air crash histories. That man traced an Army history card which finally connected the plane to Alaska and Kenneth Ambrose.
The joyful news
Through bits and pieces of information from historians, genealogists, and veterans, the man's search led him to San Francisco, where he found a marriage license and a birth certificate.
Using Marguerite's maiden name Clark, he was able to contact relatives, who informed him that Kenneth's wife and daughter were still alive.
He learned that Marguerite Ambrose Crowe, 84, lives in a nursing home near Norristown, Pa. Daughter Kathleen Ambrose Edwards, 61, is a librarian. Her husband is an instructor at Drexel University. The couple took Marguerite with them when they moved to the East Coast.
They were overjoyed to hear the news of the plane's discovery. It seemed to free Marguerite from all the grief and questions harbored within her.
"Mother is so excited. She cries, she laughs, and she cries," her daughter said, who has done some crying of her own.
Ambrose remembered
According to family records, Kenneth Ambrose was born in Marion May 24, 1918, to Esther Oyer Ambrose, daughter of Doney F. and Lydia Johnson of Marion. Esther was better known as Dolly.
Mother and son moved to rural Lincolnville in the spring of 1929, when Dolly married Frank "Fuzzy" Gilbert. They were married by Judge Jay Hargett and lived on a farm approximately two miles southwest of town. The farm was owned by G..H. "Henry" Wight.
That fall, Kenneth entered the sixth grade at Lincolnville Grade School. He graduated from Lincolnville High School in 1936.
Fellow students said he loved music and played several instruments. He played in a small band named The Hungry Five.
(Marguerite said someone anonymously sent her husband's prized trumpet to her two years after his plane disappeared.)
Lorene Smith recalled that Kenneth sang at the funeral of Henry "Hank" Ireland, a sophomore who died from pneumonia in February 1934.
Wes Fenske was a year behind Kenneth in school. He said the young man had a nice personality and was very bright.
"As an extemporaneous speaker, no one could get close to him," Wes recalled.
Helen Schambron Ollenberger of Wichita was a classmate. She and Kenneth were cousins by marriage. She said the two of them loved acting and public speaking and often shared leading roles in one-act plays.
On Saturdays, Kenneth worked at Linn's Grocery Store in Poppe town, west of the railroad tracks. He worked from 6:30 a.m. until 9:30 or 10 p.m. to earn 25 cents for spending money. One of his jobs was to "candle" eggs, a process of shining a light through each egg to check if it was good.
Helen said Kenneth hated the farm and wanted to go to California.
According to his wife, Kenneth went to Kansas City after graduating, where he enlisted in the Army and played in Count Basie's Band for a short time. A black-and-white photo from the time shows Kenneth in military uniform standing in front of the stage at a Basie outdoor concert.
When he met Marguerite, he was in college in California, studying law. She was a professional singer. A native of Texas, she was studying music at Berkeley and working at a restaurant.
They were married June 1, 1940. Soon after, Kenneth quit college and entered Army flight school. Because of Army rules requiring enrollees to be single, they kept their marriage a secret from military officials.
Kenneth graduated in October 1941, and the next spring was sent to Elmendorf Field in Alaska. Marguerite was pregnant and went to live with her parents in Berkeley.
Marguerite never saw him again, and he never saw their child.
Wes Fenske said he saw Kenneth in Long Beach, Calif., shortly before Kenneth left for Alaska. Wes and a friend from Lincolnville were in the Army and stationed there. They had a chance reunion with Kenneth and former Lincolnville High School teachers Carl and Harold Lindgren.
Lawrence Gilbert of Marion has fond memories of the times he and Kenneth spent together. Lawrence's grandparents lived just across the road from Kenneth's farm.
"Kenneth was three years older than me, and we spent a lot of time together exploring the countryside," Lawrence said.
H.C. "Mac" McGalliard, 82, Texarkana, Texas, served with Ambrose in the 54th Fighter Squadron in Alaska.
He said Kenneth and another lieutenant were famous among their comrades for being the first P-38 pilots to shoot down Japanese bombers over the Aleutian Islands.
According to Kathleen, one time Kenneth flew his plane more than 500 miles to home base on one motor after the other was hit. He was cited for bravery and received a Distinguished Flying Cross Air Medal.
According to Mac, Kenneth loved playing baseball, liked to run, and enjoyed life. His loss was felt among them and they never forgot him, Mac said.
"I felt jubilation when I heard his plane was found," he added.
Marguerite and Kathleen visited the Gilberts twice when Kathleen was a small child. She spent a summer with them in 1954, before ninth grade.
"It was quite a shock to come from southern California where Disneyland had just opened, to a small farm with no electricity, no running water, and no indoor plumbing," she said. "They did have a hand-crank phone, but that was the only 'modern' convenience.
"The cattle however, did have electricity for a water pump. Nana Gilbert had to hand pump her water. Such were the economics of a small share-cropper in rural Kansas."
Frank died in 1958, and Dolly moved into Lincolnville.
Kathleen and her husband, Allan Edwards, visited Dolly once after she suffered a stroke in 1976. She wasn't able to talk but seemed excited to meet Allan. Dolly died in 1988.
Barber, the reporter from Seattle, said the U.S. Forest Service is coordinating a possible expedition by a team of experts to the site of Kenneth's plane crash. The area is described as "the most remote region of the lower 48 states."
The district ranger said it will be a multi-faceted mission, including exploration of a federally protected archaeological site, a search for human remains to close a missing-in-action case, and disposal of hazardous waste.
Volatile weaponry could include bullets from the four nose guns and 20mm shells from its wing cannon.
Kathleen said finding her father's remains isn't as important as knowing what happened.
"It's ironic that he survived those Japanese encounters and then smacked into a mountain on his way home for leave," she said.
She and her mother are amazed and grateful that complete strangers persevered so long at their own expense to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance.
