An Alaska Army National Guard UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter takes off after dropping off Air Force Mortuary Affairs Operations and Armed Forces Medical Examiner System recovery team members supporting Operation Colony Glacier at Colony Glacier, Alaska, on June 16, 2023. (Don Hudson/U.S. Air Force)

(Tribune News Service) — It took more than seven decades but the uncle of an Alma man has finally been officially identified after he was killed in the crash of a military transport plane in Alaska on Nov. 22, 1952.

U.S. Air Force Capt. William Nelson Coombs, a Detroit native who was 31 at the time, was among the 41 passengers and 11 crew members who perished when their C-124 Globemaster aircraft struck Mount Gannett while returning to Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage.

Jeff Barker, 75, the retired president and CEO of Commercial Bank, vaguely recalls the last time he saw his uncle. He was 4-years-old and living with his family in Greenville.

“He had ferried another airplane from Alaska to the States and came by to visit us,” Barker said. “I was pretty young so I really don’t remember much about it.”

Air Force Capt. William Nelson Coombs. ()

Coombs, who was assigned to the Tenth Air Rescue Group, was a decorated WWII fighter pilot but on the return flight he was a passenger flying back to the base where he had been stationed for the prior two-and-a-half years.

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