I have to say damn good work to Jeff & Rich!!!
I had lived in Mt. Carmel, Kulpmont, Shamokin & Sunbury for many years before moving to WV. I did a lot of investigation on that crash myself. (sorry to say most of it is missing now after moving)
I would like to add some info I found out...
I started to look for this site after reading a single sentence in a "Treasure" book.
From several people I talked to, they gave me the following...There were almost no full bodies found after the wreck. I was told only a single babies body was recovered. A guy who I worked with at a hardware store told me he and his father were doing some roofing work to their home in Shamokin when the plane came over. It was smoking and they could hear the plane definitely having trouble. The underside of the plane was on fire. (which is the cargo section which had the "bundle of money" more below) The bundle of money (reported to be $250,000.00) supposedly dropped on the way to where the plane crashed. In a coal mining area. (some people have told me it was recovered but never reported to authorities, no one ever says who though.) Also told to me was that immediately after the wreck MANY people showed up and the "Coal & Iron Police" had to stop many and send them back to the road. Also said to me was that the "Coal & Iron Police" took many pieces of property for themselves. Some things like rings and money right off the bodies!
What I researched...(a lot of which I was shown from a file of photocopies in the Shamokin Public library. Some I found in Microfilm at the same Library.)
There is a grave of an unidentified girl (?) in the Centralia grave yard.
On board was two (2) bundles of $250,000.00. A registered package containing diamonds of which it was reported that a group of postal workers, (from where exactly I am not sure) came in to search for. They found 180. (sorry I don't have the photocopies of the article anymore) I believe another mentioned that Mr. Carrol was with two women on the flight. One photocopy at the library has a photo with a dotted line of how the plane landed.
To me it looks like the plane was going to try to head to Bloomsburg to land but was not going to make it so (and this is a guess) the pilot might have been thinking of landing on coal land in the Wilburton area. (near Aristies) then landed in an incline with one wing hitting the transformer. The transformer was a building that fed power to a coal breaker I believe. It is still there. But it was rebuilt with concrete on approximately the same spot. The plane wreckage was bulldozed into a hole and covered after the CAB allowed them to.
I myself have been to the site several times. I didn't have a permit though. It is directly behind the Wilburton #2 (a small coal patch of houses that is still there. Wilburton #1 is between Mt. Carmel and this "patch".) VFW or American Legion building on the Aristise side of the "Patch" of houses. When I went in winter time and stood on the coal mine property road to this area, (which divides the crash path) and looked up and down along the path of the wreck, you could make out an area where the plane hit. On the upper side toward the VFW or American Legion building I walk and saw a lot of quartz in the laurel. Down the other way I saw the transformer building to the right side and found metal with rivets like pictured above but smaller.
This was several years ago. The friend who showed me the site later told me of Jeff's & Rich's finds.
~Z~
Here is a graphic I made of the site.
