Carlsbad, New Mexico. AT-11 training bombers at the United States Army Air Forces advanced flying school dropping practice bombs. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017871966/. (Accessed January 28, 2021.)

The Night We Bombed Ourselves
By Michael E. Jones

Forrest Bourk was sleeping comfortably in his bed above the Boise City post office. It was his building, so he could sleep upstairs whether anybody liked it or not. By half past midnight on July 5, 1943, most of Bourk’s neighbors in the small Oklahoma panhandle town were asleep as well.

But someone was awake. A crash and what sounded like a small explosion jarred Bourk from his peaceful sleep. Was someone trying to crack the post office safe? If so, Bourk was determined to catch the crook before he could complete his criminal act. He kept the lights out and crept to the front window. There was a group of men gathered out front.

Just across the alley from the post office, R. D. Dodd, the pastor of Boise City’s Baptist church, had heard the explosion too. Well, Mrs. Dodd had heard it and had shaken the heavy-sleeping preacher from his slumber. She was certain she heard the distinct sound of a bomb dropping. That was the kind of thing that called for an investigation, but their eight-year-old son had slept right through the noise. To prevent frightening him, they stayed put.

Within a few minutes, the unmistakable hum of an airplane could be heard overhead followed by the terrifying whistle of a bomb falling to the earth. This time the explosion came from the vicinity of Pastor Dodd’s church, and he jumped into his overalls to go survey the damage. The only thing that might be scarier than an empty offering plate was a midnight air raid on the church.

As Pastor Dodd appeared on the street, Fred Kreiger, the Boise City News editor, was already there. Kreiger hadn’t been asleep long when the first bomb hit over by the post office and his newspaperman instincts had quickly kicked in. The streets around the Cimarron County Courthouse, the heart of Boise City, were beginning to fill up with people wondering the same thing that Kreiger had on his mind. “Just why in heck would anybody want to bomb Boise City?”¹

By that time, Forrest Bourk had figured out that there was no burglar in the post office, but the mystery of who was attacking Boise City still hung over the town. The first bomb had made a direct hit to Bourk’s garage near the post office. It was only a couple of car lengths away from the home of S.E. Ferguson where eight people slept quietly. The doors had blown open on the garage and there was a three-and-a-half-foot crater in the ground, but the explosion was not enough to do any serious damage. There was something different about these bombs.

It wasn’t long before Bourk and the men outside the post office got a chance to lay their eyes on the mystery attacker. Just a few minutes after the second bomb dropped near the church, the plane was back overhead and dumped another projectile from the sky. Bourk and the others watched a third bomb slam into North Cimarron Avenue roughly sixty yards from the courthouse. The bomb had flared up and it was dangerously close to a large underground gas tank, so Bourk marched over with several of the men to prevent an explosion.

Although many people were still watching the backs of their eyelids, the commotion had started to stir several others. Pastor Dodd found his church to be safe and sound. The bomb had only grazed the wall but it did leave a four-foot-crater next to the small white church.

A number of the patrons at Boise City’s new late-night hotspot, the Liberty Cafe, were out on the streets surrounding the town square as well. The Liberty Cafe was “open day and night”² which made it an oasis for fuel truck drivers in need of evening nutrition. Seven drivers were dining at the Liberty and they soon realized that their trucks were in the line of fire. They raced to their rigs and formed a fast-moving convoy out of town, just as the plane roared overhead for the fourth time. It was as if the bomber enjoyed the sport of aiming for a moving target, because his bomb pounded into the ground just behind the rear gasoline truck as the driver mashed the pedal down on North Cimarron Avenue.

Four of these strange bombs had landed within a small area in Boise City, but a lot of folks still slept blissfully unaware that they were under attack. The fourth bomb landed only about thirty feet away from the front porch of Lee Wright. He wouldn’t wake up until much later in the morning, and he would be angry when he did.

Those who were awake were confused about who was making their little town into a war zone. A clue had been printed in Boise City’s own newspaper just a couple of months earlier within an article titled “Bombing Sites Are Chosen.”³ The US Army Air Forces were about to begin practice bombing missions from the base in Dalhart, Texas, roughly forty-five miles to the south of Boise City. There were four bombing ranges near the base, but Boise City should have been safely beyond all of them.

As the bombs dropped all around Sheriff Harris Powell’s apartment inside the Cimarron County Courthouse, he began to suspect that the unseen enemy just might be one of those practice bombers gone way off course. Powell made contact with the base in Dalhart and told them to radio any planes they had out on a practice mission and tell them to hold those bombs!

If the unknown plane was an American bomber, the crew still had not received any message to stop as they approached Boise City for a fifth time. The bomb bay doors opened and another lethal projectile hurled toward the home of Glenn Steinberger, opening a large hole in the ground about twenty-five yards away from Steinberger’s home.

Nothing will get you up and moving quite like a bomb landing just outside your house in the middle of the night, and Steinberger knew exactly where he needed to go. He rushed to the home of his boss, Frank Garrett, the superintendent of the Southwestern Public Service Company and the man in charge of the electricity in Boise City. Like many people in those days when America was deeply engaged in World War II, Garrett had learned a few things about how to react in case of an air raid. One thing was for certain, it would be much more difficult for an enemy in the sky to bomb what he could not see.

Like everyone else in town, Garrett had no idea what was happening so he was hesitant to kill the power. Being the guy in charge of keeping the lights on would make you a little gun-shy. When the power was flowing, you wouldn’t hear a peep out of anyone and you certainly wouldn’t get any thanks for a job well done. If that power went out even for just a second, you could count on hearing about it everywhere you went in town.

Garrett wanted to get a little more information and if you needed to get the story in Boise City after midnight, it was time to go to the Liberty Cafe.

Five bombs had crashed into the town and there were people in the streets wearing their nightgowns and pajamas. The bombs weren’t causing the types of explosions they would normally expect, but they were still heavy chunks of metal being hurled at them from the sky at a high rate of speed. Garrett and Steinberger arrived at the Liberty Cafe and joined the other confused townspeople there. Garrett was still unsure if he should kill the power, but the drone of an approaching plane made up his mind for him. Boise City needed to become invisible.

The two utility company employees hopped into a pickup and sped off to the powerhouse. Before they could achieve their mission, a sixth deadly shell whistled down from the plane and buried itself just outside the home of Boise City attorney, E.B. McMahan. At that point, no one had been injured in the bombing, but Garrett needed to kill the power before that plane circled around again and their luck ran out.

The pickup truck carrying the two power company men slid to a stop at the Boise City powerhouse, and Frank Garrett made his move. The town was instantly covered with a safety blanket of darkness.

All the Boise City citizens who weren’t still strolling through dreamland listened and watched to see if the dreaded aircraft would return for another shot at them. The plane had barraged them for about half an hour.

As the minutes ticked by, there was no sight or sound of the plane and Frank Garrett was worried about keeping the power off too long. He turned to Steinberger and said, “If someone gets up and don’t know about the bombing and tries to turn on a light he will say, ‘That derned Frank Garrett has turned off the power again; they blame me for everything’.”⁴ After waiting several more minutes and with no sign of the bomber, Garrett let there be light once again for the homes and businesses in Boise City.

Steinberger and Garrett returned to their homes to salvage whatever rest they could get during the hours left in the night. It was quite a while before Garrett could settle down. Just before he pulled back the covers to go to bed, he realized he needed to check on the water and gas services to ensure they had not been disrupted in the bombing. Everything was fine, but it sure was hard work being the head utility guy.

Garrett finally settled into his bed for some much-needed rest, but before he could get to the first snore, he heard a plane buzzing again overhead. Without a second thought, Garrett was up and in his pickup tearing back down the road to the powerhouse. He hit the big switch and set Boise City in the dark again as fast as he could. He knew he wasn’t making any friends in town, but he had to do it to protect everyone.

He stepped outside and scanned the skies for the plane. A shooting star flashed across the heavens and the jumpy utility man ran for cover inside the powerhouse. Everything looked like a bomb when you were on the lookout for one. After a moment, he got his wits about him and went back outside to see the plane flying away to the south of town. He waited a bit longer, restored the power once again, and headed home for the final time that night. The bombing of Boise City, Oklahoma, was over.

Night turned to day and unlike Frank Garrett, Lee Wright had slept soundly through the entire ordeal. Wright stepped out on his front porch to greet the day and found mud splattered everywhere. Who the heck had been dumping mud on his porch in the middle of the night? This was a puzzle he would need to go into town to solve.

Like all the others in town who had snoozed through it all, Wright was surprised when he was told that they had been bombed while he slept.  He returned home and found that the porch mud bandit had actually been a bomb that barely missed his house. A little mud clean-up on the porch was no big deal when he considered what might have been.

Incredibly, all of Boise City had been just as lucky as Lee Wright. After thirty minutes of bombs dropping all over town, there was no one injured and very little property damage.

Soon an FBI agent from Oklahoma City and half a dozen men from the Dalhart Air Base converged on the town to survey the damage and to determine exactly where the bombs came from. The commanding officer at Dalhart confirmed what many folks already suspected. The assault had been carried out by a plane from his base which was supposed to be targeting a practice range at Conlen, Texas, roughly forty-five miles south of Boise City. The navigator had lost his way and mistaken the lights of the Cimarron County courthouse square for those of the bombing range. The practice bombs dropped by the plane were one-hundred-pounders, filled mostly with sand and a few pounds of gunpowder. If not for Frank Garrett killing the power, significant damage, injury, and perhaps death might have been dealt to Boise City.

The people of Boise City had every right to be upset, but the general reaction was quite the opposite. They had endured much worse hardships during the horrible Dust Bowl years of the 1930s. They also understood that America was at war, and there was a general spirit of teamwork amongst most citizens as their country fought to win World War II. Since there had been no serious damage or injury done to the town, they were willing to quickly forgive. Frank Garrett thought of the plane’s navigator who would bear most of the blame and consequences for the potentially devastating mistake. “The boy had a streak of hard luck. Instruments likely went bad. Hope the army isn’t too rough on him.”⁵

Some in Boise City were even able to laugh about the terrifying event. R.D. Dodd’s church had been grazed by one of the six bombs and in his sermon that Sunday he pointed out, “If a fourth as many people as have been on our grounds looking at the hole the bomb made would attend church our building couldn’t hold them.”⁶

Even the Boise City News found some humor in the situation. Tucked away in the “Human Interest” column and dwarfed by the “Boise City Bombed” headline, editor Fred Kreiger joked, “There are many things that Boise City needs – among which I would suggest some searchlights and anti-aircraft guns.”^{7 8}

The town would keep its good humor about that frightening night throughout the years. In 1993, Boise City celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the event. A new memorial was dedicated which featured a replica of one of those one-hundred-pound practice bombs that dropped by for a visit in 1943.

Surprisingly, there were at least two other places in the United States where they could relate to the Boise City experience.

On August 16, 1943, just over a month after the Boise City mishap, practice bombs fell on the tiny village of Tarnov, Nebraska. Once again, there were no injuries but one bomb did smash through the home of Joe Ciecior. It ripped through just a few feet from where Joe’s two daughters were sleeping and burrowed into a crater in his basement. Army officials said that the planes had overshot a bombing range on a routine practice flight.

The streets of Sierra Blanca, Texas, were mistakenly used for target practice by planes from Biggs Field on July 13, 1944, only a year after Boise City was pummeled. A reported ten practice bombs dropped on Sierra Blanca, but the town was spared from any major injuries or damage.

In Boise City, they passed down the memory of the night the United States bombed its own town and eventually set up a permanent memorial to remember. For most everyone else, it was history left behind.

If you enjoyed this true short story from Michael E. Jones, you may also like his book, Lost at Thaxton. 18 dead, 21 injured, and a horrifying night on the rails. Go back in time and ride along in this true story of an 1889 train wreck which readers have described as gripping and like they were sitting on the train themselves.

Notes

1. Lewis T. Nordyke, “Boise City Residents Remained Calm When ‘Bombed by Mistake’”, Amarillo Daily News (Amarillo, Texas), July 16, 1943, 19.
2. “Announcing Opening of the Liberty Cafe”, Boise City News (Boise City, OK), October 15, 1942, 3.
3. “Bombing Sites Are Chosen”, Boise City News (Boise City, OK), April 22, 1943, 1.
4. See note 1 above.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. “Human Interest”, Boise City News (Boise City, OK), July 8, 1943, 1.
8. Fred R. Kreiger, “Boise City Bombed”, Boise City News (Boise City, OK), July 8, 1943, 1.

Bibliography

Amarillo Globe Times (Amarillo, TX), “Boise City Is Mistaken for Bomb Range”, July 7, 1943, 3.

Census record for E.B. McMahan, Year: 1940; Census Place: Boise City, Cimarron, Oklahoma; Roll: m-t0627-03284; Page: 7B; Enumeration District: 13-1.

El Paso Herald-Post (El Paso, TX), “Plane That Dropped Practice Bombs at Sierra Blanca Unidentified”, July 17, 1944, 2.

Hamilton, Arnold, “Town to Mark Anniversary of Mistaken WWII Bombing”, Dallas Morning News (Dallas, TX), June 27, 1993.

Lincoln Journal Star (Lincoln, NE), “Six Bombs Fall on Tarnov, Platte village at 4:15 a.m.”, August 16, 1943, 1.

Lincoln Star (Lincoln, NE), “Planes ‘Bomb’ Tarnov Home”, August 18, 1943, 2.