Robert Verduzco '55
August 7, 2017 3:30 PM
updated: August 7, 2017 3:31 PM
From findagrave.com
Robert Anthony Verduzco
Birth: Aug. 20, 1932
Death: Nov. 20, 1954
2 KINGSVILLE NAVY MEN KILLED IN CRASH AT A & M.
College Station, Nov. 20. -- (AP) -- A Kingsville Navy training plane exploded over the Texas A. & M. College campus here tonight, killing two occupants of the plane and spraying parts of the campus with wreckage.
Names of the victims were withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.
Officials at Bryan Air Force Base said the propeller-driven T28 was from Kingsville Naval Auxilliary Air Station. It had been refueled at Bryan and taken off shortly before the crash.
The plane wreckage fell in a muddy field about 1/4 mile southwest of the campus after several persons heard an explosion.
Debris from the craft fell over portions of the campus jammed with students guarding a traditional bonfire that precedes the A & M - Texas football game.
A part of the plane identified as coming from either the tail assembly or a wing fell near the bonfire.
There were no reports of students injured.
A crowd estimated at 2,000 persons, most of them students of A & M, gathered around the crash scene.
The public information office at Bryan AFB said the plane landed there early today and took off again at 7:18 p.m. The crash was reported at 7:34 p.m.
E. V. ADAMS, a Bryan resident and member of the A & M faculty, said he heard a plane that sounded as if it were in trouble pass over his house a few minutes before the crash.