Crashed planes, lost nuclear bombs, and an Air Force cover-up: a filmmaker unpacks the secret history of how his grandfather nearly blew-up the eastern seaboard.
Buzz One Four is approaching completion. Picture lock has been reached, and sound-mixing and other post-production finishing tasks are under-way. It is our hope that Buzz One Four will be screening in film festivals this coming winter and spring, so keep your eyes and ears open!
Buzz One Four sneak-peek!
Please join us for a special work-in-progress benefit screening of Matt McCormick’s latest documentary film Buzz One Four. McCormick will be present to introduce the film, but instead of the traditional post-screening Q&A, McCormick will be asking the audience questions as he prepares to complete the film. Proceeds of the screening go towards completion of the film.
Buzz One Four is a documentary film that chronicles the ill fated flight of a Cold War B-52 bomber loaded with two thermonuclear bombs that crashed 90 miles from Washington DC. The crash has remained classified and details continue to be repressed by the Air Force, but it is a story the filmmaker grew up with because the pilot of the plane was his grandfather. Buzz One Four investigates the aspects of this crash and other nuclear-weapons accidents and leaves us wondering if the United States was in greater danger of nuking itself than being attacked by the Russians.
Tickets available from the Hollywood Theatre HERE
Shooting is complete and we are editing away on Buzz One Four! We are very excited about how things are coming along. With any luck, this film should be complete in mid to late 2016 and showing at a film festival, movie theater, or similar venue soon!
We did it! The Buzz One Four Kick-Starter campaign raised over $25,000 and now it’s full speed ahead with production. A giant thanks to the 305 AWESOME PEOPLE who chipped in to make it possible!!!
THANK YOU:
Jed Rosenzweig
Karl Lind
Peter Glavin
Johan Oskarsson
Elisabeth Subrin
Ian Kimmich
Michael McGregor
Bill Foster
David Cress
shay knorr
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Karen Hopkins
Matthias Fliegner
Karol Scheminske
Erin Lange
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Alfie
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Mumonkan
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elizabeth skadden
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noFADER!
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peter burr
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Martin
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TONY CONRAD
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Toronto Playing Card Company
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https://www.kickstarter.com/
Buzz One Four has an official Facebook page. Please click on over and ‘like’ us to be kept abreast of the latest updates.
I am just back from a wonderful event hosted by the Grantsville Community Museum that honored the 50th anniversary of the crash. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this story is the overwhelming energy that people living in the vicinity of the crash put into the rescue and recovery efforts. While the Air Force couldn’t seem to get out of its own way, the civilians of the area braved the frigid temperatures and knee-high snow banks to search the woods for survivors and help in any way they could. 50 years after the crash, the ordeal is still an important part of the local history, so to honor both the crew members on the plane AND the hundreds of individuals who volunteered to help, several members of the community organized this wonderful event.
People shared stories and memories of the fateful night that shook the community, and several family members of the other crew members journeyed to the event.
John Josseyln is an amateur historian who created a great website honoring the memory of flight Buzz One Four who also found and recovered what is most certainly the hatch from the B-52 which my grandfather ejected from. It had been sitting in the forest near the crash-site for over 50 years until John and a group of his buddies pulled it out of the dense woods. John brought the hatch the 50th anniversary event, which made for a great family photo:
The Cumberland Times-News had a nice article about the event that can be read here. I was also talked with Jim Vay for WFRB Radio, that interview can be heard here:
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I’ll be hanging out at the National Archives for the next few days, digging through old records and viewing as many archived Air Force films as possible, and finding lots of great stuff, like this:
My Grandfather was one of the first pilots sent to Castle Air Force Base to be trained to fly the B-52, something he was very excited and proud of.
Many of the motion pictures archived here are still on 16mm or 35mm film and have yet to be transferred to video (let alone any HD digital formats). I had thought that my flatbed editing skills were at least 20 years outdated, but I’m happy to have been proved wrong…
A huge thanks to Carol Swain and the rest of the NARA staff, the Archives are truly an amazing place!
absolutely thrilled to have had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the history of flight Buzz One Four with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Wood. His 1999 Washington Post Magazine story ‘Bomber Down’ is perhaps the most complete and comprehensive history on the crash to date. David is both a fascinating and compassionate individual who has been writing from the front-lines of international conflict since before the term ’embedded journalist’ had ever been coined. I will be very lucky if I can cover the story of my grandfather’s harrowing crash as well as David did in very thorough article.
Today, January 13th 2014, is the 50 year anniversary of the crash of flight Buzz One Four. I was very excited to notice I wasn’t the only person who remembered…