{"id":2406,"date":"2015-09-13T20:08:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T13:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewindmillrestaurant.net\/?page_id=2406"},"modified":"2020-04-09T07:52:54","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T00:52:54","slug":"51st-aviation-st-matthews-1959-0401","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/?page_id=2406","title":{"rendered":"51st Aviation – St Matthews 1959 0401"},"content":{"rendered":"

1959 0401 \u2013 Hqs Co, 51st<\/sup> Inf Div reorganized as 51st<\/sup> Aviation but still remained a part of the 51st<\/sup> Inf Div. with the aviation support mission.\u00a0 CPT Billy Dent was the commander at that time and remained so until 1963.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two newspaper articles were published\u00a0about a machine gun cache found at Ft Motte Strip.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0First article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cKnowledge of Guns Denied\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>MATTHEWS, S.C — Three men charged with possessing crates holding 107 machine guns emphatically denied here Wednesday any knowledge of the contents of the boxes.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Officers reported that William H. Brunson Jr. 34, and Charlie Leavell, about 35, said the crates were left with them by a customer for machine gun parts at their scrap metal business.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frank Warren, 43, a carpenter of St. Matthews and Silver Springs, Md. Said the Sumter men, friends of his, got his permission to store crated goods on his leased trailer home property six miles north of St. Matthews, adjoining a small airstrip.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 All three men posted bond of $3,000 each and were released by Sheriff M.H. Rowell of Calhoun County.\u00a0 The next term of State Circuit Court at St. Matthews opens Sept. 25. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Harry Walker, legal aide to Gov. Hollings, said the Sumter men told of \u201cforeign talking\u201d men stopping by to purchase machine gun parts\u00a0due in as part of an army surplus purchase order.\u00a0 The men then got permission to store some unmarked crates pending arrival of the parts.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These were the crates, Walker said the men explained, that they moved to Warren\u2019s property about a year and a half ago when the customers failed to return. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Three of the machine guns were complete and operable, officers said.\u00a0 The others lacked barrels.\u00a0 Some additional ones had been stripped of parts and chopped into three parts as is the procedure before sale by the Government.\u00a0 About 800 rounds of ammunition also were found in the crates.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rowell said Federal agents are trying to trace the guns from when Government last had them in possession, and who got them from the Government.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A crop duster using the airstrip, and looking for some spare parts\u2014Warren had a small spare parts business at his trailer home \u2013 stumbled on contents of the crates last week and notified officers, Rowell said.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 M.M. Weinberg Jr. of Sumter, attorney for Leavell and Brunson, said the men had no news statement to make in the case.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 W.P. Dent, oil distributor here and a Major in the Army National Guard, said the airstrip is used by his 51st<\/sup> Infantry Division Liaison Air Company once a month for drill<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Dent, who posted bond for Warren, said \u201cmany\u2019s the time I have sat on those crates, not knowing what was in them.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The crates were near the edge of the strip, covered with plastic and a tarpaulin. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Warren, Dent said, came here about three years ago and tried to make a go of the air parts business.\u00a0 He had worked as a civilian employee at Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cHe looked after the airstrip; would bring our men into town; would let us use his telephone; and did us hundreds of favors.\u201d <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Second article published by\u00a0\u00a0The State paper:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018COULDN\u2019T SEE FORREST\u2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Guard Unit Met Atop Arms Cache – By William E. Mahoney Staff Writer for The State<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 They couldn\u2019t see the forest for the machine guns.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That apparently was the case of the South Carolina National Guard which held one-a-month briefings smack on top of the cache of 107 machine guns.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The guns were discovered at an airstrip near St, Matthews.\u00a0 Two men are being interrogated as to how they got there.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Maj. William Dent, in charge of the aviation company, said yesterday: \u201cWe held meetings right on top of then, I sat on top of them myself.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Meanwhile, a woman who may be an eyewitness to planting of the guns there told The State yesterday she saw \u201cseveral men putting down boxes there about a year and a half ago. \u2018<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mrs. Frank Coker, wife of a fire warden, had to pass the site to reach the 85 foot tower near the airstrip where fire spotting was conducted.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0She said she couldn\u2019t be sure the crates were the same as contained th recently discovered machine guns, but \u201cthey look just like them.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She said she was on her way to the tower \u201cabout a year and a half ago\u201d when she noticed a truck, several cars and several men.\u00a0 They were piling up craters, she said.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cI thought nothing of it at the time.\u201d\u00a0 She said.\u00a0 \u201cI thought they were just surplus parts.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Frank Warren, 48, one of the men being questioned, operated an airplane parts business at the airstrip.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

1963 \u2013 51st Aviation was reorganized as 51st Aviation Company and no longer aligned with the 51st Infantry Division. \u00a0(The 51st Infantry Division was deactivated as a result of the 1963 major reorganization within the National Guard.)\u00a0 Click Here<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

1959 0401 \u2013 Hqs Co, 51st Inf Div reorganized as 51st Aviation but still remained a part of the 51st Inf Div. with the aviation support mission.\u00a0 CPT Billy Dent was the commander at that time and remained so until 1963. Two newspaper articles were published\u00a0about a machine gun cache found at Ft Motte Strip. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2406","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2406"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4616,"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2406\/revisions\/4616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scarngavpicthistory.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}