Aug. 31, 1982

Cherohala – It was a tragedy that did more than cut short the lives of nine elite U.S. Air Force servicemen: it affected life’s trajectory for many people – the young wives suddenly widowed, the children suddenly fatherless, the comrades in arms who could never erase it from their minds and even some of the first-responders.

Aug. 31 marked the 40th anniversary of the crash of an Air Force C-141B into the side of John’s Knob, straddling the border of North Carolina and Tennessee. The debris field encompassed what we now know as the Cherohala Skyway. It was by far the most deadly plane crash in Graham County’s history.

The C-141 is a big four-engine cargo jet, second in size only to the gargantuan C-5 Galaxy in the U.S. Air Force inventory. Now retired, C-141s carry the lofty name “Starlifter.” The C-141B was an even bigger, stretched version, adding over 23 feet in length and a boom receptacle to allow in-flight refueling.

The crash

On Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1982, at 12:57 p.m., a crew of nine – training for radar evasion – departed from then-Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, call sign Amore 66. The low-level flight plan called for the plane to follow a mountainous route from northeast Alabama through Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia to northwest South Carolina, returning to Charleston AFB for an on-time arrival around 6 p.m.

But a late summer storm brewed over the mountains of western North Carolina. Locals know that these summertime storms should not be taken lightly.

Other aircraft reported overcast at 4,500 feet, with cloud tops to 8,000 feet. Visibility below 4,500 feet was zero due to rain showers, a ragged cloud ceiling, multi-layered stratus and fog. The route weather was below Military Airlift Command minimums.

Nevertheless, Amore 66 was given permission for low-level training at 1:50 p.m.

It was their last contact.

Word went out at Charleston Air Force Base that contact was lost. A search began involving the Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Forest Service and the Monroe County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Office. Family, friends and comrades-in-arms stood vigil in Charleston, waiting for news and holding out hope that all was well.

A Federal Aviation Administration computer traced the plane’s last recorded radar contact and searchers found the wreckage Wednesday, Sept. 1, just before midnight.

For many, it was a very long wait.

It was determined that at 2:27 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 31, 1982 – at a speed of 260 mph – Amore 66 slammed into John’s Knob, a 4,908-foot peak of the Unicoi Mountains that marks the border between Monroe County, Tenn., and Graham County. The collision was 70 feet from the top.

The tail section – still intact – was thrown over the summit and landed on the Graham County side of the border, 1/2 a mile from the impact site, in an area at Mile Marker 2 where there is now a highway rest area.

Other than that – and four pieces of wreckage, about the size of a medium car – the jet and its crew were obliterated.

The instrument recorder was never found.

The impacts

Tonya Blythe was Tonya Sweatman back then, with a 1-year-old son. Her husband, Sgt. Jack Sweatman III, was a loadmaster aboard Amore 66. Tonya was also in the Air Force.

Suddenly a widowed mother of a toddler, soon after the crash, she received orders transferring her to then-West Germany. She asked that the orders be changed or delayed, but without success. She left active duty and continued to serve in the Air Force Reserve, retiring as an E-9, the senior most pay rating for enlisted.

But she hoped to reach that rank as an Air Force regular, not a reservist.

And she hoped to have Jack by her side.

Tonya eventually remarried (to another Air Force man), and her son followed in her parents’ footsteps, joining the Air Force – but in ground service like his step-father, not air service like his father.

The day of the crash, sisters Heather McNeilly Grace was 16, Leslie McNeilly was 14 and Meredith Perry was 10. Their father was Maj. Elmer NcNeilly Jr., a navigator aboard Amore 66.

The three sisters and their mother Patricia were in constant vigil waiting for word – “We thought they would find them and they would be alive,” Heather said – but Heather was exhausted and was headed up the stairs to bed when the knock came at their front door.

“I just remember that knock at the door,” Heather said. “That and mom crumpled to the floor – it was just like in the movies.”

Their mother was 39 when Elmer died. She never remarried and passed away in 2019.

Marshall McClung of Graham County was serving in the U.S. Forest Service and was dispatched to the crash site a day later. It was a recovery and security operation, not a rescue. The Cherohala Skyway was not yet open and he reached the site using a slick, muddy road through the woods to the base of John’s Knob.

“We saw one wheel from the plane lying in the road at the foot of John’s Knob,” he recalled. “Pieces of the plane were scattered over a wide area.

“It was a sad scene and I knew that there were still family members being notified of the crash. I thought of these men who had died training to protect our country.”

McClung has been involved in most – if not all – aircraft-crash responses in Graham County in the modern era, about a dozen such incidents. With the county’s rugged, mountainous terrain, there have been few survivors, but – except for Amore 66 – they were all single-engine aircraft with no more than four aboard. Amore 66 was nothing like he ever experienced before or since.

“For some time after the crash, a training route for military aircraft practicing low-level flights crossed directly over my home,” McClung said. “Every time one of those plans flew over, I thought of John’s Knob and would listen until the plane went out of hearing to make sure it cleared the mountains.”

The aftermath

Phil Horne was supposed to be aboard Amore 66, but was reassigned just before the flight.

On Memorial Day 2013, he – along with other military veterans – were riding motorcycles on the Cherohala Skyway when he realized that he was in the vicinity of the crash site. He was determined that a monument be erected in honor of the crew of Amore 66.

It was an uneasy task. Officials on both sides of the state line in both Cherokee and Nantahala National Forests were unhelpful. Horne was told that the U.S. Forest Service felt that establishing a memorial marker on National Forest land set a bad precedence. Eventually Horne reached out to Rev. Daniel Stewart, pastor at Cedar Cliff Baptist Church – the church closest to the crash site, about six miles east as the crow flies, or 20 miles by road near the start of Cherohala Skyway. Stewart referred Horne to McClung for help and McClung suggested that Horne look for alternatives.

Stewart connected Horne with Calvin and Jo Doris Shuler, who own a piece of property near the Huckleberry Knob parking lot along the Cherohala Skyway, around six miles east of the Amore 66 crash site and the closest private property.

The Shulers use their ridgetop property as a private family campsite, complete with hookups, a covered dining area, and other amenities. They felt that donating a small portion of their property to help memorialize the crew of Amore 66 was a good thing.

An etched-stone monument created by Ronnie Williams of Williams Memorials in Robbinsville was placed and the memorial site was dedicated during a solemn ceremony in October 2015.

The service

On Aug. 31, 2022, on the 40th anniversary of the crash, the latest memorial service was held.

There were several daughters, sons and grandchildren who attended, along with Air Force veterans who served with the crew. There was also one widow, Tonya Blythe.

Heather McNeilly Grace, Leslie McNeilly and Meredith Perry attended the memorial, as well — their first time at the site.

“We all agreed to come together,” Heather said.

Members of Cedar Cliff Baptist Church – whose pastor was so instrumental in establishing the memorial – catered the event with fried chicken and all the fixings. Members of American Legion Post 192/Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8635 out of Robbinsville provided an honor guard and performed Taps.

The event was held on a warm, sunny day, nothing like 40 years earlier.

Dave Brock of Tellico Plains, Tenn., officiated the ceremony. A retired senior master sergeant, Brock served with the entire crew of Amore 66. He flew the same route earlier that day and said the turbulence was severe and sustained, the worst he ever experienced, but the job was to push the envelope of both individuals and aircraft.

Accounts at the time said they were on a training mission simulating wartime situations that would require flying low to avoid radar.

“They were doing what their hearts told them to do to protect this nation,” Brock said.

Brock received word from the Office of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, saying that legislation was being enacted to authorize a memorial at the rest stop at Mile Marker 2, where Amore 66’s tail section came to rest.

Literally, it took an act of Congress for Phil Horne to realize his dream.