It was a warm winter day in West Tennessee, with temperatures in the 50s and winds of about 8-10 MPH out of the south. Some people were working outside; Mr. Homer Demoss, who lived a few blocks west of the Carroll County Courthouse, was working in his garden with a team of mules. T.W. Woods, a US Naval Aviation veteran who had served as an aerial engineer, was working in a field just west of town about 200 yards to the left (facing toward town) of the bridge on US 70 over Beaver Creek, a tributary of West Tennessee's South Fork of the Obion River. Ernest Smith, an Army Air Forces veteran who had become an aerial gunner on B-17s and B-24s after washing out of pilot training, was about 1/2 block from the northwest corner of the courthouse, along with Maurice Bunn, standing on a ladder in the back of his truck. Royal Crider, a bombardier in the Air Force Reserve in Memphis who had also washed out of pilot training, was working in the Post Office just south of the Courthouse on Court Square. William West, an Air Force Reserve navigator, was standing back of the funeral home about two blocks east of the courthouse where Huntingdon Mayor Robert Murray was trying a case. Huntingdon police chief George Hobbs was west of town on US 70 headed back toward town. Other witnesses were at various points around the vicinity of the courthouse. I myself was about twenty miles away at Lavinia Elementary School in the southwest corner of the county no doubt waiting impatiently for the bell to ring. I was a third grade student and had just turned eight the previous November. Other kids all over the county were in their own schools gathering up their things to get ready to board the bus when the school bell rang in a few minutes. It was Friday afternoon and everyone was looking forward to two days of no school. No one had any inkling of the horrible tragedy that was about to take place in the skies over Huntingdon.
Earlier that day US Air Force 1st Lieutenant Jack Jenkins and his crew, all of whom were new to the Air Force and to flying, took off from their base at Lawson Air Force Base adjacent to Ft. Benning, Georgia on what was supposed to be a local training flight. Lt. Jenkins' orders were to spend an hour practicing maximum performance landings there at Lawson, then to proceed to Brookley Air Force Base at Montgomery, Alabama to fly ten practice ground controlled radar approaches (GCA). Upon their completion he was to proceed to Columbus, Georgia airport and practice Variable Omni Range (VOR) approaches to finish up the six hour training flight. Lt. Jenkins never accomplished any of the assigned tasks - instead, he took his crew in their nearly brand new C-119G - the airplane only had 110 hours on it - and proceeded northwest to his hometown of Huntingdon, Tennessee to buzz the town. It turned out that he had done the same thing two weeks before, on February 9.
Lt. Jenkins had grown up around Huntingdon and had graduated from Huntingdon High School, probably in 1946 or 47 since he is reported to have graduated from Bethel College, a Presbyterian school in nearby McKenzie, a town just north of Huntingdon, in 1951. While he was in college the Korean War broke out and Jack Jenkins joined the Air Force. He applied for pilot training, which he completed on June 21, 1952 and was rated as a US Air Force pilot and commissioned as an officer. He was assigned to the 314th Troop Carrier Group at Ashiya, Japan where he spent the next year flying as a copilot on C-119 Flying Boxcar transports on missions into and over Korea. Upon completion of his overseas tour, he returned to the United States and was assigned to the 777th Troop Carrier Squadron, one of three squadrons of the 464th Troop Carrier Wing at Lawson Field. The 464th had been a bomber group during World War II flying B-24 Liberators from its base in Italy. The unit deactivated after the war then reactivated at Lawson Field as a troop carrier group in February, 1953. Lt. Jenkins joined the 777th in August. Although he was an experienced pilot, he had less than the required 1,000 hours for assignment as an aircraft commander. Upon reaching that milestone, he was upgraded and assigned as a first pilot, or aircraft commander, on the C-119 in January, 1954.
On the day of the crash, Lt. Jenkins was flying with an inexperienced crew. His copilot only had a little over 400 hours, of which only about 50 was in the C-119. The flight engineer was equally inexperienced, with only a little over 50 logged hours. The second engineer was brand new to flying status. Lt. Jenkins himself had logged 1188 hours. All four of the crewmembers were in their early to mid twenties - Lt. Jenkins was 24. During the subsequent investigation Lt. Jenkins was identified as an exceptional pilot with sound judgement - and had shown no indications that he would do what he did that tragic day.  (He had made a similar flight two weeks before but his crew hadn't reported it to anyone. In those days there was no air traffic control system as there is today and no way of tracking an aircraft's flight. He was flying with a different set of crewmembers on the fateful day.) The events of that day can only be explained by youthful exuberance and the desire to make an impression on the folks back home. He did, but not in the manner he had expected.