Hangar Talk: Mildred Rice, Women Army Corps (WACS)

Overview

On May 30, 1945, a C-47B Skytrain transport aircraft (serial number 44-76406) with three crew members, carrying eighteen members of the Women’s Army Corps (WACS) to a new duty station, took off from Accra, British West Africa, enroute to Roberts Field, Liberia. Radio contact was made over the first checkpoint at Takoradi on the Gold Coast. Approximately an hour and a half later, personnel at Roberts Field received a radio distress signal from the aircraft. The C-47 never reached Roberts Field and was not heard from or seen again. Extensive search and rescue efforts were conducted but no crash site and no remains were ever found. Born in 1914, Private First-Class Mildred E. Higgins Rice, who joined the U.S. Army from Kansas in 1944, served as a member of the Women’s Army Corps and was assigned to the 1202nd Army Air Force Base Unit, Air Transport Command. She was a passenger aboard the C-47 when it crashed, and her remains were not recovered. Today, Private First Class Rice is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the North Africa American Cemetery in Tunis, Tunisia.