Name of Buddy Holly's death plane

Anyone know if Buddy Holly’s death plane was named “American Pie”? My dentist was telling me he’d heard this, and he seemed disbelieving – as though it was spooky or something. I couldn’t respond at the time, and when he was done, I’d forgotten about it. But I got to wondering – so what if that was the name of the plane - the song came later, so it doesn’t strike me as weird, spooky, or anything that (if it’s true) the song is titled the same as the plane’s name --or am I missing something here? Now, if that was the name of the plane, but the song came first – now THAT would be spooky!

“Enola Gay”

As far as I know, the airplane didn’t have a name. It was a Beechcraft Bonanza as I recall, and airplanes that small typically aren’t named.

Lyrnyrd Skynyrd’s airplane was called 'Free Bird", and that crashed and killed several members of the band.

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The plane that Buddy Holly died in was the American Pie, I learned that in Sophmore English, when we disected Don McLean’s song as part of our poetry section.


The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
– Henry David Thoreau

Sometimes we learn things that aren’t true. I remember in second grade, we were memorizing a poem about how the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The teacher explained a little about how the sun moves around the earth. I found this disconcerting, or maybe I was just a wise guy, because the science books I was reading claimed it was the other way around. I voiced my objection, and the teacher stated that no, the sun really did go around the earth. I still don’t know whether the teacher believed this or just didn’t want to go off on a tangent from her curriculum.

Yes, you’re right, jens, sometimes teachers tell us things that aren’t necessarily true (a practice which should be wholly abolished, it’s totally counter-productive). But, I know I’ve heard this in other places, I just can’t think of any right now.


The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
– Henry David Thoreau

I’ll have to say it was not American Pie
http://snopes.simplenet.com/music/artists/amerpie.htm


Has anyone seen my keys?

One of “The Three Stars” killed in the crash, J. P. Richardson, aka “The Big Bopper”, had two top forty hits. Chantilly Lace is his best known, but he had a second minor hit called The Big Bopper’s Wedding. I heard this song for the first time that I remember over the weekend. In it, the Big Bopper is telling his shotgun-wielding prospective father-in-law that he does not want to go through with the wedding. The song ends with the sound of a single shot…

Hmmm…there doesn’t seem to be a consensus on this. I have done some searching of the web with no luck. I may actually have to go the library and get a biography for a definitive answer.