English: @ Embassy of Australia

..................................................................................................................................... Plaque commemorating the Bakers Creek Air Crash, 2008. The Bakers Creek air crash was an aviation disaster which occurred on 14 June 1943, when a USAAF B-17 Flying Fortress aircraft crashed shortly after take-off at Bakers Creek, Queensland approximately 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of Mackay, killing 40 of the 41 military service personnel on board. One person on board survived. The crash is Australia's worst aviation disaster by death toll and was the worst accident involving a transport aircraft in the south-western Pacific during World War II.

The aircraft, a Boeing B-17C, serial/tail number 40-2072, known as "Miss Every Morning Fixin" took off from Mackay Airfield just before dawn at about 6 am in foggy conditions, headed for Port Moresby. Soon after, it made a low altitude turn and a few minutes later, crashed. The cause of the crash remains a mystery.

The six crew and 35 passengers were returning to New Guinea after an R&R break. The aircraft was part of the United States Fifth Air Force and was operated by the 46th Troop Carrier Squadron, part of the 317th Troop Carrier Group. It had formerly been one of the B-17s sent to the Philippines in the autumn of 1941 with the 19th Bomb Group and had been converted into a transport after suffering heavy battle damage in a mission on 25 December 1941.

The survivor was Foye Kenneth Roberts who passed away at Wichita Falls, Texas on 4 February 2004.

Due to wartime censorship, nothing of the incident was reported in the media. The Daily Mercury, Mackay's newspaper, reported the following day that a visiting American serviceman had been injured, as well as an editorial expressing the sentiments of locals who knew what had happened. Nothing more appeared in the local media until after the war had ended, in February 1946. Victims' relatives received War Department telegrams which said little more than the serviceman had been killed in an air crash in the south west Pacific.