Lancaster found

[Paul S.]

A mate of mine was a US Army Air Traffic Control NCO in Vietnam who had several aircraft go down whilst he was working them. Stories of WWII lost aircraft and their crews being found always brings back his 'ghosts'. He says the one that haunts him the most was a flight of 4 AH1 Cobras (crew of 2 each) that radioed on the emergency frequencies that they were low fuel (~20 mins) and lost on top of a solid cloud layer over the Central Highlands. All attempts to contact them were futile and their last transmission was that they thought they were west of the Mang Yang Pass and were going to attempt to descend in the blind through the cloud layer in hopes of finding where they were. They were never heard from again and the SAR attempts came up empty.

[AZPhil]

I do not. All of the information I have is for California. Sorry guys.

Would you have any idea on where to search for this info?

[Peter Laidler]

THere was a thread on this site a year or so ago that showed a derelict but intact FW190 recently found in a Russian forest. The place must be littered with them.

[Bill Hollinger]

Would you have any idea on where to search for this info?

Try contacting Don Jordan from his site. He has a lot of connections throughout the country.

[emmagee1917]

Thanks , Bill . I just know it was said to be around here , but I don't know which side of the Colorado for sure. One of the guns was still packed in cosmoline and one had been stripped and cleaned . Figured from that that the plane was a new build and was heading to the coast for overseas when a problem came up .
Chris

[AZPhil]

Yes thank you Bill. I just spent some time on aviationarchaeology.com I found2 AT6,2 AT6C's a P43B and a U78 that crashed within 50 miles of the old Yuma Army Airfield now MCAS Yuma and that was just in March of 43. And also to note is that the SBD was the Navy/Marine version. The Army version was called the A24 Banshee. and since MCAS Yuma was a Army Airfield it could be possible that is was a Army Aircraft that the ANM2 30's came from. Just a thought!!!!!

[Bill Hollinger]

You would be amazed at what is out there. Once while hunting up on Piute Mountain near the Pacific Crest Trail some 30 years ago I ran across a few 20mm shells, some aluminum and plexiglass. I thought "what the heck?" Years later I found out an F105 crashed there in 1968. An F86 crash site is less than 8 miles from my house. When I met Don I could believe the stories he told me about all the crash sites in California. I bought his book and enjoyed hours of entertainment from it's pages. I live 10 miles north of Muroc Army Air Base (now Edwards Air Force Base) and China Lake is just to the north of me. This desert is loaded with crash site from the glory days of aviation.

Contact Don, buy his book and have fun! There are over 500 pages of listed aircraft wrecks from the beginning of flight. I would say 95% are military aircraft wrecks with the other 5% either civilian or test flights. There are a number of full length stories of the crashes and the people who flew the doomed aircraft.



It looks like Don collaborated on this one also and it deals with crash sites in Arizona,

Arizona Aircraft Wrecks

[blazer91]

while looking at Bill's site, I looked for reference info on Wiki and came across an interesting chapter in the Cold War which I had known about and will share here;
I have a neighbour (later a Wing Commander at CFB Winnipeg) who was part of the "Apex Rocket Program" that filmed Soviet drift stations in the Arctic.
He was quoted in Canadian Military Journal Vol 9, no. 1 on their mission which succeeded in photographing Soviet drift station NP-3 in 1954, then there is a story about a later "Apex Rocket" mission in 1958 which became a major intelligence coup, as detailed here;

from wiki accidents 55-59

"Circa early May 1958
A Tupolev Tu-16 is forced down on an ice runway at Soviet North Pole drift station Severnyy Polyus-6, (North Pole) NP-6, where it is discovered and photographed by a RCAF Avro Lancaster of No. 408 Squadron on an Apex Rocket reconnaissance sortie, the first detailed images of the design to be made by the West. Additional photo missions find the Soviets dismantling the bomber, that its starboard main gear was missing, and that an engine had visible damage.[170]"

These mighty Lancs were flying out of RCAF Station Rockcliffe on photo recon missions and the strip is pretty short. I lived in what was then called CFB Rockcliffe (Ottawa North) from 1975 on and all that remained of those glory years were the old WW11 era hangers housing the National Aeronautical Collection which became the The Canada Aviation and Space Museum when a modern bldg was finally built.
I will always remember touring the "Collection" in those old hangers, not the same in the new bldg.
Jim

p.s. should note that CFB Rockcliffe is sadly no more, closed down and the last PMQs razed last year. Went for a walk thru there, just the streets left and now a very valuable chunk of beautiful Ottawa real estate.
I was too young to remember much of Germany but growing up on the Base in Petawawa and Rockcliffe sure was great.

[blazer91]

flight of 4 AH1 Cobras (crew of 2 each) that radioed on the emergency frequencies that they were low fuel (~20 mins) and lost on top of a solid cloud layer over the Central Highlands. All attempts to contact them were futile and their last transmission was that they thought they were west of the Mang Yang Pass and were going to attempt to descend in the blind through the cloud layer in hopes of finding where they were. They were never heard from again and the SAR attempts came up empty.

hey Paul S. , been meaning to comment on yours, I have a thing for the attack choppers, would really like to hear if these 4 Cobras ever reveal any trace of their history.
Jim

[Paul S.]

I spoke to him last night and asked if he had more details or if he had subsequently heard more about them. He's a guy worked as an Army and FAA Air Traffic Controller for something like 30 years and can be pretty dispassionate about aircraft crashes having "seen the negative results of people exceeding the capabilities of their aircraft and skill level more than a few times".

He told me that the incident happened during the second half of 1971 when he was ATC Chief at Holloway AAF near Pleiku during his third tour. He said that as far as could tell at the time the only people who heard and replied to the distress calls were his tower (he and another controller) and the USAF C&C aircraft (an RC121 he thought) that loitered over the area 24/7. He said that there was a search NE of Pleiku/W-NW of the Mang Yang Pass involving aircraft from at least the bases in the Pleiku area. The aircraft weren't from any of the units at Camp Holloway and he suspected they may have been from a unit operating in, or moving to, Kontum-Dak To area. Not long after that, a CH47 from a Holloway unit was lost over the South China Sea with all souls on board (20+ ?) on the way to Cam Rahn Bay and that over-shadowed any further story of the lost gunships.