Uncle's D-Day mission mystery solved | Canada | News | The Belleville Intelligencer
closure for the families
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Uncle's D-Day mission mystery solved | Canada | News | The Belleville Intelligencer
closure for the families
Another. ED427 was found several weeks ago too. Shot down by flak on its way back from Pilsen/Skoda works. Crew still on board
It is amazing that these aircraft are still being found. A few years ago a friend of mine, Don Jordan, called me and asked If I would be interested in a "dig". I, of course, said hell yes! Don had found a B24 that crashed in April 1944 in the Mojave Desert just about five miles west of the town of Mojave. Don had been looking in the wrong area for two or three years because of erroneous information on the original crash report. Only by chance did he run into a witness to the actual crash while eating lunch in Mojave. Don went out and within 10 minutes he found an oil pressure gauge from the errant B24.
We went out and started digging and found human remains almost immediately. Although most of the B24 had long been removed, the report stated the all the remains had been recovered. This was not the case. All that was left were four engine and one fuselage divots, a ton of aluminum frame and skins bits and pieces, all four engines and in the main hole, a lot of twisted aluminum framework, and rubber from the puncture proof tanks. We found a dog tag, the pilot's ring, and a "lucky" 1876 silver dollar also belonging to the pilot and a navigator's stop watch. We stopped the dig and called the Kern County Coroner's office. The Coroner notified JPAC and they were out there in a matter of days from Hawaii. Don and I were allowed to help in a limited capacity on the dig. We recovered all ten bodies from the wreckage. The JPAC team leader, a Marine Captain let me keep some of the artifacts from the wreckage. I found the data plate off one of the flight cameras, a slough of engine parts, Norden Bomb sight parts, a damaged 1943 dated .50 round and a few web gear lift the dot snaps.
Here are a few photos of the dig. I did not post photos of the remains for obvious reasons. A lot of what was found was very small. A crash like this one is very devastating.
My experience with JPAC was absolutely wonderful. I will never forget it!
Me
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5091379-1.jpg
Don
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5091386-1.jpg
A box of stuff at the beginning of the dig.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5091374-1.jpg
Empty .50 case, Norden bomb sight parts and stuff.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5091393-1.jpg
Data plate from the flight camera.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5091395-1.jpg
Rocker levers and cylinder pieces
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...P5161472-1.jpg
Ring and stopwatch.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...topwatch-1.jpg
Interesting. Looks like an Elgin A-8 navigation stopwatch. Thanks for sharing. Glad they were finally recovered.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
The sister of the pilot was not so happy at first. Their family had put him to rest, or so they thought, soon after the crash. It is just amazing what our government does. The story goes that the Army brought a crane and bulldozer to the site and gathered up what could be seen and left the rest. Before they left they graded the crash site flat and then wrote down the wrong coordinates. Years of storms and flash flooding uncovered the site to where it could be seen with ease. As I said, four engine divots and one fuselage divot. The plane can in nearly straight down. Pilot error was blamed for the crash.
For those interested, Don has a couple of books out. Aircraft Wrecks In The Mountains And Deserts Of California
Here is the B24 story:
B-24D
Thanks Peter for the ED427 Lanc info, i've read the details and will be looking at that website often,
and thanks to Bill for his help and work on the Liberator site, will be checking that desert crash website out as well.
The big birds were truly "mighty machines", 10 man crews mean a lot of families are still looking for final answers, the work of the men and women trying to find these answers is honourable.
Jim
Was just reading about ED427, met a guy at the War and Peace show who was into aircraft digs etc, he collected some panel from Heinkels, an interesting bloke, was talking of a crash site in Russia, many years ago, he was out there looking for something else when they got wind of a reckage that was egulfed by trees, when they got there (think it was Stuka) they were amazed to find a complet plane belly up, pilot and gunner still in the cockpit . he reckons there are still 4000 or was it 400 -1000 WW2 aircraft missing worldwide ?
Just a quick question. Do you have any info on a SBD that might have belly-flopped here in the desert around Yuma , Az. ? I have a couple of ANM2 .30 cal MGs ( that have had thier right sideplates cut out ) that were supposed to have come out of the back seat of one that had to make a landing around here. Would like to be able to have a story on these.
Thanks , Chris
I would also so be interested in hearing about this story:thup:Quote:
Originally Posted by emmagee1917
Semper Fi
Phil
I do not. All of the information I have is for California. Sorry guys. :(
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.
Would you have any idea on where to search for this info?Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Hollinger
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.
Try contacting Don Jordan from his site. He has a lot of connections throughout the country.Quote:
Originally Posted by AZPhil
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
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!!!!!
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.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...ver1jpeg-1.jpg
It looks like Don collaborated on this one also and it deals with crash sites in Arizona,
Arizona Aircraft Wrecks
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul S.
Jim
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.