I just heard on Good Morning America that hikers in the Sequoia National Forest found what appears to be a Lockheed C-45 missing since WWII, in a glacier with the pilot’s remains still inside. Will be watching for more info on this as it becomes available.
Brian [C):-)]
WOW! Fascinating and, I’m sure, a morbid find all at the same time. Truly a moment “frozen in time.” At least the pilot’s family will finally know the fate of their loved one.
Eric
Living near there, that is not quite correct. Here is the actual information:
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Park rangers were working with military officials Wednesday in a remote Sierra Nevada glacier to excavate a body believed to be that of an airman who crashed in 1942.
Two unidentified climbers spotted the frozen head, shoulder and arm of body that is 80 percent encased in ice while climbing the glacier on the 13,710-foot Mount Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, said park spokeswoman Alex Picavet.
A crew of park rangers and specialists will camp on the mountain side, in below-freezing temperatures, for what promises to be long, difficult excavation, Picavet said. The crew includes an expert from the Joint Prisoner of War Accounting Command, which recovers and identifies military personnel who have been missing for decades.
“We’re not going to go fast,” Picavet said. “We want to preserve him as much as possible. He’s pretty intact.”
Park officials believe the serviceman, who is wearing a U.S. Army Corps parachute, may be part of the crew of an AT-7 navigational training plane that crashed on Nov. 18, 1942. The wreckage and four bodies were found in 1947 by a climber. This man may have been connected to that expedition, although it’s hard to tell until the body’s been recovered, Picavet said.
The body was found at the base of the glacier, in a remote, icy area that can be reached only after days of hiking, Picavet said.
Military officials said they’ve handled cases like this before, recovering bodies of U.S. airmen from extremely remote locations like a Tibetan glacier.
Once the body is identified, and confirmed to be that of a U.S. military serviceman, it would be flown to the family, who could then choose to bury the deceased with full military honors at the government’s expense, said Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s POW-MIA office.
mhvink,
Thanks for the corrected update; as usual, ABC/GMA haad about 1/10 of the story correct. The phot they showed this a.m. was of a C-45 or AT-11. It will be an intweresting story to follow, and will hopefully give the man’s surviving family some closure. Please keep us abreat of any further developments.
Thanks,
Brian [C):-)]
Flying is not without its hazards. At least now he can receive a proper burial. Morbidly fascinating.
Eric
Okay, latest update.
Recovery crews have extracted the body from the glacier and transported him to Fresno where he will be x-rayed to determine if an autopsy is needed. Reports stated that his parachute was deployed and speculation is that he died when he either struck the ice or rocks during his descent.
I will keep you guys informed as more is presented.
Hey Brian, I didn’t mean to sound standoffish. Sorry
Mike
[:D] Mike,
No problem, you didn’t sound that way at all. I appreciate the correct info, no apology needed or due! Thanks for keeping us updated!
Brian [C):-)]
I’ve always interested in this sort of happening. I’m an admitted military geek and someone from a close knit family so wondering where someone is is something that bother’s me. The fact that technically I have forensic training doesn’t hurt. In any case one less POW/MIA. Is there a counter for POW/MIA’s somewhere???
If you are into these sorts of stories, Cassie… Here’s one to research.
My hometown, Port Orford, OR… (Southern Oregon coast, just south of the westernmost point of the US Map - Cape Blanco).
Back in or just after WWII a Canadian Bomber (I think it was a bomber) crashed on Iron Mountain, which is outside of the Port Orford area. I don’t know any details except that my uncle, back in the late 1960s or early 1970s used to spend a lot of time treasure-hunting for a legend called the Port Orford Meteorite - a massive meteor supposedly discovered in the 1800s by a geologist/explorer and then never located again. During one of his motorcycle/hiking forays in the Iron Mountain area he came upon the old wreckage and dug around and brought home an intact parachute. He was unaware of the bomber’s existance until that discovery, but I believe it was a documented loss and on record.
Sound intriguing?
There are many missing and some recovered aircraft in the Sierra Nevadas east of California’s Central Valley. In the mid-80’s, a B-24 was found in Huntington Lake, northeast of Fresno. This lake is long, narrow and DEEP! Formed by a dam, this lake at 7800 ft elev. is mainly ice water. The B-24 was lost while looking for ANOTHER B-24 lost up there. When the lake level was lowered to work on the dam, the B-24 appeared. Reclaimation crews recovered the flight crew, a couple of engines along with some other artifacts, but the plane remains at the bottom of the lake.
In the late 70’s, a T-33 Shooting Star from Fresno’s 144th Fighter Wing of the ANG (at that time, we had F-106’s and T-33’s here) was lost near Sequoia National Park. The only thing found was part of the canopy railing with a serial number tied to the missing aircraft. The rest of the T-33 is still missing along with the pilot.
The mountains east of us are covered with small lakes and tree-shrouded valleys, many of which are unreachable by foot.
More to think about.
Mike
Mike, I doubt they will find the pilot with the plane. If they found the canopy, it was likely blown for ejection. The pilot either would have ejected and not survived, meaning he could still be near his seat or in it if he couldn’t get seperated. Other wise he would have been thrown out when or before impact, since by blowing the canopy he would have started belt seperation and not been attached to his seat. If they have a last known location and the location of the canopy it could be used as a trajectory. The plane would probably be along the line and the pilot in between the plane and canopy locations.
Definately intreging Aric. I’m already digging. Actually I’d like to find someone interested in researching missing wrecks. Someone to exchange email, etc with and see if we’d come up with something. An online research project. I’m a geology minor so I do well with maps, plus the university has a very good map collection so map data is easy to come up with and I’ve found a few links. I’m already hunting data on the t33 and bomber in Oregon.
Wreck hunting has always been one of the things I’d love to do[maybe someday] so keep us posted you guys!! The pilots family will finally get some closure. Rest In Peace Airmen Rest In Peace.
Okay Gents, the plot thickens! This is kinda long, but interesting.
Mike
Sierra ice might hold others from WWII plane
A pilot, three cadets went missing on a 1942 training flight.
By Mark Grossi / The Fresno Bee
(Updated Saturday, October 22, 2005, 6:53 AM)
More bodies might be frozen in the same Sierra Nevada glacier where authorities this week chipped out the remains of a military man wearing a World War II uniform and a parachute.
A pilot and three cadets went missing on a 1942 training flight that struck the glacier near where the military man was found this week, according to an archived government report.
None of the four airmen on that flight was ever found, the report said. The report raises the possibility that the frozen body found this week might have been one of the four airmen in the accident 63 years ago.
“The bottom line is that there could be three more of them out there,” said New Jersey resident Mike Stowe, a contractor who locates archived military reports and who has the report on the 1942 accident. “The report says they didn’t recover any bodies from that wreck.”
The body found this week continues to defrost at the Fresno County Coroner’s Office. Military officials need it to thaw out so they can identify the body in the coming weeks.
Two climbers spotted the head, shoulder and arm of the body over the weekend at Mount Mendel, 13,710 feet in elevation, in Kings Canyon National Park. About 80% of the body was lodged in ice.
The body reportedly had light-colored hair and signs of broken bones. Officials have not found dog tags, nor have they been able to see the clothing close enough to detect a laundry mark, a distinctive symbol used to identify each soldier’s clothing.
Officials at the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command, the military unit in charge of recovering and identifying the remains of lost soldiers, said they have narrowed the search for the identity.
“I haven’t gotten confirmation about which plane crash this might have been associated with,” said spokesman Troy Kitch, when asked about the 1942 crash. “But the report about that accident is being considered.”
If the crash is connected to the frozen body, identification could become a lot simpler, said Ohio resident David R. Berry, a forensic historian who locates missing people. Berry began looking into the crash when he saw news accounts of the body’s recovery.
“Unless there was an undocumented person onboard, this was a training flight with four people,” he said Friday in a telephone interview. “They may have found one of them. That means three more people could still be up there.”
A few pages of the archived report have been posted on a Web site run by document contractor Stowe. He owns a large collection of military accident reports from the government. The reports are available to the public.
The accident occurred on Nov. 18, 1942, after an AT-7 took off from Mather Field in Sacramento with a destination of Corning in Tehama County to the north. There was no explanation of how the plane wound up more than 200 miles south on a desolate Kings Canyon National Park glacier.
The pilot was 2nd Lt. William R. Gamber, 23, of Fayette, Ohio. The three cadets were John M. Mortenson, 23, of Moscow, Idaho; Ernest G. Munn, 23, of St. Clairesville, Ohio; and Leo M. Mustonen, 22, of Brainerd, Minn.
The report said the plane departed from Mather at 8:30 a.m. with five hours of fuel. There was no contact with the plane during the flight, the report said, and a futile search began at 1:30 p.m.
Five years later, Sierra Club member William Bond spotted the wreckage while hiking, but officials did not investigate the site until 1948. They found a tag on one of the plane’s engines, which led them to identify the aircraft.
But they did not see enough evidence to identify the occupants. The report listed this description:
“A small piece of frozen flesh was found on a spur of a rock at upper edge of glacier. … Insufficient remains were found for identification of bodies or to indicate the number of persons aboard. The wreckage shows no evidence of having burned.”
Whatever remains they found were buried in a single plot at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. The names of all four airmen are listed at the grave.
Now, military officials must conduct a thorough investigation of the frozen body discovered this week to determine exactly who it is. The body will be flown to a lab in Hawaii where many different strategies will be used, including DNA comparisons.
Accuracy is crucial, said one forensic anthropologist, who has worked with the government on such cases.
“They will leave literally no stone unturned,” said professor Turhon Murad, anthropology department chairman at California State University, Chico. “There have been mistakes made in the Vietnam era, and they do not want any kind of repeat.”
Parts of the B-24 wound up at the museum at McClellan AFB, Sacramento. Part of a turret and one engine. There was a show on the Discovery channel not too long ago about the T-33. The pilot ejected out and then hiked out of the mountains with a broken leg. A journey that took him three weeks. When he finally reached civilisation, the government, in its infinate wisdom, accused him of flying the plane to Mexico and selling it to the Soviets. The AC has never been found but parts of it are occasionally found by hikers. Three or four pieces all together IIRC. The pilot of this AC was killed in the late sixties or early seventies in another AC crash.
Cassibill, do an internet search under aircraft crashes. There are several groups that search out lost AC and document them. I worked with one group 10 years ago to document a F-86 that had crashed in SE Oklahoma in 1957.
Thanks Roadkill. That sound’s interesting. I might have to do that.
Thawing him out won’t be easy or pretty. Bodies that are frozen tend to hyper decompose when thawed. (I can’t remember the name for it, sad seeing that I wrote an essay question on it a while back) They basically try to “catch up” to where they sould be is decomposition. The water in the cells freezes and explodes the cells. That’s why meat goes bad so quickly after you thaw it. I’ve heard a few horror stories about finding a body, bagging it up, not realizing it had hard frozen at some point, it thawing on the ride to the morgue and being goo and bones when it came out of the van. My teacher worked at a body farm. I’ve see pictures and yet I’ve eaten since. That desensitizing thing must be true.
U.S. Government teams have gone all over the world to recover bodies or any remains of U.S. Servicemen. Teams have been working with the Viet Nam government to investigate crash sites as well as battle sites. A few years ago a B-24 crash site was combed for remains in a mountainous area of China. Crash site and battle sites in Korea have and continue to be explored for U.S. servicemen’s remains.
It is comforting to know that the government is dedicated to “bringing its servicemen home” and identifying them for the families. The folks that do this work are beyond dedicated, they are a phanominon. Once the remains are identified, beyond any reasonable doubt, the family is notified in person. There will always be many who are “unknown but to God”, and their families will never know the comfort of knowing what happened to them. the least we can do is to never forget their sacrifice.