Mission Scrub

(My Dad)

I set out this morning to bag a wreck site. The place was only 50 miles away. I took my father, who had the day off. Our targets were two. Our primary was P-38H #42-66778, with a secondary being B-17F #42-29500.

Let me start by saying my TWO WHEEL DRIVE Tacoma has never let me down. Let me then add, the "roads," as the map referred to them, we travelled were probably better traversed with mules, or mountain goats, or ELK (see illustration). I would hesitate to take a 4X4 on these...or at least I would now, after today's "adventure."

We did meet some very nice and helpful people. We stopped by the Windfarm, hoping for better roads to get us closer to our quarry...or is it quary? Turns out there is a wonderul visitors' center. We could not get to the other side of the farm, since they are expanding their facilities and visitors are not allowed past a certain point without an escort. (We plan on calling the PSE rep/environmental person as soon as we get a chane to get an escort to that part of the farm.) The folks there were very friendly and helpful and proud of their project! The person we needed to talk to about a tour was not there at the time, so we decided to take their advice and try another road down the way a few miles. Yeah, not gonna just believe a map EVER again.

Still, it was a good day. We managed to get ourselves out of the creek we had gotten up without a paddle. We got into a VERY steep area and tore up my rear tires...so yeah, there was a price.

We ended up taking about 4 hours to make 10 miles in distance. It was a case of poor choices piling up on each other. We ended up passing the P-38 by, because, by the time we were near it, we simply wanted to get home in one piece. It was a tense four hours.

Still, here are a few pictures. LOOK, they have PROPELLER BLADES, that counts, right?

I am still working on the post about the Beaver.

My First Wreck!

Today, I met up with Gene Gould and we both located the wreck of P-38L #44-23914.


Now, I have been reading about Aircraft Archeology for about two years. I have read first hand accounts by various authors who live in California and Arizona and Oklahoma. These guys are professionals, several have been doing this for decades. They have found hundreds of wrecks. They say on their sites that it is not easy to find a wreck, even if you know approximately where it went down. I always thought they might have been blowing just a little smoke...NOW I KNOW! They are completely correct!


This is what we were looking for...and it looks strangely like the other areas of sagebrush!


Gene and I traversed an area of sagebrush the size of Kentucky, which was uphill in every direction, and full of suspicious cows. We did that several times before we decided to walk ourselves through the instructions Gene had received from someone who had once lived in the area.

Gene expects to receive the accident report for this aircraft sometime in the near future, at which time he will share with me and I will likely share it with you. That's just the kind of guys we are.


We were walking back to the cars to start again when we spotted a definite sign of aircraft...a piece of aluminum with rivets. It was most awesome to follow the pieces in an uphill direction and see the crash site. It was, as the instrucions had said, in a small indentation in the hillside. From the impact site (We assume) the wreck spread up hill in a triangular pattern. We found things that appeared to us to be parts of the landing gear, parts from the self-sealing fuel tanks, parts probably from the engine and turbocharger, and what is surely the side of a M2 Browning Machine Gun.


Some parts were surprisingly bulky, yet very light. Conversely, some of the components were remarkably heavy. No, we did not find any V-1710 pistons, that would have been cool! Considering the size of the original aircraft, there is not really very much left. It is mostly scraps of aluminum spread cross a hillside. Still, what was amazing to me was that the crash caused the aircraft to break up into such small pieces! Not one was larger than two feet, while the majority were considerably smaller than a foot. The boys from the base cleaned up the area pretty good.