EISPIRATEN

It started with a Facebook post from Kristin Sabo, a trail crew leader in the Tujunga area. She had found some plane parts while scrambling above Gold Creek on Peak 2602. Naturally I took a keen interest and picked her brain about it. She provided all the details and suggested that the parts might be from one of two military crashes in the 1940s. After doing my own research, I agreed. However, none of the parts that Kristin found helped identify the plane. They were mostly unmarked wing pieces.

After informing Dima of the mystery, we picked a day between storm systems and set out with shovels--on an NFL playoffs Sunday. Yes, I missed the Chargers-Patriots game for this.

We drove up Little Tujunga Canyon Road to Gold Creek Road and parked at the Oak Spring Trailhead. This area burned in the 2017 Creek Fire, so much of it looked like a wasteland. But the steep trail was in very good shape.





The wide bridle path contoured around the north and east sides of Peak 2602. Not sure exactly where to leave the trail and begin scrambling upward, we both chose different routes in order to explore more terrain.





Unfortunately we misjudged the route and topped out on Peak 2749 instead, south of where we needed to be. We again split up and agreed to meet on the correct ridge, which could now be seen a little below to the north.

I was halfway along the ridge to the west of 2749 when Dima shouted, "I found it!" He had dropped down the north side, taking a more direct line to the next ridge. I promptly switched gears and sidehilled toward him, utilizing an animal track and spooking two deer in the process.





I approached Dima up on the slope in a shallow headwall gully. We were now about 300 feet southeast of Peak 2602. Below him I collected a few small pieces of aluminum and brought them up to the main debris site.



Clearly we had hit the jackpot and likely found the impact site, which contained many large engine parts.





Dima used the shovel a bit and unearthed whatever this is.





Meanwhile I took notice of this special piece among the scattered mess.



It had all these cool words on it: "gyro, dim, bright, fixed." After cleaning it, I read some engraving on the side plate.



Hrm: "U.S. Army Air Forces, Type K-14A Gun Sight."

Hot diggity dog! I knew instantly that we almost certainly could identify the plane from this part, if not from the engine and other items.

We spent lots of time at this location before moving up to the summit and searching around the other side of the ridge, where Kristin had discovered the initial wing fragments.





In addition to the engine, we found many wing or fuselage pieces distributed around a 500-foot square area north of the peak. This pattern might indicate a recovery operation that transported larger pieces by helicopter to the roadway north of the hill. These smaller pieces could have fallen during transit.



Later, after returning down the trail, we ate burgers and fries in La Canada. I googled the gun sight info and found out that it was made for the P-51 Mustang, which the military redesignated the F-51 Mustang in 1948. Based on this evidence and some corresponding newspaper accounts, Dima and I strongly believe this particular wreckage is that of Lt. William H. Hardwick's F-51 (#44-73080) that went down on September 21, 1949 in the vicinity of Gold Canyon.


(San Bernardino Sun)


(Los Angeles Times)

Strangely, Dima discovered that this same plane appears to have been in a landing accident due to engine failure only two years prior in 1947. I suppose it was cursed.

Sean wrote: Hrm: "U.S. Army Air Forces, Type K-14A Gun Sight."

Hot diggity dog! I knew instantly that we almost certainly could identify the plane from this part, if not from the engine and other items.

That’s a great find! Sorry I missed this.

Nice bit of sleuthing boys.

Jackpot!

Nice work!

Badass! Nice photos too!!

Alright, so most of the parts here were from the engine. There were some wing chunks on the other side of the ridge for some reason, but those were scattered over an area, instead of clustered around a single spot; which maybe means that they ended up there after the initial impact. This is a P51-D (thank you, internet) which has a Packard V-1650 Merlin engine (thank you, wikipedia). This thing is a V12 allegedly. The engine block itself was missing, but we found 4 pistons scattered around. The crankshaft was there too (Sean has a photo above). There're 6 sites where a piston would clearly connect; the other 6 weren't obvious to me. If somebody knows how these things are supposed to work, feel free to chime in

Oh, and this was a super-charged engine, with the super-charger chunks lying in the pile:



If anybody wants to see higher-res images, my photos live here.

An alternate theory for the large debris field, suggested by Kristin, includes the idea that dozers could have scattered the pieces during construction of a fire break. 1976 aerial imagery confirms a new fire break on that ridge at that time.

What a great find. Especially the gunsight piece with the ID still attached. Huge thumbs up on this one.

dima wrote:There're 6 sites where a piston would clearly connect; the other 6 weren't obvious to me. If somebody knows how these things are supposed to work, feel free to chime in

I took a closer look at my pics and there are actually 12 spots for a connecting rod to attach to that crankshaft. Notice how one of the rods has a narrow, single-stem end piece, while the others have wider, two-pronged pieces. The narrower ones would have connected to the narrower spots along the crankshaft. And all the pistons would have fit into two rows of cyclinders shaped into a V angle.

Here is a helpful animation of a V-12 engine at work.

Parts of the aluminum engine block can still be seen in one of the posted photos but it appears a good portion of it either melted away during a post crash fire or recent wild fire. The crank seen in the photo is about half of the whole crank, I count only 5 connecting rod journals and 4 main journals.

This particular wreck is listed on this web site but without much detail; http://www.qnet.com/~carcomm/wrecks.htm

If anyone is interested in additional info on local aviation crashes go to this web site; http://www.aircraftwrecks.com/

BTW, the unidentified item Dima uncovered looks like part of the propeller hub.

Great find and thanks for posting the details. Without your trip and/or the Creek Fire it may have remained hidden from sight for a long, long time. Let's just hope no souvenir hunters will go retrieve anything for this sacred site.

That's interesting. You think the full crankshaft was longer than what we found? I don't recall if the ends looked broken or not.

I have Macha's books (which are pretty good), but I've never found his website (linked above) useful. I want to say it doesn't describe that many events, but they're listed only by aircraft type and accident date, so it's difficult to find what I usually want: a list of events in a particular area. Have you found it useful? Am I doing it wrong?

I took a closer look at the photo with the crank in it and now I think it is pretty much the complete crank. Put my glasses on this time.

As far as Macha's web site, I feel it's helpful but agree with you about it being difficult to find things. You're not doing anything wrong IMO.

Another great website for plane wrecks is Joe Idoni's site.

https://joeidoni.smugmug.com/Aircraft-Crash-Sites

hiiker wrote:I took a closer look at the photo with the crank in it and now I think it is pretty much the complete crank.

Here's a better angle of it. We placed the pistons like that for reference.

In other news, I discovered that some military accident reports are obtainable, and I got a copy of the report for this accident. From this guy: http://www.accident-report.com/

Pretty interesting stuff. The pilot was fairly experienced in this type of plane. This was supposed to be a VFR (visual-only) flight, but he ended flying by instruments only in a thunderstorm. Unclear if he didn't realize the storm was there, or if he went somewhere he wasn't expecting to go. For whatever reason, he ended up diving from inside the storm clouds at a very steep angle, and hitting the ground at full speed. The wings and tail broke off before the ground impact, which explains why the wing chunks are on the other side of the ridge from the engine. There were some large pieces there, most notably the tail, but this was removed at some point during the past 70 years. The report repeatedly mentions that he wasn't wearing a helmet. One commanding officer's conclusion is that you shouldn't fly a P-51 by instruments only, although that is disputed by other important people.

That sure looks like the whole crank. Two pistons per connecting rod journal would equal a V12. Thanks for posting the better photo.

Never seen the ...accident-report... web site before. I'll have to give it a close look at. Thanks for providing the link, it's now a favorite. At one time post crash reports were available from the NTSB web site. The crashes could be searched by year. I haven't looked at the site in awhile and also don't recall ever seeing any military aircraft listed. The military seems to do their own crash investigations. Old newspaper clippings are probably the best sources for military crash history I suppose.

The NTSB doesn't deal with military accidents, and their reports don't go back that far. You can see the local accidents here. I'll put together a better map next week.

As for the military report, I don't know what I'm trying to protect here, so here's the report for this event. Enjoy. If you want more, contact the accident-report.com guy, and share

Hummm I've looked for this for years

The Pilot suffered hypoxia, most if not all my efforts have been on Yerba Buena Ridge and Gold Creek

This is a link to the AAF accident report Sheriff's Department report and witness statement

Crash report

Ooh, where did you get that report. It's a subset of the report I linked above. If there's another source of these things, I'd like to know abou it

Pat Macha gave it to me when I went to his archive in Huntington Beach

It would be nice to visit the site and scan with a metal detector and try to find a serial number or something.... There are some other wreck sites in the area that are unlocated and there are always unknown sites.

The map you show doesn't seem to correspond with the debris pattern diagram in the AAF/ANG report and crash witness statements

This is my searches from 2005 to 2016 https://caltopo.com/m/00AR

Unfortunately many of these site have been salvaged by scrap metal scavengers. At the time of this wreck heavy lift helicopters wouldn't have been available, at most they would have buried it with a bulldozer. Given the violence of the the supersonic impact I'm surprised the engine is so near the surface and so intact. Other wreck sites I have seen mangled engine parts but no intact engines

As I now recall Pat Macha told me about a supposed P-38 wreck site in Gold Canyon / Little Tujunga area. I looked with Pat Jr and on my own several times but found nothing

This certainly deserves more scrutiny, I had heard from hunters there was debris up there too .. didn't see anything in my explorations

Whoa. You really did put in lots of effort to find this one. Found any other wrecks in the process?

I'd be surprised if this crash site is a different plane. The relative distances in the report don't match, but the elevation of the ground impact area matches, and I'll claim the site map matches too: the main impact site lies below a ridge as shown (more or less). The wing fragments are across the ridge, also as shown. From the earlier airwest 706 search, I wouldn't expect the descriptions to match any better than this. If it's a different airplane, it'd have to be something else with a k-14a gunsight. Any candidates? Going back to this site and digging a bit would surely uncover stuff, so somebody should go do that

I looked around the internet for info about that P-38 a bit. Something said that no effort was made to pull out the wreckage, but that a bulldozer was brought in to cover it with dirt. I don't remember where I saw this; the LA Times article, maybe.

I'm going up there early tomorrow. If it's a p38 there are 2 engines. The P38 was made by Lockheed . The P51 was north American aviation, part numbers and inspection stamps will help sort it out. A serial number would be awesome. Later NAA mfg aircraft had the planes serial number on everything. That is how I verified the F89 Scorpion crash site in la Tuna cyn

I've checked a few websites. It doesn't sound like the P-38 ever had a K-14 series gun sight.

http://www.aircraft-gunsights.com/aircr ... gunsights/

Went up there this am. It's definitely NAA got excited when I thought I found a serial number, but alas it wasn't to be . I certainly agree it's almost certainly the F51 from 1949. Especially given the widespread debris field. The armor plate is cool, while the heel from the shoe is a reminder of the pilot and to treat the site with respect . Thanks for sharing this find

Glad you found it. How did you verify that this is an NAA plane? Many of the body parts had specific part numbers; this is something that only NAA does? Did you find anything we didn't? I did find the shoe heel in the pile.

Inspection stamps. To the best of my knowledge they would only be used on a north American aviation aircraft. At least for me the orientation of the armor plate to the engine indicates a single engine aircraft. I found a fuel tank access and a piece quite a distance from the site as I returned XC to the 1st switch back. It was not far from the point where I got on the trail