Historic Aircraft Wrecks of Los Angeles County

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INTRODUCTION

The year 2014 marks my fifty-first year of searching for and documenting aircraft crash sites in open-space areas throughout the state of California. I came to this unique avocation while working at a youth camp in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California in the summer of 1963. My camp job was hike master, and that included nature walks, day hikes and overnight camping trips into the San Gorgonio wilderness. A highlight of the overnight trips included the ascent of Mount San Gorgonio, the highest peak in Southern California at 11,503 feet. At that time, the prescribed route to the summit was via the Poop Out Hill Trail Head to a bivouac site at Dollar Lake. After a night’s rest, we hiked to the summit of Old Greyback, where the view on a good day could be one hundred miles or more. Following lunch at the top, we reversed our course, picking up our packs and gear at Dollar Lake to begin the trek back to the parking lot at Poop Out Hill, where a stake bed truck would return us to YMCA Camp Conrad in Barton Flats. We averaged eighteen and a half miles in two days on these wilderness treks. Continuous route repetition led me to try another way down from the summit where no trail existed in those years.

On our first descent on the east flank of Greyback, we stumbled upon the crash site of an air force transport plane that I recognized to be a Douglas C-47. Our group was dumbstruck as we surveyed a scene of devastation, where wings, landing gears and engines were interspersed with personal effects, uniforms, shoes, luggage bags and headphone sets. Campers and counselors asked me what happened and when and who was on board? I wanted to know the answers to these questions too. The aluminum structure looked new, bright and shiny. Our star-and-bar national insignia was visible on one of the wings, with USAF on the other. I photographed the crash site that day with an Argus C3, a 35mm camera borrowed from my father, from whom my love of everything airplane comes.

I finally did learn the story of the C-47 tragedy from a U.S. Forest Service (USFS) ranger at Barton Flats Station; he also shared with me the locations and stories of eight other aircraft crash sites that he had seen during his long tenure in the San Bernardino Mountains. This ranger had opened a door to the past, and I began the long search that has continued to this day looking for crash sites that are scattered across the mountains, hills and deserts of California. Unlike roadside vehicle accidents, which are quickly cleaned up and forgotten, aircraft wreck sites in remote locations remain largely undisturbed in deep canyons, hidden in forests, overgrown in the chaparral or widely scattered in small parts across vacant desert landscapes where few people venture.

Los Angeles County covers 4,752 square miles, characterized by coastal plains, numerous valleys, a dozen named hills and mountain ranges that include the Santa Monica, Santa Susana, San Gabriel, Sierra Pelona and Verdugo. The highest point in the county is 10,068-foot Mount San Antonio, also known as Mount Baldy, and it is located in the San Gabriel Mountains. Portions of other Transverse Ranges, the extreme southwestern end of the Tehachapi Mountains, the western edge of the Mojave Desert—including the Antelope Valley, with eight named buttes—and a portion of Rosamond Dry Lake all lie within the county. Four major rivers—the Los Angeles, San Gabriel, Rio Hondo and Santa Clara—along with the Newhall Pass and the San Andreas Fault Zone, are important geographic features. Also, within the county of Los Angeles, in an hour’s flight off shore, are two of the California Channel Islands, Santa Catalina and San Clemente. A burgeoning population of more than 10 million people is served by interstate highways such as the Christopher Columbus (known as Interstate 10), Interstate 5 and twelve other major freeways—together they make LA a twenty-first-century autopia. Two harbors (Long Beach and Los Angeles) and three major rail lines, along with LAX, one of the world’s busiest airports, make Los Angeles one of the most financially dynamic and diverse counties in all of the United States.

Within this mix of desert, hills, mountains, islands and the Pacific Ocean lie more than 450 aircraft crash sites, including more than a dozen missing planes presumed lost at sea. This book will give the reader a glimpse into aviation accident stories, histories and mysteries that remain today on private and public open space lands, two islands and beneath the Pacific Ocean.

By the mid-1920s and ’30s, the combination of climate and undeveloped open space made Los Angeles County the ideal place for airfields, airports and aircraft manufacturing. Many aviation pioneers launched successful businesses here, including Allan Loughead, the founder of Lockheed Aircraft Company, which made Burbank Airport its home. Donald Wills Douglas established Douglas Aircraft Company at Clover Field in Santa Monica. James Dutch Kindelberger founded North American Aviation with a factory at what is now LAX. Jerry Vultee built his manufacturing facility at Vultee Field in Downey. John Jack Northrop founded Northrop Aircraft Company in Hawthorne at Northrop Field, later known as Hawthorne Municipal Airport. Howard Hughes built his factory and airfield in Culver City.

During the halcyon days of flight in Los Angeles County, small airfields and airstrips abounded, such as Kelly’s Airfield, now the site of Hawthorne High School, and thirty-nine other airfields that no longer exist—paved over, built on and now largely forgotten. In the heyday of mass aircraft production from 1940 to 1980, Los Angeles County was the aerospace capital of America, employing tens of thousands of men and women. Other companies flourished during this time, too, including Garrett Air Research, Fletcher, Parker Hannifin, TRW, Doak and Aerospace Corporation, all of which added to the earning power and prestige of Los Angeles County. In the modern era, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman have made their marks here, too, but some manufacturers have relocated to Arizona, Texas, Georgia and elsewhere in the southeastern United States. Nonetheless, the aerospace legacy of innovation and resilience in the twentieth century lives on in new companies like Robinson Helicopters and SpaceX, leading the way into the twenty-first century.

CHAPTER 1

FLYING INTO THE STORM

The twentieth century got off to a flying start in Los Angeles County, first with balloons carrying passengers on sightseeing flights and later with powered aircraft. Early aviation accidents often involved pilot error, and sometimes power plant or structural failures also were an issue. Stunt flying, wing walking and other daredevil antics did occasionally end in tragedy. Most of these accidents occurred at or near the early airstrips during training flights or air shows.

One of the earliest aviation accidents in Los Angeles County involved a hydrogen-filled balloon called the American that launched from Pasadena on Saturday, August 10, 1909, with a pilot and five passengers riding in a wicker basket. The flight departed Tournament Park in Pasadena at 3:00 p.m., rising quickly to an estimated 6,000 feet, and in light winds, the balloon drifted over the snow-covered San Gabriel Mountains and into an arriving storm. The balloon passed by Mount Lowe and then swiftly passed west of Mount Wilson, heading straight toward 6,256-foot Strawberry Peak. With a possible collision eminent, luck carried the American around the looming peak, and that’s when the pilot pulled the rip cord, releasing gas from the balloon. The result was a hard landing cushioned somewhat by the chaparral on the rugged north slope of the mountain. Amid a snowstorm, shaken and bruised, Captain A.E. Mueller and his passengers hunkered down for the night.

Prior to the flight, Captain Mueller asked everyone to remove any matches they were carrying as a safety precaution, as the hydrogen gas used in the balloon was highly flammable. Fortunately, one of the passengers, Mr. Sidney Cray, found one match in his coat pocket lining, and with that match, they made a campfire that gave the survivors light but little warmth. Snow showers and the sound of thunder added to the trepidation of those who had narrowly escaped serious injury and death. The following morning, the men began their trek down Fern Grotto Canyon. The snow had turned to rain, and after a day of hiking, they were cold, wet and very hungry when they stumbled into Colby’s Ranch just before sunset. Luckily for these aeronauts, Mr. Colby was at home.

The weather kept the men with Mr. Colby until Tuesday morning, when they began the long hike to Switzer’s Camp, where there was a telephone. Meanwhile, since no trace of the balloon could be found by searchers, many people thought that Captain Mueller and his passengers had perished in the wilds of the San Gabriel Mountains. The aeronauts were saved by a combination of luck, piloting skill and perhaps divine intervention. The wicker basket and the gas bag were eventually recovered and repaired to be used again. The coming age of air transportation had begun, with an inauspicious start.

World War I saw the establishment of flying training schools in the Greater Los Angeles area. Year-round flying was possible here, except for the occasional strong down-slope winds and winter storm fronts that briefly swept the basin. Most people did not consider low coastal clouds and fog to be weather. The stratus clouds would come in at night and burn off by early afternoon near the coastline. The stratus clouds were most common in the months of May, June and from late September through mid-October. Stratus clouds could, however, appear at any time of year when atmospheric conditions were right. These non-storm clouds would be a factor in many aviation accidents in Los Angeles County, except in the sun-drenched, and sometimes windy, Antelope Valley.

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, both Goodrich and Goodyear were building blimps for coastal and convoy protection. The highly successful C-6 was manned by a crew of five and powered by a two-hundred-horsepower Hall-Scott L-6 engine. The 192-foot-long, 42-foot-diameter blimp was filled with 181,000 cubic feet of noncombustible helium. Hanging beneath the gas bag was the car, where the flight crew and engine were housed. The top speed of this early sky ship was sixty miles per hour, and enough fuel was carried for a ten-hour patrol mission.

On September 29, 1920, U.S. Navy (USN) blimp C-6, piloted by Lieutenant Gordon G. McDonald, was engaged in a military exercise know as a Fleet Problem, which intended to simulate an attack by enemy vessels approaching the West Coast. The C-6 was operating in darkness and fog when the crew became lost, flying well inland from the shoreline it intended to patrol and into the Santa Monica Mountains. The crash occurred west of Laurel Canyon at about 1,250 feet above sea level in an area undeveloped at the time. The thick blanket of chaparral that covered the mountains and low airspeed helped mitigate the impact. Three crewmen were seriously injured, including the pilot, who sustained two broken ankles, while three others escaped with cuts and bruises.

The wreck was mostly removed and scrapped shortly after the accident by a crew of fifty naval personnel. In the spring of 2007, the author attempted to locate this historic accident site, but the exact location could not be determined. Wildfires and encroaching development have erased what little might have remained of the C-6.

On January 18, 1923, the navy experienced another aircraft loss in Los Angeles County that was weather related. This crash occurred on Santa Catalina Island and involved a large Curtiss F-5L flying boat A-3359 that was assigned to VT-2 at North Island Naval Air Station (NAS) in San Diego County. Eyewitnesses saw the flying boat come out of a fog bank, swerve to avoid a sightseeing boat and crash into large rocks on the shoreline at Abalone Point, southeast of the town of Avalon. The crash killed the pilot, Lieutenant Earl B. Brix, and copilot, Lieutenant W.H. Rohrback. One crewman was critically injured, and five others suffered broken bones and severe contusions. It was considered a miracle that anyone survived the impact velocity, estimated to have been about forty miles per hour.

Aircraft could be used for military purposes, for pleasure, as a platform to carry cameras for the growing Hollywood movie industry, to carry passengers, to explore and map remote areas of the world or to transport the U.S. Mail.