1977 Airplane Crash in Yosemite

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hamie

Social climber
Thekoots
Jun 22, 2016 - 01:03am PT
What kind of a training mission results in 5 missing planes??????????
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Jun 22, 2016 - 07:18am PT
What kind of a training mission results in 5 missing planes??????????

They were ordered to fly in formation from March AFB to Sacramento and flew right into bad weather. More planes were lost on the return trip a week later. Total of 8 planes were lost. I think some of the losses might have been search planes.

From Pat Macha's Website

The weather problem was compounded by the P-40's propensity to develop carb ice at altitudes over 12k feet.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jun 22, 2016 - 07:25am PT
The sad thing is that a flight from March to Sac has no need to go over the Sierras especially
in view of the fact those planes and pilots were not equipped or able to fly IFR, especially
in a thunderstorm.
Winemaker

Sport climber
Yakima, WA
Jun 22, 2016 - 07:59am PT
Here's a picture of the Allison. Good call Reilly.

Jan

Mountain climber
Colorado & Nepal
Jun 22, 2016 - 12:39pm PT
Shouldn't somebody report the find to the Air force for verification?
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Jun 22, 2016 - 03:57pm PT
Shouldn't somebody report the find to the Air force for verification?

A guy who has rebuild P-40s has looked at the pictures and verified that they are P-40 parts. It is a machine gun in the one picture.

Supposedly the Air Force recovered most of the plane a couple of weeks after it went down in 1941. They left behind the pieces that are there now, and no record of its location was made. Basically the site was "lost" again.

The formation flight was supposed to go up the Central Valley but poor leadership had them going over the mountains. oops
Gnome Ofthe Diabase

climber
Out Of Bed
Jun 28, 2016 - 04:07pm PT
@2503 posts do i dare click the link?
It is much more of a read to try to read this thread end to 'eifin end.


It was obvious to anyone living in the small community of Yosemite Valley that something had changed. In addition to throwing money around in the Village, a few climbers — the same ones who dived dumpsters for food — bought used cars and new packs. All of a sudden there was plenty of nice climbing equipment in Camp 4. Strader got his rack, which he would use to climb El Capitan four times in 1977.

Some of the climbers squirreled away their earnings. John Bachar, the Stonemaster and famous solo climber, was rumored to have used cash from his haul to help fund a successful climbing gear company. (Bachar died in a climbing accident in 2009, so it's impossible to confirm.) Lykins, the waiter who first discovered the wing, traded his windfall for a couple of years of college tuition. Vern Clevenger bought his first Nikon with the Lower Merced weed money — Clevenger has since become an acclaimed nature photographer. There were climbing trips to France and Asia and blowouts that are still the stuff of legend. It's likely the biggest windfalls exceeded $20,000, a tremendous amount of money in 1977. But the climbers tended to live fast, and in most cases the money didn't last long. The story has fared better. The crash grew mythic in barroom retellings and has been conveyed in fragments in books and newspapers, as well as in the 2014 documentary about Yosemite's climbing scene, Valley Uprising.

On April 13, which would later be known as Big Wednesday, six armed rangers boarded a Huey and stormed Lower Merced Pass like death from above. "By all reports it was like ants scattering," recalls Setnicka, who was on the radio at the time of the April offensive. "The people up there had created this infrastructure kind of like the Vietcong put in some areas of Vietnam — makeshift housing and tents, fire pits, all sorts of tarps. They picked up digging equipment wherever they could. It was really caveman technology."

The Park Service was embarrassed that the crash site had been discovered. "We underestimated the entrepreneurial spirit of certain members of the community," says Setnicka. Rangers were posted along the trails leading away from the lake in order to catch people fleeing. For all the melee, Clevenger and a companion were the only two arrested. They were told to report to the park's federal magistrate the next day, but the arrest was later nullified, thanks to a due process violation. No one was ever convicted for their involvement in Dope Lake.

After the siege, two rangers who had served in the military were given rations and equipment and sent to guard the lake. The pair lived in a tent for 17 days. They rigged trip wires to ration cans and kept their pug-nosed .38 pistols at the ready.
Jon Beck

Trad climber
Oceanside
Jun 28, 2016 - 04:11pm PT
Licky got a credit on the photos so I imagine he had a hand in writing the article.
zBrown

Ice climber
Jun 28, 2016 - 08:51pm PT
Why did ric get photo credit for photos which quite clearly are not his?

http://public.fotki.com/RonLykins/travel/airplane_1977/

C'mon ric. Time to fess up .

What about the ranger interview from public radio?

Why no credits for Arellano-Felix?

Why did the plane crash?


bvb

Social climber
flagstaff arizona
Jun 29, 2016 - 01:40am PT
When was that article published? Is it in the current issue?
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jun 29, 2016 - 07:08am PT
Why did the plane crash?

Since the NTSB did no inquiry I would be very surprised if Licky has managed to suss it out
after 40 years. It may not quite be rocket science but it ain't something you can learn by
taking an online course.
zBrown

Ice climber
Jun 29, 2016 - 08:21am PT
When was that article published?

A severe limitation and aggravation of the internet. The article doesn't have a date, but was posted 2days ago.

I found another page which says "JUN 2016", so apparently the currrent issue.


When did planes begin carrying flight recorders. Would a plane such as this have had them?

So, subject to affirmation by ric of course, 150 40-pound packages.

Interesting that the flight path was known despite both occupants of the plane dying in the crash. So this was not the first trip, eh?

How many trips had they made?

Did they wave to mfm?


Halfway up the state, Glisky killed his running lights and turned sharply inland, hitting the deck to drop off radar. Cutting across the sparsely populated farmland of the Central Valley basin, the plane reached the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in minutes.

And of course, where were they headed?

On a related note:

Wreckage, ‘Black Box’ Data Point to Fire Aboard EgyptAir Flight 804



bvb

Social climber
flagstaff arizona
Jun 29, 2016 - 04:38pm PT
The article was plenty for me. It's a fun read, but nowhere near as much fun as the visceral impact one feels when hearing the story as oral history, a woven tapestry of vernaculars and viewpoints told in the idiolects of those who were there, from one campfire to the next, over the decades. It's the tiny details and asides and gestures and facial expressions and humor and giddy reflective amusement that the storytellers bring to life and that make the story worth listening too. I spent many weeks in the Valley that spring, so I heard the whole tale from quite a few people, and already the story was well along in it's evolution into mythology. In any event, having read the article I doubt I'd bother to read any book, should it someday appear. Unless, of course, it receives rave reviews and a write-up in The New York Times Review Of Books.

In other words, meh.
Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jun 29, 2016 - 04:51pm PT
When did planes begin carrying flight recorders. Would a plane such as this have had them?

BwaHaHaHaHa! Even if that thing had one, and it most certainly did not,
do you seriously believe a bunch of dope runners would have it turned on?


where were they headed?

According to earlier posts in this thread their usual landing site was
up around the Black Rock Playa in NW NV.
mouse from merced

Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
Jun 29, 2016 - 04:57pm PT
F*#K THE BOOK!

Such a waste of time when anyone, myself included, could have done a Hollywood film version of this episode in Yosemite climbing history.

Condor of the Sierras is my own working title.

I have most of the plot worked out and an original screnplay is in the works.

I'm asking Chappie to play the part of the climbing ranger/narrator.

I am gonna get on my knees with eClint to ask him to produce this.

I know Hanks won't want to do this so soon after playing the role of Capt. Sully Sullenberger, Hero of the Hudson, but I want to give him first refusal.

So, keep dithering, kiddies.

See you at the movies.

MFM


edit: that is a great article in on the event, Camaro.
Lorenzo

Trad climber
Portland Oregon
Jun 29, 2016 - 05:04pm PT
Why did the plane crash?

Probably misjudged altitude. There was a crash less than a mile from there in 1938 that went down for the same reason.
zBrown

Ice climber
Jun 29, 2016 - 05:22pm PT

Probably misjudged altitude. There was a crash less than a mile from there in 1938 that went down for the same reason.

They should have bought a flight recorder, turned it on the first trip, then just put it on auto-pilot thereafter, right?

That and a set of pontoons, though if they were really smart they would have never utilized a plane. No big time successes in the drug trade used/use airplanes. Everybody knows that.


Let's see what ric said


Topic Author's Reply - May 18, 2014 - 04:40am PT
The left wing was found a quarter of a mile from one of the two verticle stabbalizers. When the Rangers flew up to the described location provided by Ron Lykins for the wing, they saw from the air a straight line of tree tops that were sheered off, almost acting like an arrow toward the lake. The verticle stabbilazer was found a quarter of a mile from the lake where the plane rested in sixty feet of water in Lower Merced Pass Lake, upside down in the deepest end.

Why would the plane come in low? It was clearing the Sierras running toward a location in northern Nevada. Remember, the Nevada Air National Guard was located at the Reno airport. This was 1976. The US had pulled out of Viet Nam, but the cold war was still on. Here is a huge plane traveling over 350 miles per hour looking just like a Russian Bear bomber. Glisky and Nelson want to fly below the radar sweep of the Sierra.

Something happens to the left engine. The plane dips low and the left wing catches some trees...............

Ok...I have two issues. One is why did the left engine have problems? It is well documented. And two, who had access to the engine(s) before the run?

I won't write this until I have some cold hard answers, and that's what I'm working on.


Finally, and maybe ric will tell us, where did all the money go? Not the $ used for a camera, some college classes, and possibly an equipment business, the real money?

http://gregnichols.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Dope-Lake-Nichols-July-Aug-16.pdf

Reilly

Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
Jun 29, 2016 - 05:27pm PT
Those guys were good pilots. They clearly had a mechanical issue. My
guess is an oil pressure issue which caused a catastrophic loss of oil
pressure in one of the prop governors so they weren't able to control
the prop pitch and that led to unmanageable yaw and pilot overload, which
ain't a good thing when you're only a few hundred feet above the trees
hauling azz in the dark.

And you can't use a flight director/autopilot for flying nape of the earth
unless you're in an F-111 or something of that ilk.
zBrown

Ice climber
Jun 29, 2016 - 05:38pm PT
Our work is just about done here then except for two questions:

Why didn't they have an F-111?

[I'll answer this one. Because it would have been even more uneconomical than their poorly chosen first choice].

Where did they go after they reached Nevada?

Things go better in threes, so how about, who was their accounting firm?





Bullwinkle

Boulder climber
Jun 29, 2016 - 06:05pm PT
Possibly the/a hydraulic pump as a bulletin had been sent out calling for replacement of said pump. A replacment pump was strapped to a pallet in the plane, they were going to swap them out, but. . .they must of been high. . .
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