Post by Morgan Sierra on Mar 14, 2012 21:48:17 GMT -6
The Crash on Mount Charleston
A little over a decade ago I decided to take a short vacation to Nevada and California. My goal was to do a little bit of mountain climbing, starting with an easy hike up Mount Charleston, which is an 11,918 foot peak just west of Las Vegas. It did not exactly turn out to be what you would call an exemplary climbing expedition. Being fairly inexperienced as a climber I was still learning the ropes, so to speak, and I was prone to making novice mistakes...one of which I discovered when I got off the plane in Vegas the morning of what was supposed to be my first climb and discovered that I had left all of my hiking equipment in my car, which was very inconveniently parked at the airport back in Texas. Not good.
After driving my rental car all over creation searching for a store that sold hiking equipment I managed to procure a new pair of boots, a small backpack, some water bottles and a few other odds and ends that I figured might come in handy on my climb. I didn't want to spend too much money since I already had all of the same stuff at home and climbing equipment is not cheap. The boots alone cost me over $200.00. That was close to the total amount of money I was planning on spending on the entire trip. Once again, not good.
After a short drive through the desert and a winding road up to the mountains I finally reached the trailhead at about 1:00 in the afternoon--a little late to begin a hike but since I was in halfway decent shape and the hike to the summit and back was only supposed to take about eight hours I figured I could make it back before sundown. Once again I was wrong.
I had barely gotten to the 11,000 foot mark when I noticed the sun was sinking towards the horizon. I continued pressing on but was starting to get a chill from the rapidly dropping temperatures. It had been a balmy 85 degrees at the trailhead down below but up above the treeline it was closer to 40. Because it had been so nice when I started out I was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt and they were soaked with sweat from the hot temperatures. I had already gone through the two liters of water that I had packed as well.
I was determined to keep going but was soon stopped dead in my tracks by a hurricane force wind that was blasting up over the ridge leading to the summit. All of a sudden I was freezing cold and in danger of getting hypothermia. With the summit in site and only about 20 minutes away I hated to turn around but going forward could have put me in a very dangerous situation. Common sense told me to turn around but my stubborn pride refused to allow me to surrender. I decided to get out of the wind and consider the options.
I traversed over to the other side of the ridge away from the wind and was suddenly surprised to find myself standing in a pile of junk. There were bits and pieces of twisted metal, wires, cables and all sorts of aluminum and steel debris scattered all over the area. A quick examination told me that the metallic mess had once been an airplane...but what the heck was it doing way up there on the mountain?
Naturally curious I started poking around the debris field trying to determine what type of plane it was and what had caused it to crash. It was only when I noticed that the sky was turning to twilight and the sun was going down that I finally dragged myself away from the wreckage. With no chance of making the summit in the gathering darkness and freezing temperatures I finally headed down the mountain and stumbled into the parking lot at the bottom several hours later in total pitch blackness. It had not occurred to me that I might ought to buy a flashlight to replace the one sitting in the car back in Texas. Another boneheaded mistake.
Mount Charleston is one of the few mountains out of the many I have climbed that I was not able to make the summit on the first attempt. It was kind of annoying to me because it is such an easy mountain to climb. The rest of the mountains I failed on were easy ones too. I guess you could chalk my failures up to bad luck and inexperience...or stupidity...whichever seems more fitting. Either way I was determined to someday go back and climb that mountain again...and get to the bottom of that mysterious crashed airplane...
*******************************************
November 17, 1955
A Lockheed C-54 sits on the tarmac at the airport in Burbank, California, it's four engines rumbling steadily in the early morning dawn. It's wingtips and tail were painted red, and on the tail fin were stenciled the numbers 9068. Other than that there was nothing remarkable to set the plane apart from the rest of the aircraft lined up on the runway.
Waiting on board was the Pilot, Lieutenant George Pappas, his co-pilot, paul Winham, and twelve passengers. There was supposed to be thirteen but one of them was late. It looked like he was going to be a no-show. After waiting as long as he thought he could the pilot finally gave the order to close the door then taxied down the runway and zoomed into the skies to the northeast. It's destination...a mysterious place called "Watertown."
The plane was a good one, one of a line of old warhorses the Air Force had dubbed "Skymasters" because of their reliable service during the war. Each of its four engines put out over 1200 horsepower apiece, more than enough to handle just about any task that could have been asked of it. It had always done its job well.
As the plane headed out of town it stayed low, zig-zagging in between the small mountains before leveling off over the flat California desert. It maintained an altitude of only about 10,000 feet...much lower than any normal commercial aircraft would have traveled. As it sped along in the general direction of Las Vegas a strong tail wind help quicken its pace. It was a bright sunny day, with little hint of the danger that lurked just to the west of them.
Shortly after crossing the California/Nevada state line the plane suddenly cut all radio communications and altered its course, heading north into the barren Nevada desert. These were highly unusual maneuvers for a passenger plane, but this was not just any ordinary flight. It's crew was actually a group of engineers and CIA agents heading for a secret base out in the middle of nowhere at a place called Groom Lake. It later would come to be known by another infamous name--Area 51.
The base was originally created as a secret site to test and develop the ultra Top Secret U2 spy plane. Flight 9068 was one of the daily flights that covertly shuttled passengers and equipment in and out of the base. The need for secrecy dictated the false flight plan and radio silence, so the plane could not be tracked to its secret destination by spying eyes. Unfortunately, on this day the extra security precautions would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Little did the pilot or crew know that a huge storm was lurking just ahead of them. As they sailed silently along they soon found themselves blasted by hurricane force winds and pelted with snow and hail. The snow quickly covered the landscape with a blanket of white reducing visibility to almost zero. The howling wind pushed the plane off course to the east and with no ground support to guide them they quickly found themselves dodging the peaks of the Spring Mountain range. They were flying where they weren't supposed to be.
Realizing the danger they were in the pilot broke radio silence and made several frantic calls for help, but nobody answered. Since they had been deliberately flying low to avoid radar none of the surrounding towers had any idea where the plane was, or where it was going. As far as they knew it wasn't even supposed to exist.
As the pilot barreled along through white-out conditions he could only guess at where he was and what was around him. It was extremely dangerous flying conditions and he knew that he was in trouble. Perhaps he finally realized that he had been blown of course and needed to head to the west to get out of the mountains, or maybe he just decided to turn around and head back to California. Whatever he was thinking will never be known because, unfortunately, his last correction put him on a direct collision course with the tallest mountain the entire area--Mount Charleston.
As the mountain suddenly came screaming towards them the pilot pulled back hard on the wheel and jammed the throttle wide-open hoping to gain enough altitude to make it over the peak. The wind came howling in the opposite direction seemingly determined to keep them from succeeding. With gut-wrenching horror they must have finally realized that they weren't going to make it.
One of the propellers dug into the ground then ripped the wing off causing the plane to plow hard into the ridge. The cockpit disintegrated and the rest of the fuselage broke in half and exploded into a huge ball of flames. All fourteen men on board were killed instantly. It was a huge tragedy.
In the days and weeks that followed the military and a civilian rescue team launched a heroic attempt to recover of the bodies of the dead men. Having succeeded the government then tried to sweep the entire thing under the rug and pretend that it never happened. The need for secrecy to protect the U2 project meant that nobody could know about what really happened, where the mysterious plane was heading or why. The families of the dead were only told that the men had died in a crash. Many of them never found out how or why.
A military recovery team combed the area to recover any classified materials that may have survived the crash, then a demolition team was brought in to dynamite what was left of the wreckage and blow it to smithereens. Some of the engines were salvaged to be used for parts on other aircraft. The rest was left to lie there and rot...or be carried away by souvenir hunters. Whatever remained is still scattered over the mountainside today.
In 1998 the government finally decided to declassify the U2 project, and that meant declassifying the plane crash as well. A man by the name of Steve Ririe found out about the crash and created a group called The Silent Heroes of the Cold War which is dedicated to preserving the history of what really happened up there on the mountain. He researched the history of the crash and contacted as many of the family members of the victims as he could find and told them the truth about how and why there relatives really died.
They published a book, written by Kyril Plaskon, called Silent Heroes of the Cold War:Declassified. In it is the complete story of the plane crash as well as short biographies on each of the people who died, as well as the one lone survivor who missed his flight. Ririe and the rest of the members of his group are now attempting to raise funds to build a permanent monument up on the mountain...something that will tell the story of what happened on that fateful day so long ago
*********************************************
This past August, 2011, I once again found myself standing at the base of Mount Charleston. Having learned much in the past decade, both about climbing as well as how to travel without losing luggage, I was ready to tackle the mountain once again.
I carried with me a backpack filled with food, water, flashlights, batteries and enough clothes to overheat an Eskimo. I also had my camera, as well as knowledge about the wreckage that was lying up there close to the summit. I planned to take plenty of pictures.
Since I was actually in better than average physical condition this time due to the marathon training I had been doing I managed to reach the crash site early in the afternoon. Not wanting to miss the summit again, and dreading that another freezing cold wind might blow in, I continued on up to the top, took a few celebratory photos, then headed back down to see some history.
The wreckage was still there, just like I remembered it from before. The mountain is now listed as a National Historical Site so taking souvenirs is strictly prohibited, although that probably doesn't stop some people from doing it. At least it seemed like most of the stuff was still recognizable.
I dug through the pile of debris looking for bits and pieces to photograph and found quite a few interesting things. Most of the metal appears to be aluminum, with a few small titanium pieces mixed in. There was also some steel and iron which surprisingly showed very little rust considering how long it has been exposed to the elements. some of it still looked new. I also noticed that some of the aluminum pieces were partially melted, either from the fire that occurred during the crash or from the demolition that followed.
I can not even begin to describe how eerie it felt to hold a piece of melted metal in my hands knowing that once upon a time it was part of an aircraft flying through the air at close to 300 miles per hour, before plowing into the mountain...and knowing that men died there because of what happened. The fact that it was a clandestine flight to the most infamous military base in the country only made it even more intriguing.
What really took me by surprise is how close they were to making it over the ridge. If the plane had been just ten feet higher, or twenty feet further to the left, they would have made it safely over the mountain and onwards to their secret destination. Ten feet might not seem like much, but to those fourteen men who perished there back in 1955 it made all the difference in the world. It meant the difference between life and death...the difference between making history or becoming a part of it.
As for the fourteen men who died up there, their bodies may be long gone, but they will always be a part of that mountain. The sacrifice they made should never be forgotten...or swept under the rug. They are the silent heroes of the cold war. Even if the official monument never gets built, they will always have one...scattered in the bits and pieces of aluminum and steel that remain up on top of Mount Charleston.
A little over a decade ago I decided to take a short vacation to Nevada and California. My goal was to do a little bit of mountain climbing, starting with an easy hike up Mount Charleston, which is an 11,918 foot peak just west of Las Vegas. It did not exactly turn out to be what you would call an exemplary climbing expedition. Being fairly inexperienced as a climber I was still learning the ropes, so to speak, and I was prone to making novice mistakes...one of which I discovered when I got off the plane in Vegas the morning of what was supposed to be my first climb and discovered that I had left all of my hiking equipment in my car, which was very inconveniently parked at the airport back in Texas. Not good.
After driving my rental car all over creation searching for a store that sold hiking equipment I managed to procure a new pair of boots, a small backpack, some water bottles and a few other odds and ends that I figured might come in handy on my climb. I didn't want to spend too much money since I already had all of the same stuff at home and climbing equipment is not cheap. The boots alone cost me over $200.00. That was close to the total amount of money I was planning on spending on the entire trip. Once again, not good.
After a short drive through the desert and a winding road up to the mountains I finally reached the trailhead at about 1:00 in the afternoon--a little late to begin a hike but since I was in halfway decent shape and the hike to the summit and back was only supposed to take about eight hours I figured I could make it back before sundown. Once again I was wrong.
I had barely gotten to the 11,000 foot mark when I noticed the sun was sinking towards the horizon. I continued pressing on but was starting to get a chill from the rapidly dropping temperatures. It had been a balmy 85 degrees at the trailhead down below but up above the treeline it was closer to 40. Because it had been so nice when I started out I was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt and they were soaked with sweat from the hot temperatures. I had already gone through the two liters of water that I had packed as well.
I was determined to keep going but was soon stopped dead in my tracks by a hurricane force wind that was blasting up over the ridge leading to the summit. All of a sudden I was freezing cold and in danger of getting hypothermia. With the summit in site and only about 20 minutes away I hated to turn around but going forward could have put me in a very dangerous situation. Common sense told me to turn around but my stubborn pride refused to allow me to surrender. I decided to get out of the wind and consider the options.
I traversed over to the other side of the ridge away from the wind and was suddenly surprised to find myself standing in a pile of junk. There were bits and pieces of twisted metal, wires, cables and all sorts of aluminum and steel debris scattered all over the area. A quick examination told me that the metallic mess had once been an airplane...but what the heck was it doing way up there on the mountain?
Naturally curious I started poking around the debris field trying to determine what type of plane it was and what had caused it to crash. It was only when I noticed that the sky was turning to twilight and the sun was going down that I finally dragged myself away from the wreckage. With no chance of making the summit in the gathering darkness and freezing temperatures I finally headed down the mountain and stumbled into the parking lot at the bottom several hours later in total pitch blackness. It had not occurred to me that I might ought to buy a flashlight to replace the one sitting in the car back in Texas. Another boneheaded mistake.
Mount Charleston is one of the few mountains out of the many I have climbed that I was not able to make the summit on the first attempt. It was kind of annoying to me because it is such an easy mountain to climb. The rest of the mountains I failed on were easy ones too. I guess you could chalk my failures up to bad luck and inexperience...or stupidity...whichever seems more fitting. Either way I was determined to someday go back and climb that mountain again...and get to the bottom of that mysterious crashed airplane...
*******************************************
November 17, 1955
A Lockheed C-54 sits on the tarmac at the airport in Burbank, California, it's four engines rumbling steadily in the early morning dawn. It's wingtips and tail were painted red, and on the tail fin were stenciled the numbers 9068. Other than that there was nothing remarkable to set the plane apart from the rest of the aircraft lined up on the runway.
Waiting on board was the Pilot, Lieutenant George Pappas, his co-pilot, paul Winham, and twelve passengers. There was supposed to be thirteen but one of them was late. It looked like he was going to be a no-show. After waiting as long as he thought he could the pilot finally gave the order to close the door then taxied down the runway and zoomed into the skies to the northeast. It's destination...a mysterious place called "Watertown."
The plane was a good one, one of a line of old warhorses the Air Force had dubbed "Skymasters" because of their reliable service during the war. Each of its four engines put out over 1200 horsepower apiece, more than enough to handle just about any task that could have been asked of it. It had always done its job well.
As the plane headed out of town it stayed low, zig-zagging in between the small mountains before leveling off over the flat California desert. It maintained an altitude of only about 10,000 feet...much lower than any normal commercial aircraft would have traveled. As it sped along in the general direction of Las Vegas a strong tail wind help quicken its pace. It was a bright sunny day, with little hint of the danger that lurked just to the west of them.
Shortly after crossing the California/Nevada state line the plane suddenly cut all radio communications and altered its course, heading north into the barren Nevada desert. These were highly unusual maneuvers for a passenger plane, but this was not just any ordinary flight. It's crew was actually a group of engineers and CIA agents heading for a secret base out in the middle of nowhere at a place called Groom Lake. It later would come to be known by another infamous name--Area 51.
The base was originally created as a secret site to test and develop the ultra Top Secret U2 spy plane. Flight 9068 was one of the daily flights that covertly shuttled passengers and equipment in and out of the base. The need for secrecy dictated the false flight plan and radio silence, so the plane could not be tracked to its secret destination by spying eyes. Unfortunately, on this day the extra security precautions would prove to be a fatal mistake.
Little did the pilot or crew know that a huge storm was lurking just ahead of them. As they sailed silently along they soon found themselves blasted by hurricane force winds and pelted with snow and hail. The snow quickly covered the landscape with a blanket of white reducing visibility to almost zero. The howling wind pushed the plane off course to the east and with no ground support to guide them they quickly found themselves dodging the peaks of the Spring Mountain range. They were flying where they weren't supposed to be.
Realizing the danger they were in the pilot broke radio silence and made several frantic calls for help, but nobody answered. Since they had been deliberately flying low to avoid radar none of the surrounding towers had any idea where the plane was, or where it was going. As far as they knew it wasn't even supposed to exist.
As the pilot barreled along through white-out conditions he could only guess at where he was and what was around him. It was extremely dangerous flying conditions and he knew that he was in trouble. Perhaps he finally realized that he had been blown of course and needed to head to the west to get out of the mountains, or maybe he just decided to turn around and head back to California. Whatever he was thinking will never be known because, unfortunately, his last correction put him on a direct collision course with the tallest mountain the entire area--Mount Charleston.
As the mountain suddenly came screaming towards them the pilot pulled back hard on the wheel and jammed the throttle wide-open hoping to gain enough altitude to make it over the peak. The wind came howling in the opposite direction seemingly determined to keep them from succeeding. With gut-wrenching horror they must have finally realized that they weren't going to make it.
One of the propellers dug into the ground then ripped the wing off causing the plane to plow hard into the ridge. The cockpit disintegrated and the rest of the fuselage broke in half and exploded into a huge ball of flames. All fourteen men on board were killed instantly. It was a huge tragedy.
In the days and weeks that followed the military and a civilian rescue team launched a heroic attempt to recover of the bodies of the dead men. Having succeeded the government then tried to sweep the entire thing under the rug and pretend that it never happened. The need for secrecy to protect the U2 project meant that nobody could know about what really happened, where the mysterious plane was heading or why. The families of the dead were only told that the men had died in a crash. Many of them never found out how or why.
A military recovery team combed the area to recover any classified materials that may have survived the crash, then a demolition team was brought in to dynamite what was left of the wreckage and blow it to smithereens. Some of the engines were salvaged to be used for parts on other aircraft. The rest was left to lie there and rot...or be carried away by souvenir hunters. Whatever remained is still scattered over the mountainside today.
In 1998 the government finally decided to declassify the U2 project, and that meant declassifying the plane crash as well. A man by the name of Steve Ririe found out about the crash and created a group called The Silent Heroes of the Cold War which is dedicated to preserving the history of what really happened up there on the mountain. He researched the history of the crash and contacted as many of the family members of the victims as he could find and told them the truth about how and why there relatives really died.
They published a book, written by Kyril Plaskon, called Silent Heroes of the Cold War:Declassified. In it is the complete story of the plane crash as well as short biographies on each of the people who died, as well as the one lone survivor who missed his flight. Ririe and the rest of the members of his group are now attempting to raise funds to build a permanent monument up on the mountain...something that will tell the story of what happened on that fateful day so long ago
*********************************************
This past August, 2011, I once again found myself standing at the base of Mount Charleston. Having learned much in the past decade, both about climbing as well as how to travel without losing luggage, I was ready to tackle the mountain once again.
I carried with me a backpack filled with food, water, flashlights, batteries and enough clothes to overheat an Eskimo. I also had my camera, as well as knowledge about the wreckage that was lying up there close to the summit. I planned to take plenty of pictures.
Since I was actually in better than average physical condition this time due to the marathon training I had been doing I managed to reach the crash site early in the afternoon. Not wanting to miss the summit again, and dreading that another freezing cold wind might blow in, I continued on up to the top, took a few celebratory photos, then headed back down to see some history.
The wreckage was still there, just like I remembered it from before. The mountain is now listed as a National Historical Site so taking souvenirs is strictly prohibited, although that probably doesn't stop some people from doing it. At least it seemed like most of the stuff was still recognizable.
I dug through the pile of debris looking for bits and pieces to photograph and found quite a few interesting things. Most of the metal appears to be aluminum, with a few small titanium pieces mixed in. There was also some steel and iron which surprisingly showed very little rust considering how long it has been exposed to the elements. some of it still looked new. I also noticed that some of the aluminum pieces were partially melted, either from the fire that occurred during the crash or from the demolition that followed.
I can not even begin to describe how eerie it felt to hold a piece of melted metal in my hands knowing that once upon a time it was part of an aircraft flying through the air at close to 300 miles per hour, before plowing into the mountain...and knowing that men died there because of what happened. The fact that it was a clandestine flight to the most infamous military base in the country only made it even more intriguing.
What really took me by surprise is how close they were to making it over the ridge. If the plane had been just ten feet higher, or twenty feet further to the left, they would have made it safely over the mountain and onwards to their secret destination. Ten feet might not seem like much, but to those fourteen men who perished there back in 1955 it made all the difference in the world. It meant the difference between life and death...the difference between making history or becoming a part of it.
As for the fourteen men who died up there, their bodies may be long gone, but they will always be a part of that mountain. The sacrifice they made should never be forgotten...or swept under the rug. They are the silent heroes of the cold war. Even if the official monument never gets built, they will always have one...scattered in the bits and pieces of aluminum and steel that remain up on top of Mount Charleston.