Sunday, April 21, 2024

Thanks to John for sharing this memorial about a B17 crash site in Oregon's Blue Mountains, and it's crew!

 


B 17 42-30655 crashed on training flight in Oregon mountains 33 miles from the base near Pendelton, a bomber training site during the war

The US Government retrieved the bodies of the crew and left the wreckage of the bomber at the crashsite.  It seems that the wrecks are never cleaned up by the govt. 

1st Lt Lewis Hubbard, Navigator
1st Lt Francis Stephenson
An engineer in the Army Air Corps, Lt Stephenson had been a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers while attending the University of Illinois. He took his basic training at Rantoul. He was also stationed at Rapid City, S.D., and New Haven, Conn.
1st Lt Walter Fitzmaurice, Eng
Mstr Sgt Phil Rogers

This airplane is Chapter 6 of the book Aircraft Wrecks of the Pacific Northwest, By David L. McCurry, Cye Laramie, Dan Thomas Nelson



there's a website made by a guy who is tracking down all the Oregon plane wrecks, and there are a lot of them, besides this B 17, there was a P 38, and an A 6, and a Hellcat on Deadman Mountain, there are at least 24 WW2 era crash sites in the Blue Mountains area


A6 above, and P 38 below



and another B 17 crashed on Cape Lookout


myself, I feel the govt is responsible for the equipment it knows of that litters the planet, as a result of crashes, or as a result of wars. There are many crash sites, on mountain sides, in swamps, in lakes, etc etc that the govt has never bothered to remove.

After all, try and tell the govt that you'll be expecting them to ignore the aircraft you relocate from some crash site to your museum or home.... and you'll see them get mighty protective of their ownership of the planes. You know?

But tell them they have some plane crashes to clean up, and they'll give you the I don't think so, "it's not in the budget" dead shark eye look while they wait for you to move along.

The govt has turned a blind eye to the crashed Army Air Corps planes for about 80 years, but if its YOUR cars and trucks in your back 40, that are on someone's hit list, you can guess who gets fined by the day until abandoned cars are removed.

2 comments:

  1. Here in Maine we have a B52 crash site on Elephant Mountain, I checked it out a couple years ago being former USAF. https://visitmaine.com/things-to-do/hiking-climbing/b52-crash-site

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    1. Yes, I heard about that years ago and posted https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2019/03/in-january-1963-b52-was-damaged-by.html

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