Backpacking to find the B-17 crash site:
The Boys are ready to go!!!!
The past couple of summers we have been traveling abroad and have not really got to enjoy our backyard called Wyoming and the surrounding states of Colorado and South Dakota.
So this summer we will be doing some local adventures. Some of these trips will be with our new camp trailer and some will be backpacking. This trip will be a backpacking trip to the Comanche Peaks Wilderness Area, located in the Roosevelt National Forrest in Northern Colorado.
We will be hiking into the site of a B-17 that crashed during WWII. Here is the information I have gathered thus far.
It was on June 13, 1944, an Army Air Forces B-17 flying a training mission out of Rapid City, S.D., went off course and slammed into a snow-covered mountainside. According to newspaper accounts and ColoradoAirCrashes.com, the olive drab Boeing B17F Flying Fortress was returning to Rapid City during nighttime training when a navigational error sent the plane some 70 miles off course.
After a crewman spotted something nearby in the darkness, the pilot switched on the landing lights only to see "the forest-covered mountainside just ahead,”. The pilot immediately pulled up, applying full power, but as the plane's nose pulled upward, the planes belly slammed into the mountain. The crash happened about midnight. Both pilots and the navigator were killed instantly, but the emergency maneuver spared the lives of six of the remaining seven crewmen.
At daybreak, two of the least-injured survivors set off for help, hiking for 14 hours through snow and dense forest before reaching fishermen who drove them an hour to the nearest phone, located at a Fort Collins bar called Ted's Place. (Ted’s Place has a good bit of history and was an iconic establishment till the late 1980’s)
One of them, Cpl. LeRoy Faigin, later told the Helena Independent-Record that he phoned the air station in Rapid City for help and also called his wife, who had been told that her husband was presumed dead in the crash. "When Bernice Faigin heard her husband's voice, she nearly dropped the phone," the newspaper reported.
The next day, Lt. Amos Little, an airborne-qualified doctor, made history when he parachuted from a circling UC-54 to deliver medical treatment to the injured men.
The daring jump was recognized as the highest-altitude landing of its day, according to a July 10, 1944, “Time” article, and it's remembered as a precursor to modern search-and-rescue efforts.
"When the main rescue party arrived by land, nearly four hours later, the patients had been fed, bandaged and drugged to ease their pain," the magazine reported.
During WWII, Colorado offered tactical advantages for training because its landscape - the meeting of the plains with the mountains - was similar flying conditions in Europe and parts of the Pacific.
The crash was caused by a wrong estimation of altitude during a night navigation training flight. The aircraft was at 10,000’ and the terrain was roughly 13,000’.
Survivors were: Cpl. LeRoy Faigin, Cleveland, OH, Cpl Lester Place, Corpus Christi, TX, Cpl. Max Weiner, Philadelphia, PA., Sgt Donald E. Jacobs, Philadelphia, PA, Sgt. David Phillips, New York, 2nd Lt. Harold Eisele, Rochester, NY.
There were four casualties: 2nd Lt. Drury Holt, Columbia, S.C., 2nd Lt. Doyle J. Hall, Clinton, S.C., Cpl. Daniel Conway, Troy, NY, FO Timothy O. Hurst, Oklahoma City, OK.
In preparation for this trip we dug out our old backpacking gear. It can be said this is a retro backpacking experience we are embarking on. Yet we do have a new larger tent so as to accommodate us and The Boys (our Malamutes). The Boys have new packs they received as their 2nd birthday presents.
Kenai is having no issues carrying his pack, while Sitka is another story. Sitka acts as if he has been burdened with a ton of gear. Their pack will only weigh about 6 pounds and as 75-80 pound dogs hey should be able to carry 25 pounds about 1/3 of their weight. Their packs will be filled with their food and water.
I have loaded the GPS with Topographical Maps and marked the crash site coordinates. I also will be carrying a paper map and compass as a backup for navigation. Our hike into a camp site will be a bit over 6 miles, and at this time we will be flexible in wether to locate the crash site on the way in or as we hike out. I hope to visit on the way in but we will see.
Our menu will be simple, lunches of PB & J Crustables trail bars and breakfasts of oatmeal and warm beverages, dinner will be a pasta with cheese, broccoli , and tuna, dessert will be cookies. The MSR stove will be used for cooking and boiling water as this is a wilderness area where no fires are allowed.
For a camera I will just be carrying my aim and create Olympus. As this is bear and lion country we will be wearing bells and have bear spray and another deterrent device handy.
The trail is described as having some nice views and we will be above 10,000 feet most of the time.
Stay turned as we chronicle this overnight trip.
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