[Phil]

Today Cye and I ripped through Snowfield creek drainage, into Wonder Mt Wilderness, and back. Yeh those horde flies were there TR to come

[Phil]

[mossy mom]

[captain jack]

[Phil]

Capt I'll PM you on some Wonder Mt route things. I've made it in via 3 routes, each with its merits.

[captain jack]

Thanks Phil. I think I've read pretty much everything you, Larry, and Luc have posted about the area on this site. Regarding the F102, the south fork Bogachiel drainage and the Calawah drainage get very little use, nobody wanders around there much, so it could of been lost up there.

[Phil]

[Bright River]

I've just been messaging Once Lost about a crashed F102 that we ran into in the Olympics near Mt Anderson many years ago. It was ONce Lost that pm me asking more about the crash site. I saw the post about the family wanting closure here in this thread. If this is actually the missing plane then it is due to ONCE LOst's credit that he was able to pick up on the story that I wrote put it togetner with the missing airplane report and continue to investigate. I am going to the larger history form here as well as to Once Lost by pm because I think that there must be somebody else that saw the site and took photos. It was the PM from ONce Lost that may have put it together just today as Possibily THE MISSING AIRCRAFT- when he said that it was a F102 and it was missing in Nov 1962. VEry little to actually substantiate however, a photo of the numbers that we saw on what may have been a piece of the tail assembleage and a look around the vicinity for the rest of the wreckage woul dadded more relevant information. SENT THIS MESSAGE TO ONCE LOST TODAY: am sending 3 reports that I have sent to others , most went to Dane ( on list) but I talk about the trip and where I encountered the aircraft and what the topography was . the aircraft was on or near Watterson, on the north side. There seemed to be very few large pieces and the area had little vegettion ( not brushy), but was rocky. At the time I wondered if there had been a fire. I picked up a cone shaped cylinder that was about 10-12 inches long and Monty teased a perfect tail parachute out of it - the parachute was white silk, with yellow 1/2 inch webbing, as I remember it was dated 20 years earlier. This is the webbing that we used for so many rappels - and I still have some of it. Monty, my husband is a former AF fighter pilot, he remembers little of the airplane. However when I asked him if it was Navy. He said "oh, no! I thought it ws a F102 or 106 ,out of McChord." He had flown F102s and He thought that McChord had 106's, he remembers thinking that it was certainly one or the other. Can you tell me what type of airplane went missing and when? Dane went back in that area in the last couple of years and saw the crash site - and I think that he took a photo - I was surprised that it would still be obvious after 30 years ( could it really be that long ago??) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THEN SECOND POST TO ONCE LOST: "Wow, I just reread your post and realized that you had said what the aircraft type was and when it went missing, I have a serious case of goose bumps going on here!! Becasue I did not tell my husband what you had said, I only asked him what he remembered, and what he thought the aircraft was. I had not prompted him, only told him that a guy was interested in the crash. This could well be you missing airplane. The dating on the parachute would put the date about right as well for the crash. And there is the additional factor that Monty has actually flown F102s so that he was not an unknowledeable observer. Monty had also been a aircraft crash investigator and had been in numerous crashes ( including 3 midair colissions, and bailed out also parchuting 3 times), so he was seeing things that you or I probably would not have picked up on. Monty and I just talked about our impressions. There were very few pieces, and not much that was not severely damaged. I picked up the tail parachute cone because it was one of very few large pieces and it was relatively undamaged ,everything else was torn or twisted. There was apiece of a section about 1 1/2 feet square that had a number ( numbers ?) on it, probably part of the tail, all the edges very torn. Monty's first impression when he saw the crash was that the pilot had bailed out. I asked him why he thought that - Because there was so little there. In thinking about it now , it is probable that what we found was only part of the airplane, that the plane had come apart or was scattered somehow, and what we had found were pieces of the tail. We did not look around more and were hurrying to get to Crystal Peak before dark. I have another impression: there were not many pieces and they were all in one area. the pieces did not cover a very large area. There was not a debris trail. It was more like something had fallen, or been pushed slightly upslope. And that there may have been a fire - although I did not think of this becasue of the debris so much ( it could have been burned, because the metal pieces were so badly damaged, and the tail cone could have been blown free) as the fact that the slope was fairly bare, and must have been so until recently because Dane was able to find the crash. See Burke Range story of tranverse under Bright River (end of first page) : https://www.nwhikers.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=410703#410703

[Phil]

May be that it was one of the two F-89s that crashed, the other one being found by the Humes glacier.

[Once Lost]

Apologies in advance for the non-hiking related info below: The notes I have on the F-89 collision between aircraft 54-293 and 54-313, put one of the F-89's 4 miles from the Elwha Snowfinger and the other aircraft near a small glacier on the northwest rim of the Goldie Cirque (I am not very familiar where either of those locations are). I am guessing that the aircraft that Bright River could have come across was another F-102 56-1344 that crashed on 2/8/1964. F-102 56-1344 piloted by 1Lt. John Boutz crashed and was killed on Crystal Peak on 2/8/1964 after SAGE control (Military Air Traffic Control) made a mistake in directing Lt. Boutz. I spoke with a pilot that was flying in the same mission with lt. Boutz when he crashed. This same pilot went back up in a search helicopter and was the one that found the crash site on Crystal Peak. Seattle Mountain Rescue Council assisted in removing Lt. Boutz. Crash site is at approximately 6800 feet, I have a couple of poor photos showing crash site. However I am not familiar enough with the geography of Crystal Peak to know the difference between Crystal Peak proper and Watterson Peak. I believe that one of the possibilities is that the missing F-102 crashed very near an existing crash site, which has prevented the aircraft from being properly identified. If Bright River happens to have some photos of the wreckage with some serial numbers or other identification that could really help in figuring this out.

[Phil]

Once Lost, I think you are on target, per what Cye told me via PM.

[ranger rock]

I see that Cye just got his book published: http://www.amazon.com/Aircraft-Wrecks-Pacific-Northwest-McCurry/dp/1483915751/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366311683&sr=1-1 I'm going out to look at an old airplane crash site this weekend, I'll post a TR on what I find.

[Dick B]

I Will add a footnote regarding the collision of the 2 jets in1954. Our fire crew in Quilcene was called out on that event. They had found one pilot that had ejected, but the fate of the second pilot was unknown. They knew where his plane had gone in as it had started a small fire. We were dispatched late in the afternoon, drove to Hoodsport, then hiked in towards the crash site until it got dark. We bedded down for the night with a crew from another district. The next morning they sent the 2 crews in 2 different directions towards the crash site. Our radio was dropped which broke off the antenna, so we were out of communication with the other crew and the spotter plane. The 2nd crew got to the site before us and put out the fire as we never did see any smoke. The pilot was in the plane when it went in. Our crew never did make it to the crash site. We packed up and headed back to Hoodsport and home that evening. We never did get a report that either plane had caused any fire damage. I assume we are talking about the same event.

[Doug lucas]

I am capt Lucas second son. Why did they give up after only 2 weeks? My dad was in the army for several years before becoming a pilot and was very skilled in.wilderness survival. A lesson. He taught that I always remembered was ; if lost either stay put or follow a stream downward. I imagine he survived long after they gave him up.