Aircraft Archeology

Teacher’s Novel Hobby Yields Unique Record of Wrecks

In the summer of 1989, a helicopter carrying G. Pat Macha of Huntington Beach and eight other men set down in a high-altitude basin in the High Sierra.

They had landed within 100 yards from the wreckage of a P-40 fighter plane, one of five that had crashed when a squadron of 19 newly built P-40s encountered a severe thunder storm over the Sierra on Oct. 24, 1941.

Although the remains of the pilot, 2nd Lt. Richard N. Long, were removed when the plane was first discovered in 1959, the remote crash site 13 miles northwest of Mt. Whitney would remain undisturbed for the next 30 years.

Until the arrival of Macha and company.

With the permission of the National Park Service, the nine members of the Curtiss-Wright Historical Assn. had come to dismantle the pre-World War II relic: a treasure trove of rare and valuable aviation artifacts that they would use in a P-40 restoration project.

Surprisingly, some of the young pilot’s personal effects were still scattered on the ground, including a bank book, buttons and other parts of his uniform.

“It was really sobering,” says Macha, 46. “Everything was undisturbed for all these years. It’s like time stopped and we were right back in 1941.”

It’s to 2nd Lt. Richard N. Long that Macha has dedicated his new book, “Aircraft Wrecks In the Mountains and Deserts of California” (Aircraft Archeological Press; $17.95 )

The book is a testament to Macha’s unusual hobby: aircraft archeology, a pastime that is only slowly catching on in this country after gaining considerable popularity in Britain and Europe over the past two decades.

As an aircraft archeologist, Macha identifies and documents wrecked or abandoned aircraft. And it was after confronting the wreckage of Long’s wrecked fighter plane two years ago that Macha decided to assemble all of the information he had been accumulating over the years into a book.

The remote Sierra location is one of more than 1,250 crash sites listed in Macha’s self-published paperback, which spans more than 80 years of aviation disasters in California’s remote areas--from a sightseeing hot-air balloon that smashed into the San Gabriel Mountains in 1909 to a Piper Cherokee that crashed into a hillside in the Santa Clarita Valley in 1990.

The book is aimed not only at aviation history buffs, but those who might want to visit the wreck sites. Macha says it also will let sheriff’s departments, the Bureau of Land Management and the Civil Air Patrol know what wrecks exist in their areas.

According to Macha, about two-thirds of the crash sites still contain wreckage. In some cases, the entire aircraft remains intact, oftentimes at the bottom of an inaccessible canyon or overgrown by chaparral.

Macha, a history and geography teacher at Hawthorne High School, said interest in recovering the wrecks has increased dramatically during the past decade among aviation museums and those involved in restoring World War II-era aircraft.

“There’s just no other source of parts,” Macha said. “They’ve become extremely scarce and the cost of fabricating parts and fittings is extremely expensive.”

Removing the wreckage to salvage parts is not without risk, however.

In August, pilot Rory Rogers of Fresno was killed when his helicopter crashed while he was attempting to lift the engine of a U.S. Marine Corps Corsair airplane that had plowed into Sonora Peak in the Sierra in 1952.

Macha said he wrote his book not only to chronicle the approximate location of every known aircraft crash site in the mountains and deserts of California, but to provide information on the causes and factors that contributed to these crashes.

As Macha observes in his introduction, “Unlike freeway automobile accidents that are quickly cleaned up, airplane wrecks that remain for years undisturbed provide us a sobering opportunity to consider the power of nature and the mistaken judgments of man.

“Sadly, the majority of the accidents listed resulted from pilot error, and not from the failure of aircraft systems or structure.”

Through his research, Macha has determined that the greatest number of accidents occur among pilots who have less than 500 flight hours “and then the accident rate improves dramatically until you get out there to 10,000 hours.” At that point, Macha said, a pilot may figure that “he’s done it all” and then fly in unsafe conditions.

Indeed, about 97% of the listed crashes were weather related. “Most of the people who get into trouble are not instrument-rated pilots, and if they are instrument-rated they’re not current: They get into bad weather and they can’t handle it,” he said.

Macha hopes his book will serve to show pilots that they can learn from the mistakes of others: “If you consider your own limitations and training and look at the weather,” he said, “then a lot of times folks need to make the decision to stay on the ground.”

More than 60 of the crash sites in the book are located in Orange County, many of them in the Santa Ana Mountains where veteran movie stunt pilot Frank Tallman of Newport Beach crashed his twin-engine Piper Aztec in 1978.

“He was a great pilot with thousands of hours, but he was flying by the seat of his pants,” said Macha. After an intensive investigation, National Transportation Safety Board officials speculated that Tallman, who crashed during a violent rainstorm, continued flying under visual flight rules rather than relying on navigational instruments.

Macha’s interest in aircraft wrecks dates back to 1963 when he stumbled upon his first wreck while working as a hike master at a YMCA camp in the San Bernardino mountains: a C-47 air cargo plane that had crashed into Mt. San Gorgonio in a snow storm in 1952, killing all 13 men on board.

Since then, he has visited more than 450 crash sites in the mountains and deserts of California. He has also searched for wrecks throughout the Western United States, Baja California and British Columbia and serves as a consultant for museums and aircraft restoration groups, in addition to helping various agencies identify aircraft wreckage. Macha is often joined by his 23-year-old son, Pat, who has been accompanying his father since he was 7.

For Macha, aircraft archeology is an opportunity to combine his lifelong love of the outdoors and aviation.

Like any archeologist, Macha relishes the search and the thrill of discovery.

“It’s like looking for a shipwreck or looking for the ruins of an ancient tribal site,” he said. “They’re a challenge to locate, especially the old sites. It’s a challenge of literally going back into time.”

Although he’s not sure how many people hunt for airplane wrecks as a hobby, Macha estimates there are about a dozen “serious” aircraft archeologists in this country, most of whom “tend to work closely with established museums.”

Alaska is the only state that considers aircraft wreckage a part of its archeological history and it has enacted legislation to protect the wreckage. But because of the increasing value of the rare old aircraft parts, salvage operations are under way all over the country.

In September, plans to remove the wreckage of 60 planes, including pieces of two dozen World War II-era aircraft, from northern Ventura County forests were put on hold by the U.S. Forest Service because of complaints from airplane aviation historians.

Wreckfinders, a Hawaii-based firm, wants to remove all of the wreckage in order to to sell it to vintage aircraft restoration groups. But members of the International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) have asked that the wrecks be left alone until reports are made on their historical significance and completed and assessed by preservationists. The remains of some historic planes, the group maintains, should be placed in museums.

Macha, who is a member of TIGHAR, believes some wrecks should remain where they are.

“I’m in favor of protecting some wrecks as historically significant, especially out of the World War II period,” he said. “It would be not only a monument to the people who perhaps died in the crash, it is part of the history of the mountains.”

Although he serves as a consultant, Macha is not directly involved in the removal of wrecks. “I’ve been a little more of a bookworm on that end of it. I want the best historical and photographic record I can put together.”

During the summer, Macha goes wreck hunting several times a month.

By looking through old newspaper clippings and talking to law enforcement officials, civil air patrol pilots and rangers, he usually knows what he’s looking for, but he never knows what he’s going to find.

On San Miguel Island in August, he photographed and documented the wreckage of a B-24 bomber that had crashed in the fog with 11 men on board in 1943 while on a search mission for another lost plane. The plane had been located before, but Macha found 50-caliber rounds in the sandy soil.

On Santa Cruz Island in September, he found a prohibition-era plane believed to be that of a bootlegger running liquor to Santa Barbara. He also discovered something he hadn’t expected to find: an undetonated Navy missile.

Macha is already making plans for next summer: He’s going to search for the one still-missing P-40 that crashed into the Sierra 50 years ago.

The missing plane was flown by Lt. Leonard Lydon, who proved to be luckier than Lt. Long. After bailing out and spending a week in the wilderness, Lydon and another pilot who had bailed out with him were spotted by a search plane.

But even Lydon’s luck ran out in North Africa during the war, according to Macha.

Late one night, while returning to base, Lydon was told to halt at a sentry post that had not been there when he left. Apparently thinking he was heading into an enemy trap, Lydon continued driving and was shot and killed.