Why don't we start a documentation of Past Crash Sites?

[Major Carrales]

I know we have lots of things on our plate,  but, don't you think it would help out a lot if we could document, on a chart or something, all the crash sites that already exist.

Maybe we can do it as a CAP-USAF mission?  Produce SAR charts that indicate this sort of thing. 

Is this already done...and if so, why are these "false finds" being reported as such an issue?

[JC004]

AFRCC has such a list

[Trung Si Ma]

When I was an MC in AKWG in the late 70's we had such a list

[RiverAux]

The AFRCC crash finder is available online at their website but for many, many older crashes the "locations" they give are so vague as to be absolutely useless in terms of separating out the wheat from the chaff.  

Plus, that crashfinder database is only as good as what goes in it.  From what I understand they'll input crash sites they were involved in searching for or that are reported to them by reputable sources.  However, if an airplane crashes and the response doesn't involve them, they probably aren't ever going to know about the crash site.  

It is a very imperfect tool.

[Smokey]

Word I heard is NVWG had a list, but some of those located were not on the list.  Could be they are crashes that were never located.  Supposedly a ground crew is going to check each site and log the info and possibly solve an unsolved missing aircraft incident to boot.

[BillB]

What is the link to the AFRCC crash finder??

[Major Carrales]

I can't think of a better training mission that to have new Aircrews locate and photograph old crashes.   

How many time have any exercises actually taken place in areas like the one's where S. Fossett is supposed to be?

How about the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas where there was a search earlier this year?

[sardak]

The lists, organized by state, are not complete.  For whatever reasons, some crash sites are not in the lists.  And at one time, the exact coordinates weren't entered into the database, just the coordinates of a corner of the CAP grid in which the crash was located.  Some wings have tried to keep the lists updated themselves.

In some places ground team trainings involved going to crash sites and marking them with an X or something else. The idea was so that from the air it could be seen that someone had been there, i.e. this was a known crash.  However, paint wore off or the wreckage got flipped over by the wind and the markings weren't visible.  A lesser problem is that there are some "crash zones" where checking any wreckage is a good idea, even if thought to be old.

There is or was a US Forest Service policy that crashes after a certain date on national forests had to be removed.   I don't know that always happened.

And in a moment of open admission of stupidity, Colorado Wing was activated last month for a sighting of a possible crashed airplane.  It was indeed a crash, but one the wing has searched for and successfully found twice before.  The first time was in 1999 when a save was awarded.  The crash is on private property but not on the crash locator.  The proper solution is to ask for permission to remove the wreckage.

The national crash locator from AFRCC is at the bottom of this page:
http://www.acc.af.mil/afrcc/annualreports.asp

Mike

[RiverAux]

Well, I once thought that, but many of the crashes are only located to the minute level:  75 degrees 16 minute West, etc.... and the fact that many of them are decades old (as old as the 40s) and probably aren't even there anymore doesn't make them very good targets anymore.

Now, for the ones with the bad coordinates you might try to access the NTSB accident database for that crash and they might have better data.  

Now, I have been in a place where there was a great old crash site that was regularly used as a target.  

[RiverAux]

If you know about the location of a crash have your Wing submitt it to AFRCC.  They will update their database. 

[RiverAux]

AFRCC web site with crash locator: http://www.1af.acc.af.mil/units/afrcc/

[flyerthom]

NV has a fairly through list and we use those old wrecks for training scanners and observers. But the areas are full of old crashes from years ago from old WW II training bases. We use some the old strips for photography training. The mountains claimed many planes  from before the data base. Some divers recently discovered a B-29 on the bottom of Lake Mead!

[baronet68]

I have a copy (somewhere) of the WAWG/Washington State DOT crash site archive dating back to the 1940's.  We've built SAREX training flights around attempting to locate these crash sites.  After flying over dozens and dozens of the locations we found that about 80% of the crash sites have been either removed during logging operations or the area has been developed (homes/schools/etc.)

WAWG does have an interesting SB-17 crash site.  The plane crashed in a remote mountain area the 1950's.  With the airframe almost completely intact and easily visible from the air, the USAF painted big red 'X's on the wings/body so pilots would know it was an old crash.  During the 1970's so many private pilots were calling it in as a 'new' crash that the Army sent a team into the mountains and blew-up the airframe.  Today's aerial view of the site looks like a pile of refrigerators and sheet metal but if you hike into the site it's pretty cool.

[CadetProgramGuy]

I looked at the file, massively large and fairly unusuable.

What i would suggest is that you work on your own state logging all the sites using Google Earth or some other GIS database.

Maybe you can then get a feel for the 'Problem areas' your state has.

Just a thought

[RiverAux]

I don't know how long they've had the crash database in this format, but I can't imagine why, even back in the bad old pre-GPS days they would only record degrees and minutes for the crash site location.  They could have been more precise and I don't understand why they wouldn't have been. 

[CadetProgramGuy]

I don't know how long they've had the crash database in this format, but I can't imagine why, even back in the bad old pre-GPS days they would only record degrees and minutes for the crash site location.  They could have been more precise and I don't understand why they wouldn't have been. 

I have another issue....

They claim for Iowa only three crashes back to 1975....Thats a little off......

[RiverAux]

Since we've established that the database is missing all sorts of crashes, it definetely wouldn't be a bad idea for Wings to, when time and money allows, to send an airplane or ground crew back to a fairly recent crash that they worked (and that they obviously have their own location info) to find out whether or not the wreck was cleaned up.  If it hasn't been, then it should definetely be submitted to the database.  Hard to say what percentage of crashes are cleaned up enough to no longer be a factor and what ones are left to rust. 

[w7sar]

It's a great idea and a useful resource.
when I was Utah's ES officer in the late 70s and 80s, I would get calls from various sheriffs or hikers coming across wreckage.  All I had was the AFRCC list for Utah and it often did not have the crash on the list.

I learned that the AFRCC list had ONLY crashed that the AFRCC was involved with (i.e. CAP usually, military sometimes).  If a crash happened and was located by a sheriff or non-AFRCC resource, the site wasn't logged.

So I set out to research old crashed.  I used newspaper archives from several papers, FAA and pre-FAA reports, unclassified military reports, CAP archives, etc. and created a listing of over 1,500 crashes in Utah dating from 1941.  When I finished it in 1991, I had a several inch-thick book (Titled: 50 years of downers) and each crash had a paragraph and as good a lat/long as I could determine.  It wasn't perfect, but it saved a lot of work when someone would come across an old wreck. 

I also plotted every crash on maps (used the USGS 1:100,000 maps) and made briefing books we could use for search missions.  Each grid was labeled with lat/long and other info.  The resulting grid was about 8 x 10 and could be copied and given to a crew.  As they flew the grid, they had a good topo map of the grid with which to plot leads, and they had a graphic plot of known crashes.

Sure, a lot of the sites were gone. But, there were still many left.  There was a lot of upside to the project.  I developed an "historic probability of crash" (HPOC) based on historical crash data -- giving some grids greater values than other grids (useful for a route search where you have NO leads).  In short, if (over 50 years) one grid had no crashes and another had several, the latter grid had a higher HPOC value and would be searched first -- IF -- you had no leads and no other relevant data (weather, etc).

The downside was that it took over 10 years to complete.  It's an intensive project from a time perspective.  Imagine doing all states, especially states with more aviation traffic than Utah.  It would be a daunting task.

As to AFRCC data.  I offered it to them and it was declined.  Too much data to include.  They do have a copy of my "book" but it's not in the list you find online.  As to FAA data.  It's only good from when the FAA was formed and the data is non-digital from early years -- i.e. one looks through microfilm.

Military records were once easier to search.  With HLS concerns, they are not as easy to use for research.

So....great idea, time intensive.   But, in Utah we have data that's pretty accurate to 1941.  I did find a lot of data going back to 1930 and included it, but I was so burned out I didn't continue.  I've also not updated it since 1991 as most of that to current is electronically available.

Jerry Wellman
Utah

[RiverAux]

If you've got that document, or major parts thereof in electronic format, I would be very interested in seeing it. 

[w7sar]

Electronic format? No.
Actually, I did enter all of the crash locations (lat/long) into a Radio Shack TRS-80 using a BASIC program I wrote so I could sort the data -- which allowed me then to plot them into grids. 

When it was all finished (the book, that is; the maps took another three years to finish) I had 10 copies bound (all at personal cost, CAP=come and pay). Five of the copies were donated to area libraries (U of U, SLC, SLCounty), one copy went to AFRCC, one copy went to RMR commander Col. V. Smith, I kept one copy, I gave one to the Hill AFB museum and the final copy went to CAP HQ.

When the project started, there were no computers -- so each page was typed and corrected.   I was thinking of converting it to an electronic format, but the OCR software wasn't too good a couple of years ago so I did not  proceed.  I work for a newspaper, so I used our typesetting equipment for some of the headers  and titles.  the mix of type caused the OCR to not read the data reliably. 

In the past four or five years, I've been unable to find the envelopes containing the original sheets.  I still have the bound book (as, I presume, the libraries and others) but have been unwilling to slice the book to get good scans.

I have in the past couple of months started the process of searching through old "stuff" and perhaps I will find them.  I found a dozen or so boxes of old photo negs and have scanned 14,000 images (really!)  About half of them are old CAP photos including crashes, encampments, etc. from the Utah/Wyoming/RMR units.  I was especially pleased to find the first CAP find I was involved with in Casper, WY back in 1972.  I was able to compare the AFRCC (and Wyo Wing online) crash locator with my photos because I had a shot showing the tail number.  That brought back some good memories.

So, eventually I will find the envelopes and will convert them to .PDF format.  I did find all of the maps I did and could send you a couple scans of the crash plots.  My scanner isn't able to hand the 8.5 by 14 sizes, but I could do a two-part scan and you could see.  I can also scan in a year from the book and you could see how the data looks.  I'll keep looking -- meanwhile, the data is used by Utah Wing (when they remember it is in the EOC).

Jerry Wellman, W7SAR
Utah Wing (and SLC C4 director)

[RiverAux]

I suppose that won't be necessary.  Was this for ALL airplane crashes or just those that resulted in a search? 

[KyCAP]

Just completed the AFRCC Search Management Course today.  I spoke with Allan Knox from AFRCC training who is a trained SAR Manager for AFRCC.. He's a very knowledgeable guy and basically I understand that they SHOULD be logging ALL of the crashes they are working.

I let him know that I am aware of two that I was involved with (one as the IC last year the other as Planning Section in 2004) that were not on the list as of this morning.   He said to give them a ring at AFRCC and let them know of the crash sites and they should definitely update their list.

I got the impression that they would update the list for others as well if we were certain of the crashes.   They want the sites because they are working on research for NTAP to crash site comparison for SAR training update in FY '08.

[RiverAux]

It only takes a cursory look at the list to see that they have not come anywhere close to keeping this list up to date with crashes found as a result of an AFRCC mission.  He may have thought it was being done, but it certainly isn't reflected in the publically available list. 

[KyCAP]

It seems that way.

[cnitas]

Was this for ALL airplane crashes or just those that resulted in a search? 

After looking at the MD list of crashes, I would guess that it is just those that resulted in a search.   This is based upon my being involved in the search in 1/2 the listed crashes on the list.

I know there were other crashes that were not listed and did not involve searches.

There was only 1 search I could remember that was not listed, and that was recent (last year).

[Hoser]

The problem with the AFRCC Crash Locator Database is that it is not very precise regarding the lat/lons listed. In MO we have tried to find a couple from the air both with the Mark I eyeball and ARCHER and found nothing. I can't speak for everywhere else but the wrecks listed for MO are old, in the neighborhood of 15 plus years. Some were near airports and probably picked up and not reported to anyone. Those not picked up have probably been cannibalized by the Jim Billy Bobs of the area and that's not accounting for the weathering of the wrecks. I can't imagine the amount of work and money entailed to reassess the Crash database and bring it up to speed. If anyone can figure out how to come up with that much money, please share the wealth. It has invaluable training potential for air and ground crews. Much better than the old airplane shaped blue tarp.

Hoser