The MISSING Plane the Air Force NEVER Found! | AF 2469
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- Опубликовано: 23 дек 2022
- Throughout the 1940s and 50s, an air navigation route known as the Northwest Staging Route earned the moniker “The Alaskan Graveyard.” As aircraft flew from Alaska down to the contiguous United States and back again, hundreds of crashes occurred as low time, inexperienced pilots contended with the worst flight conditions imaginable - we’re talking instrument conditions in the mountains with frequent icing.
As a result, dozens of emergency airfields were constructed, and a robust search and rescue system was put in place due to the sheer number of incidents. When an aircraft went down, rescue personnel typically located it within hours or, at worst, days. So why, when a Douglas C-54 went missing, and the combined RCAF and USAF forces conducted a month-long, 9 million dollar search, was flight AF 2469 never found?
What follows is a DEEP DIVE into an unsolved aviation accident.
PATREON
/ flightdojo
#mystery #aviationhistory #aircraftaccident 
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Great job researching #2469!
A few years after the accident, Robert Espe re-married and they had a daughter, Kathy Espe, who I married. Over the years, Kathy told me about the fact that her dad lost his first wife in a plane accident, but I did not know the whole story. Since then, I have ‘joined the cause’ to find the aircraft.
Ironically, a number of years ago, my pilot friends purchased two C-47 from the Israel Defense Forces. I served as navigator for one of the planes and we almost ended up in the north-sea, between Iceland and Greenland, due to ‘heavy icing’. The Israelis did a fantastic job maintaining the planes, except for the deicing boots, they were non-functional.
This event has had far-reaching consequences, as all such matters should. I wish you the happiest of new years and my best of wishes toward your endeavour.
The plane had a lot of fuel onboard so if the Air Force wanted to find the crash location doing water samples and following traces upstream might find the planes area. Using old water samples might not be as productive since variable reasons to omit some findings are possible. Good luck.
@@nightwaves3203 I am not part of the search. I am a continent away, and you may have miss messaged me?
@@stevenhoman2253 It's to Mike Luers. You might notice your name isn't at the front of the text :)
I hope yourall all the success I possibly can. If US can send Billions upon Multi-Billions overseas & A lot of this is unaccountable, But they can't find it in there budget to bring there own servicemen & women home to there love ones who serve to protect our great nation. Maybe it's time to start elected a whole bunch of new leaders. These poor people has went missing for totally way to long. Specially with all this new technology they just love to brag about. US citizens should come 1st in line not last in line as appears it's has become. That's our taxpayers dollars to start with these fools are just wasting. Please Vote More Wisely Forward.
In the early 70s I was in the Air Force stationed at Elmendorf AFB at Anchorage. One day our Rescue Coordination Center (RCC) received a call from a bush pilot who had spotted what appeared to be a wing tip protruding from a glacier down on the Alaska Peninsula, southwest of Anchorage. We rolled a helicopter and the crew found what proved to be a relatively intact C-118 (DC6) Air National Guard aircraft from the Lower 48 that had disappeared some years back while on a summer exercise. Piecing the story together, it appeared the aircraft had impacted the glacier higher up. Storms had then buried the plane deeper and deeper until the glacier had eventually spit out the wreckage. Easy to imagine that C-54 suffering a similar fate. Perhaps one of these days it will reappear as a glacier moves it downstream. The RCC, by the way, maintained a card file with 3 x 5 index cards. Each card represented a missing aircraft that had never been found. There were several hundred cards in the box.
It seems likely that as glaciers move, whether retreating or not, more of the missing aircraft from the RCC's card file will be revealed. One of them might even be the Cessna 310 that went missing in October, 1972 with two congressmen on board.
@@kennethlawrance201 I was peripherally involved in that search in 1972 being assigned to the RCC to assist with dealing with the media. I doubt that airplane is in a glacier. If you look at the proposed flight path in the flight plan, 95% of the flight was over water. We were pretty sure they got through Portage Pass which put them over Prince William Sound and then Icy Strait when they got closer to Juneau. That water is very, very deep, cold, and remote. Further, a Cessna 310 is a very clean airplane. Unless the gear or flaps were deployed, the consensus was that it could hit the water at a high rate of speed and not shed many parts to be found by searchers. Finally, Don Jonz, the pilot, had written an article which by coincidence appeared in the October issue of Flying Magazine (I believe) in which he postulated that ice accumulation wasn't as big a threat as most pilots would have said. There would likely have been a high likelihood of icing in those October clouds. My theory was that they iced up and stalled, spinning into the water, and the airplane lies thousands of feet down on the bottom of the sea.
@@stevegordenier2104 Yes, the Boggs-Begich flight path was over a lot of deep water, but a fully functioning 310 can handle icing pretty well. I once flew a C-310Q model through moderate icing that lasted nearly an hour. The indicated airspeed gradually dropped from 160 knots to 120, then stabilized there. The props, wings, and tail were able to handle the accumulation, while the ice on the unprotected areas of wingtips, prop spinners, antennas, rotating beacon, and unheated windshield was smooth enough not to drag excessively. (It took me 30 minutes of hard labor to remove it after landing).
A pilot with Don Jonz’s Alaska knowledge and experience would have been more proactive in avoiding an extended encounter with icing than I was on that day. (I, too, remember his article in Flying Magazine, ironically published the same month he was lost). I think some critical malfunction must have sunk him.
I love flying, dreamt of being a pilot as a wee one. Instead, I pressed together wonderbread and Land-O-Frost ham sandwiches for our boys maself, trick was three slices of ham, not just two. That ham is all things and floopy y know. Not a lot of people would do that, most just put the usual two. I put three slices. They cut the shit so durn thin at the ham plant or whatever you could put a stamp on it and put in the mail fer a birthday card. I reckon you fellas would've liked my sandwiches. Hell, maybe fer you boys I'd be willin' to make a whole damned flight meal. I was one of the best the Air Force ever sawd when it came to leavin out the heel from the loaf, that and flickin the pepper packets till theys totally dry. Most just put one pepper packet, and not even all the way flicked out, neither. You gots to flick the pepper all the way out the packet, ya know? Jeeze louise. I flicked out two whole pepper packets dry dry on whatever needed 'em. Put mustard on some of 'em, too. Made sure the boys were nice and bound-up for their flight duties, last thing I reckon a nice tight pilot needed was a case of the runs up there while theys buzzin' around prattlin' bouts stuff in their little cool flip trick radio things what have the foam on the talking piece. Always wanted me one of those radios what have a little box with three or four buttons on the front. Makes a guy feel pretty neat havin' to say say stuff on a radio. They let me use a walkie-talkie once when I had to hustle down to the flight line 'cause 'ol Jazz cabbage Willy "the Perm" Sherm(an) forgot a pilot's Thermos of Kool-Aid. Well, they *almost* was gonna lemme take the walkie-talkie, then theys decided never mind, needed it for somethin' I guess, but I came back and the mic was still danglin' from the little rack thing by the squiggly cord just the same as it was when I left.
If you boys ever fly buzz around down here, I keep the wonderbread fresh at waist level so's it's easier to git to fast just in case a pilot swoops their noisy ass aircraft low enough for me to huck a Land-o-Frost ham and Great Value mustard sandwich up at 'em. I've always had this recurring dream I huck a goopy Smuckers jam sandwich toward the skies and outta nowheres a hairy little arm out the winda of a noisy ass plane snatches it up out the clouds. I got an arm like first-rate catapult boys I just know I could get a sandwich to ya. Maybe even a can of TreeTop, too. Six point four ounce can of cola maybe. Whatever you big 'ol smarty pants pilots want you kin jus holler it down, long as the plane ain't one of those noisy ass ones. Should make a plane more quieter I dunno why they ain't never done that. Okay fellas I think I hear one not too far off now, I think this whole situation here done made me feel like tryin'a huck some shit up at 'em. Hair little arm done gonna reach out and snatch it out the clouds. I kin throw a Ritz cracker damn near a thousand yards. I could whack the pecker off a flea with a Ritz cracker at over a thousand yards, fellas. I kin throw a saltine like a ninja star. I's just foolin' I caint sidewind worth a fuck.
Keep flyin' boys.
That scenario would closely match the circumstances surrounding the civilian version of the Lancaster bomber that disappeared in the Andes only to be found more than 50 years later. It appeared from a glacier after all those years.
As a retired Naval aviator C-54 Plane Commander who actually flew the last C-54 airlift I thoroughly enjoyed your video professionally done. First, the C-54 is probably the most forgiving plane I ever flew. That said it was altitude limited. We carried O2 masks for crew and pax to get to 20,000’ no mention in the video. Deicing boots were only good in moderate icing and required technique or you could build ice in back of the boot. Personally I believe the pilot should have turned around back to known conditions rather than plodding ahead into unforecasted conditions. I never used radio range nav aids which are difficult even in good conditions. Also using magnetic compasses in the far north in IFR is asking for trouble. Looks like stacking of unfortunate events led to the aircraft loss. That said, just turn around and talk about it on the ground. How many hours did the pilot crew have? Hours in Texas don’t equal hours in Alaska.
He said they didn’t have O2 onboard, did not say why.
@@c1ph3rpunk probably they didn't use o2 much in Texas
Yeah, that’s the biggest question for me… why not turn back to snag? In terms of oxygen, the report mentioned they had to stay at 10,000. Would you have had enough oxygen for all 44 passengers and crew?
You have to keep in mind the external pressures that we’re trained to ignore.
I have extensive mountain flying experience in aircraft with similar capabilities to the C-54z
I can’t say that there are times when I probably should have turned around but didn’t - especially in the mountains. Sometimes I figured that staying on the airway was safer than turning around with terrain possibly in close proximity. I powered through the worst storm of my life just desperately trying to stay on the airway. Not my best move.
Class I navigation is all line of sight. There’s no way you would hit terrain while receiving a navaid unless you descended into it.
But back to your point - yes, hours in Texas do not equate to hours in Alaska.
So true Luckey. Things were not so easy then. I'm a Regional jet pilot (early retired) with 14,000 hours. Sometimes it goes ok, sometimes it doesn't. But when it goes well, it goes well slowly- when it doesn't, it goes bad fast.
Well made video, I flew the DC-6 as a freighter and the DC-6 is similar to the DC-4 but the 6 had hot wings and was pressurized. My guess on why it was never found. Bad weather and snow covered wreck and a huge area to search. If the radio was inop and they were able to fly for a few hours or more the area might be as big as Nevada or Ca or bigger. This is a huge area in Canada with a small population so chances of someone finding it by chance are slim. Also there are a lot of lakes south of Snag and a huge lake south east of Snag. I also have flown over Northern Canada and it is hard to imagine how big it is and how little signs of life you can see from the air. I have seen the wreck of a large aircraft in the So Cal mountains from the air and even knowing where it is you will hard time finding it.
It will fall out of a glacier one day maybe someone will see it. That B36 bomber was found . Nice job with the video . Mesmerizing.
I've Been researching and locating military aircraft crash sites in Arizona for almost 40 years now. I totally concur with your findings, You've done a lot of hard work! I hope and pray that the families of the
victims of this missing C-54 can someday have closure. Great video, I applaud your efforts!! God bless you!!
My dad was on the search and felt the plane had pancaked on a ridge nearby and over the years sank into a mountain lake by spring.
As a retired flight surgeon/pilot trained in accident investigation, well done. You are “subbed”. Look forward to more.
There are also the simpler explanations. The report over Snag actually said “we are in the vicinity of Snag” which supports what was widely known - the pilots did not fly the exact airway routes but “cut corners”, visually flying closer to the mountains to save time - only problem being conditions sometimes made the peaks invisible. This apparently caused the crash of a DC-4 flying the same route in 1947 - the pilot ran right into one of the Wrangell mountains. As sometimes seen in other mountain crashes avalanche action immediately covers the debris. The C-54 wreckage could have ended up in a static ice deposit but more likely will someday emerge from one of the Wrangell-St. Elias Glaciers.
Last summer , my wife & I took a 2 month RV trip thru Canada & Alaska. I actually bought a book that coved this ( and other missing aircraft ) . Having driven & hiked there I now have much more respect for the vast distances and lack of vehicle accessibility there. Great job on the extensive work you have done here, I hope that someday the answer may be revealed.
An aerial survey using ground-penetrating radar might offer some clues. Radar penetrates ice well, and is already used to monitor glacier thicknesses. Might even be able to do it from orbit, at least on a scale that would pick up something as large as a C-54.
I subscribe to several disaster investigation channels, and I must say that the level of thoroughness and research you do is unheard of, save for Brick Immortar. Subscribed.
Not the first time I have rewatched this documentary. This is a haunting story that will one day have a conclussion. Well done in your attempts to recreate the flight that must have taken weeks. As the story unfolds you get the sense of growing confussion even with all the resources being made available the weather, terrain and less than perfect technology were getting the best of rescue attempts.
This is the first time I have visited your channel. Impressive research.I can appreciate the obsession with something technical and historic. You never know when or if it may be handy, but if it gives you satisfaction, I am happy for you.
One aircraft was missing for similar reasons in Chile for many years, except that the crew flew above the icing conditions into the jet-stream, which they failed to factor into their navigation calculations. When they descended below the clouds, they crashed straight into the mountainside.
That was, I believe, the British Airways converted Lancaster bomber for civilian use. It eventually appeared at the bottom of a glacier. There was someone of importance on the flite, which led to speculation that the plane had been sabotaged. Same story from the Andes Mountain range? They let down too soon due to a headwind which slowed them and didn’t allow them to clear the ridges.
The plane was called "Star Dust ".
Many years ago I flew air search over the high Sierra Nevada Mtns in California. One winter I flew search at 10,000 to 11,000 feet east of Fresno. I couldn't go any higher. I remember seeing a few trees above the snow. I flew the same search grid that summer and found those few trees were actually a whole forest of trees. There was 30 to 40 feet of snow covering most of the trees. We never did find the airplane we were looking for. Does the snow ever melt at the upper areas of those mountains that far north?
Incredible research and dedication to this incident. I really appreciate your work on this and your other videos.
Great job! I am currently researching a flight that never made it to Fort St John BC in the 1940s and used the Northeast Staging Route. It was a DC3, that they eventually found I think 5 years later!
Before I go and put my big mouth into operation and spout an opinion/theory I would like to say that @ 16:44 I am very impressed by the detailed research and presentation you have made thus far, the graphics are very very interesting and informative, with all the information you have included your research and video compilation must have taken a great deal of time and effort to produce, do you have any idea how many hours it took? Whatever the answer it was very well worth it to us viewers and you should be proud of your work. I am going to watch the rest of your presentation and then put forward my own thoughts 💭 or theories if you haven’t already covered them, onwards and upwards as they say.
@ 32:08 I think that you have covered the most plausible and likely scenarios, but having listened to the many different events that could have occurred in relation to this crash I think that there are too many variables to form a 100% accurate answer, for example in the event that they encountered severe icing the pitot heads might have, despite pitot heaters, partially blocked with ice and made the instruments give unreliable indications that would have made navigation a lot harder to be accurate even completely useless, wing anti-icing boots were the best equipment available at the time and, as you said, were only effective in certain icing conditions and when operated by an experienced crew, combine the icing conditions on the wings and possibly inaccurate instruments and the whole navigation accuracy is dubious at best and lethal at worst, add in unfamiliar terrain and the maximum altitude possible for the aircraft then “departure from controlled flight and impact with terrain” is definitely the most plausible scenario. I noticed from the maps that there were a few large bodies of water either close by or on the planned flight path, it is plausible that they crashed into one of these (if they weren’t covered in very thick ice) resulting in instantaneous death, and even if the lake etc was frozen the crash could have killed everyone onboard then the aircraft could have been covered by snowfall and never spotted from the air, then come the spring/thaw the lake could have swallowed the aircraft never to be discovered.
Anyway, thanks for a excellent video, very interesting and informative. 😀👍🇬🇧🏴🇨🇦 🇺🇸🇺🇦 P.S Subscribed.
Good review and analysis!! A very puzzling story indeed and in my back yard here in the Yukon. The local CASARA organization continues to conduct annual organized searches for 2469 including as recent as this year. There is another "still missing" aircraft along the Amber 2 flight path. In June, 1943 a USAF C-48 air transport with a crew of 3 went missing after last radio contact NW of Aishihik (Tail Number 42-38325). They were south bound in route to Whitehorse (YXY) with a modest load of cargo. Like 2469, nothing has ever been found of the aircraft or the crew (Pilot Gilbert Enger, Co-Pilot Raymond Vanderbush, Radio Operator John Rebus...RIP).
Thanks for your efforts on this mystery. Great work.
clearly months of hard work and research done here and it definitely shows in the final product. great job dude!
I am going to have to watch this one again - complex but intriguing!
Half a century earlier, it was common for people to “find” messages in a bottle from lost ships, they did it for attention. Very possible some of the reports and even radio emissions were of this nature.
Great video, never heard about this incident before
Amazing analysis sir. Thank you for not just regurgitating the standard report and news details.
I’d love to hear you give a similar treatment to the 1951 crash/ditching/disappearance of C-124 49-0244 in the Atlantic.
Really interesting and well done. As a long time Yukon bushrat this story has always fascinated me. I have been fortunate to be a pax on so many older planes used in the north flying to remote locations, often on ice strips. There is a Catalina planted on a remote hill side about 40 miles south of my home. The wreck was a SAR out of Alaska and always haunted me. Thank-you for a great story. Hopefully the real ending is coming soon.
Watched from Jamaca. During WW2 a US navy Kingfished disapeared off our south coast on a clear day with other aircrafts of it's squadron flying in the area at that time. The craft was attached to VS-60 but to make this incident more difficult is the facted that the squadron never filed an historical report. I can provide more imformation.
EXCELLENT investigation, thank you.
Fantastic show. I really enjoyed that.
Very interesting mystery. On the Ham radio side I wonder if they should have had the FCC declare a regional radio blackout during the search, they could have passed the word on the ham bands via emergency services coordinators, Civil Defense and such. I have an old VLF directional beacon radio and I'm always surprised to still pick up airport beacons hundreds of miles away on cold, winter nights.
A very good video - thank you for publishing it.
I don't recall having heard of this one before. VERY informative and VERY WELL put together and presented. Thanks for the upload!!
An amazing job, sir! Thank you!
Very interesting story, very sad though. Thank you for your hard work.
Going for a Hike in Alaska in the Spring, maybe I'll trip over it.
Flight Dojo, after having watched this in-depth investigative report and being a professional pilot, all I have to say is the following; outstanding job, well done, sir. I had to subscribe, so I subscribed.
Just found your channel. Good shit man!
Great video, every Yukoner out in the mountains to this day always have their eyes open, still looking.
OUTSTANDING. New sub👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Great content love watching these shows
Gotta say the video quality and obvious time and effort you put Into this is very very impressive keep up the amazing production quality 👏🏻 🙌 😀 👍🏻 👌🏻 😊
Amazing deep dive and investigation 🙏
Mate your knowledge and dedication to research is an inspiration.
After learning about the navigation tools of the time, fair dinkum I don’t know how any aircraft made it home safely
Very good video thanks I very much enjoyed watching good work sir
Excellent presentation 👍
Amazing research
Many missing planes are just in ice or montains under the ice/snow.
Or underwater. Many have hundreds of pieces laying around.
Great video! Tweeted to my aviation spotter followers.
Great video!!
great theory, amazing details. Thank you for your work!
Magnificent mini doco, Flight Doco. Thank you for your amazing work. I'm your latest Subscriber. - David - Perth Western Australia.
Amazing work. Stellar. Wow.
Well produced. Kudos
In all the years since then some remnants of this flight should have turned up. A truly unsolved mystery.
Supercooled Large droplets would not be understood until after the crash of an American Eagle Flight at Roselawn, when it brought down a regional turboprop. Most likely, none of the weather stations could have factored it into icing reports anyway.
Very well done.
A remarkably clear and concise response using evidence based science. If people would only appreciate the manifold differences between conjecture and the chain of evidence, instead of revelling in self satisfying hoopla. Well done.
They forgot to check the lakes.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Bodies of water are the best at hiding planes
@@BoostedSpeedDemon just a deep drift of snow would do it.
My thought too. I'm guessing it's underwater somewhere. I'd think somebody would've run across it in the intervening 70 years.
A very thorough video where you explore the various alternative reasons for the disappearance and also conducted enough research to be to be able to lucidly explain how the pilots were flying "in the day"
I am left wondering because of the weather and the mountainous terrain that the plane might have entered if it broke up upon encountering Clear Air Turbulence or hit a Microburst as neither phenomena were understood to any great dgree at that time and the pilots might not have recognised the signs and been able to take the appropriate evasive action even if they knew it.
However I would incline to agree with your suggestion that severe icing brought down the aircraft as bearing in mind the metereological conditions at that point in time it seems to be the most reasonable of the explanations.
Excellent, thank you. Just found this channel and subscribed. I wonder whether the second downed aircraft may have reported no food after only one day because the food supplies had been lost in the crash.
Nice job!
Thank you!!
Your channel was on my recommendations, so I decided to give a watch. After hearing the lengths you went to in researching this case, I subscribed. Anyone willing to do all that is someone I want to watch, other videos/topics sight unseen
thanks!
EXCELENT!!! Very well done. I wish you would do the same on the missing flight of Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501. Lost over Lake Michigan and never found. Again, Well Done!
at least all the bodies were recovered and buried in two secret unmarked mass graves, however the next of kin was left in the dark about this....
Great job and research, what sim did you use for the recreation?
It would be interesting to revisit high probability areas using the latest ground search technology Lidar. Eliminating common vegetation and other ground clutter from aerial scans just might indeed reveal an aircraft fuselage or other related components. After the great length of time that has now passed - advanced technology may very well be the only means left to solve this very old mystery. Hopefully, one day it will be found and the remaining family members of those lost can put this tragedy to rest
Thank you for doing this. How many other still missing passenger aircraft are out there?
Quite a lot en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_aircraft
I also believe they got into trouble and tried to make the the airfield at Burwash Landing. Two years ago I posted an article on Wreckchasing Message Board, under general post SiskiyouJ3Kid, about the possible location of C-54D #2469 on the north east side of Mt Hoge, Yukon. That location is about 12 nautical miles from Burwash landing. Google earth shows a tall skinny object sticking out of the snow field/glacier (date 2002). I used the NOAA site and Trig to calculate the height of the object and it came close to the estimated height of the tail sitting on the ground. What is very interesting, is there is a 20+ ft "X" left of the supposed tail out of the snow field! What is even more interesting but a little harder to see is the vertical word "SAVE" left of the X! A Website called MIA Recoevries supposedly has been to the Mt Hoge location, and has more information.
Outstanding job with your analysis/investigative work. Me ... 16K hours ... much in Queenairs. And yes ... a MAJOR problem we were very conscious of, was cointinuing in moderate to heavy icing. The boots worked okay ...but as noted in the vid commentary and illustrations ... ice absolutely CAN build up .. BEHIND the boots. The Queenair has a characteristic that when even light icing begins ... the airplane wants to come off the step, and settle slightly tail low allowing the "underwing" (and out of sight !!) icing to develop. Boots help yes ... but are not a sure-fire fix ... you just get out of the icing!! These guys were in such horrendous conditions (but almost normal for the "up country"!!) ... that perhaps there simply was no way out. Sorrows and much sympathy for the lost!! Flying the north country is definitely NOT for the inexperienced ... !!!! Very close friend used to fly ANG C-54s up to Alaska and back. And swore you can be flying in CAVU weather one minute .. the next in some of the worst IFR anywhere. All due to North Pacific 'boomers" blowing in from the north Pacific ... constantly. Surely ... some day ... some hunter, etc. ... will stumble across the wreckage. Really sad, sad story.
That’s what happened at Roselawn, with the early versions of the ATR 72 and ATR 42 aircraft.
18:52 you suggest that HAM Radio operators were interfering on the same frequency as the distress signal. This did NOT happen. Amateur radio operators LISTEN on emergency frequencies of other services, but maintain their communications in the AMATEUR bands, where they're legally licensed to do so. The nearest band they would have been operating, was at 7100kHz, but at that time of year, it would have been more likely 3.885Khz or 1.9KHz. The amateur radio affiliate organization Civil Air Patrol was specifically active for this purpose, their SAR radiolocation nets were well documented in both practice and operational record.
From a radiolocation perspective, the Amateur Radio Service operators were much more likely to produce accurate positional data than any other, but suggesting that they were interfering on the aviation beacon frequency (outside their allocation) is just blatantly wrong.
Distress beacon from the AN/CRT's output, under high-lattitude winter/nighttime circumstances, would be basically ineffective for signal reception by ANY mobile unit, as nighttime winter atmospheric conditions generate natural interference many orders of magnitude GREATER than the hand-operated transmitter and basically worthless antenna could generate... to be even SLIGHTLY effective on 8200KHZ, the antenna wire would need to have been at LEAST 120ft long, and for 500KHz, it would have needed to be a whopping 1970 feet. Combine this with the aerial search aircraft generating enough internal RF noise to drown what WOULD have been audible, and you've got a failed radiolocation plan. Only stationary sites with very large antenna arrays would have had the chance to hear an AN/CRT-3 at that lattitude, season, and weather, and probably only IF there weren't scores of aircraft flying around willy-nilly. Downed aircraft beacons were all moved up to over 100 MHZ specifically for atmospheric, and performance reasons.
That seemed like a weird comment in the video, I'm guessing there was some exhaustive list of possible (not necessarily probable) factors and HAM operators may have been mentioned.
I mistakenly attributed the pollution on 8320 to ham radio users. The report mentioned that reliable repite ok that frequency were impossible due to too many people (probably rescue forces) constantly clogging the frequency
The first act that if ammateur were transmitted out of licensed frequency was left his operation license... Ammateur guys are just acostumated to do some help on localizing left persons, cars or even aircrafts all around the world, I'm a licensed ham operator - PU4 CHT - and cb - PX4A 7800 on Brazil since jul. 1995.
A very concise and detailed answer sir. Thank you for your input.
Emergency Locator Transponders have been around since the 50's but weren't mandatory until after a politician went down in Alaska in 1973 and was also never found.
We are losing much bigger airplanes today without a trace so I'm not surprised we lost many airplanes decades ago. It a frozen wasteland in Alaska most of the year.
We have several, Amehlia Earhart and even today, Malaysian airlines flight 370 thats never been found proving it still happens.😊
I really enjoy your videos. Just thought I'd say.
thank you!
Second this
Don't think too much :)
From what I remember, the ‘legend’ at Elmendorf AFB is that the lost C-54 Skymaster is in one of the two bodies of water near Carcross. Either that North or West of the town. Basically because this is the only area left, as pretty much ALL of the search area had been covered by several separate rescue sorties.
There were several avalanches in the search area. But in the ensuring years, the areas these avalanches were in proved out to not be a crash site.
Pronounced Yakutat, not Yukatat. Mt. Crillon is in the Fairweather range. The plane likely impacted a glacier at elevation, and is by now covered by hundreds of feet of snow. Some day it could exit the snout of a glacier or become visible with significant glacial melting with a warming climate.
just looking into mt mertha and kathleen peak... those are a couple of dangeous places to go down in, would take a team of dedicated expert climbers with a lot of metal detectors to sweep that area, but the area around the creek might be where they ended up trying to get to or land in, either way it seems like a rather desolated area to go down in
Great video.
most shots were msfs2020, some were Il2, the B-17 shot was DCS
@@flightdojo Thanks
They were flying 1000' above MSA, in IMC and Heavy Icing (they said). That tells me all I need to know.
well reported. search location from the air is typically unfruitful in the wilderness. Very sad.
Great video but sad story. Like you said most likely the wreckage will never be found except by peer accident/luck.
Well a somewhat similar accident occurred some years earlier on a flight to Chile from Argentina of British converted Lancanster bomber operating a commercial flight with just a few passengers. The crew had started a descent without taking headwinds encountered and struck a mountainside where it was buried in a resulting avalanche which wasn't discovered for another 50 plus years when melting during summer an Argentine army crew discovered Rolls Royce engines. large tires, and other debris which could only be the missing flight.
You're thinking of the crash of BSAA 'Star Dust', although the Avro Lancastrian was a development of the Lancaster bomber, the aircraft wasn't a conversion. Apart from that, you're correct, it took something like 50 years for the debris to be expelled by the glacier. BSAA also lost Star Tiger and Star Ariel which were Avro Tudors.
@@MorristheMinor Ooooohh god bless BSAA becasue nobody cares and god bless Avro becasue thats a cool name if you like people thinking you are a car rental company so god bless Lancaster and bombers becase without bombers how would we kill eachother so god bless god for being a sadistic slut and god bless angel dust
@@TimPerfetto Ach, I'm glad somebody got a good bottle of whisky to see in the New Year. Mind you, I bet you've got a right sore head this morning.....😁
@@MorristheMinor Achhhhhh god bless you aand your whisky and god bless new years and god bless heads and sores opohhhhhhhhhhhh
Excellent presentation. Is there any type of modern technology or equipment that could use magnetic waves or Ground Penetrating Radar that could locate a large assembly of metal such as a crashed aircraft… even beneath snow and ice?
Awesome video I’m a private pilot flying around Southern California so we don’t have similar weather conditions but everything I know about when aircraft go missing they are extremely difficult to see from the air and with the delay of the search due to weather it’s fair to assume that the C54 was covered with snow. I can’t imagine how they suffered hearing aircraft flying overhead and not being found. Maybe with Global Warming many of these missing aircraft will eventually be found. Thanks.
Operation Mike. Guy went down on plane was from like 15 to 17 miles from my own home I use live at years ago. Strange they had countless emergency signals but never could figure it out if its was true or false signals. Icing appears to myself the most reasonable cause. My wild guess it's buried in snow pile on a side mt. I hope they find them. A great reading mystery. As retired now everytime I see this I usually reresearch this mystery again.
I have been up there , you could walk right over top of it and never see anything ,
Very interesting, yet sad, video. I was looking at Google Earth after watching it and couldn't help but notice the many bodies of water along that route. Unfortunately, one of the many lakes or large rivers may be the final resting place of this plane, crew & passengers.
And btw. I think one picture of the video is from a 1968 wreck in a swiss glacier that resurfaced last summer. I fly in Switzerland.
very fair prestaion
A great job of research but I wonder if they might have gone down into a lake or river somewhere. There are a lot of lakes that could easily cover a plane up even one of that size.
I don't know enough to have an opinion so RIP everyone aboard the flight.
Heavy icing even in modern aircraft has to be exited as soon as possible. Modern deicing isn't a guarantee of defeating the icing. Weeing wings and such are good but heavy icing has to be exited. I think it figures they altered for a lower altitude and possibly airfield. If heavily iced and they slowed down iced up it will crash the lane since ice spoils lift.
Whether this observation might be significant, I don't know, BUT the snow covering the mountainous terrain in this video is not at all realistic in that there will always be snows dumped down to cloud heights from the mountain tops. IOW, snow depths are greater in the higher altitudes due to more frequent snow-bearing cloud coverings. If you'll watch some mountain of your choice get overlain by a snow cloud covering, you'll notice the cloud layer descend from on high down the sides of the mountain to some specific altitude while dumping snow not visible from the side the entire time. Then some time later the cloud cover lifts and you'll see snow covering the mountain side down from the peak to the level the snow cloud descended. This happens repeatedly throughout the snow season, leaving a very discernible difference in snow depth throughout altitude. I suggest this may factor in to any mid-winter mountain search.
I am surprised they don’t use Google maps with the technology to search for the plane locations
Sounds like a great late summer adventure project....the snowpack will likely be at a mjn by Aug 2023
I pray for the aircraft and the deceased remains be located. Great research. Thank you I have to wonder if the area you finally selected as respectably feasible is visited by hunters, trappers, etc. Also, since some satellites might have metal detecting and other data gathering capabilities ... I wonder if they might cast their eye across the region.
Funny to see Texarkana on the old film reference.
@flightdojo , I'm a historic researcher from New Zealand and I've just found a short clip in this video from a 1939 documentary about the Royal Mail in your video at 18:56 which depicts a man sitting at a wireless transmission set being handed a telegram for transmission.. just wondering how you obtained the footage? It doesn't appear in the original 4:3 ratio or show the watermark.
Let's go look for it,
The more I see about this i can't believe that they didnt investigate the crash sounds reported at Watson lake , it could have easily gone through the ice and frozen over very quickly