The Sierra is a graveyard for aviators who misjudged its dangers — or simply ran out of luck. The Bee and fresnobee.com is exploring the stories and mysteries of lost flights over California's signature mountain range. Follow the series here, and send questions to reporters Mark Grossi and Cyndee Fontana on the Lost Flights blog.
The AT-7 military trainer that slammed into Mendel Glacier in November 1942 is just one mysterious casualty among many in the Sierra. Were the four airmen aboard really lost? Did the military lose track of them? The Bee, along with writer Peter Stekel, hiked to the glacier to look for answers. Read story
The Cessna crashed almost upside down. Over the next 15 days, Gene Ebell and Robert Starr survived an incredible ordeal. And those close to them demonstrated the power of friends, family and faith. Read story
Every so often, the water in Huntington Lake drops low enough to reveal a legend. Resting in the deep is a World War II bomber -- at least what's left of it. Read story Menu of all Lost Flights stories
A Mammoth Lakes hiker claims to have found adventurer Steve Fossett's identification papers near the area of Minaret Lake.An Inyo National Forest official confirmed that the report had been made, but the items had not been turned over to local police yet. Police officials have not responded to phone calls. Reports from people in Mammoth Lakes indicate there was a sweat jacket and a small amount of money. None of those reports have been confirmed.Colleague Cyndee Fontana and I wrote a story about Fossett's disappearance for the Lost Flights series. Read the complete blog post
The AT-7 military trainer that slammed into Mendel Glacier in November 1942 is just one mysterious casualty among many in the Sierra. Were the four airmen aboard really lost? Did the military lose track of them? The Bee, along with writer Peter Stekel, hiked to the glacier to look for answers. Read story
The Cessna crashed almost upside down. Over the next 15 days, Gene Ebell and Robert Starr survived an incredible ordeal. And those close to them demonstrated the power of friends, family and faith. Read story
Every so often, the water in Huntington Lake drops low enough to reveal a legend. Resting in the deep is a World War II bomber -- at least what's left of it. Read story Menu of all Lost Flights stories
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The hike to Mendel Glacier
AUDIO: Military historian Anthony J. Mireles talks about crashes in the Sierra: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4AUDIO: Forensic anthropologist Paul Emanovsky talks about the remains found from the 1942 Mendel Glacier crash: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5AUDIO: William Ogle talks about his father, Charles, who vanished in a plane over the Sierra in 1964: Part 1 |
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6AUDIO:Barbara Adams shares a childhood memory of her cousin, William GamberAUDIO:Pilot Larry Jobe on flying a United DC-8 that hit a "mountain wave" updraft over the SierraAUDIO:Pilot Larry Jobe on how
winds flow over Sierra like currents of waterAUDIO:Author Peter Stekel on
searching for plane wreckage and lost airmenDOCUMENT:Military report on Dec. 6, 1943 crash of B24 into Huntington LakeDOCUMENT:Military report on Dec. 5, 1943 crash of B24 into Hester LakeDOCUMENT:Military report on
Nov. 18, 1942 crash of AT-7 on Mendel Glacier
On Nov. 18, 1942, a twin-engine AT-7 Beechcraft carrying four airmen vanished over the Sierra while on a navigation training flight. Military officials searched for a month before abandoning any hope of finding 2nd Lt. William Gamber and cadets John Mortenson, Leo Mustonen and Ernest "Glenn" Munn.
In 1947, two mountaineers spotted wreckage on Mendel Glacier in Kings Canyon National Park. No bodies were recovered. In 2005, ice climbers found mummified remains later identified as Mustonen by military forensic anthropologists. The body of Munn was discovered in 2007.
Here are stories from The Bee's coverage as the crash recovery unfolded (original publication date noted).
Oct. 20, 2005: Remains from WWII crash in Sierra recovered Nov. 13, 2005: Mystery on Mount Mendel Feb. 5, 2006: Frozen WWII airman identified, kin say Aug. 21, 2007: WWII aviator found frozen on Sierra mountain Aug. 22, 2007: Discovery of airman's body stirs hope, tragic memories Aug. 26, 2007: Writer recounts discovery of WWII aviator in Sierra Feb. 13,
2008 Airman from WWII glacier crash identified Standing on wind-swept ice at 12,500 feet, the mystery of a 1942 military plane crash at Mendel Glacier seems a lot less mysterious.The glacier -- in a brutal mountain wilderness -- is where four young airmen died. Five years passed before hikers stumbled across the wreckage. More than six decades later, two bodies emerged from the melting glacier, eerily mummified in ice.Back in 1942, military authorities suggested that the twin-engine AT-7 had flown 200 miles off course during a training mission on the west side of the Sierra Nevada. It vanished in a storm.Today, based on location of the crash site at Mendel in Kings Canyon National Park, it seems more likely that the plane came from the east on an entirely different course.In the process, the aviators probably encountered one of the biggest storms of the century.The flight on Nov. 18, 1942, is just one casualty among many in the Sierra. Hundreds of military and private planes have crashed in the 400-mile-long mountain range, trapped by some of the world's most dangerous winds, sudden storms, no-way-out canyons or their own mistakes.Like many lost flights, the 1942 crash left more questions than answers.Were these four airmen really lost? Did the military lose track of them, not realizing they were on a different training flight on the other side of the mountains?Looking for answers, The Bee hiked last week with Seattle writer Peter Stekel to the glacier as he continued researching a book on the crash. Stekel, who last year found the second ice mummy at Mendel Glacier, said there is more to this story than military accident and search reports show.During the four-day hike to Mendel, Stekel said letters from the airmen mention destinations east of the Sierra. He said he believes they may have been flying a route that the military did not report.He also said the pilot, 2nd Lt. William Gamber, probably was an elite aviator-instructor, not just another young flier.Weather appears to be the biggest factor in the crash. Fresno meteorologist Steve Johnson said the wind in this storm probably peaked at 150 miles per hour, creating an epic blizzard as Gamber's plane approached.Said Stekel, "Bill Gamber was a good pilot who was caught in a very bad situation."Salt Lake or Lancaster?Cadets John Mortenson, Ernest "Glenn" Munn and Leo Mustonen flew with Gamber to work on their navigational skills. The three cadets were together because the military grouped them alphabetically for training.Just a few days before their final flight, the temperature had been in the 80s, according to meteorologist Johnson. Weather forecasting was still in its infancy, so there was a good chance that no one predicted the immense storm that was forming.Gamber's flight began at 8:30 a.m. from Mather Air Base near Sacramento. The sketchy military accident report from the 1940s said the AT-7's course would take it over Los Banos and then back to a Northern California destination called Corning in Tehama County.The military accident report does not explain how the flight became lost and wound up on Mendel Glacier.But Stekel said there may have been some kind of mix-up in the military accounting of Gamber's flight. Other than the accident and search reports, the military records of the era were destroyed, so the plane's actual course cannot be confirmed.Stekel said he thinks Gamber flew east out of the Central Valley toward other training destinations on the east side of the Sierra, such as Salt Lake City and Lancaster in the upper Mojave Desert.The military report said the plane had five hours of fuel -- more than enough for the trip to Corning.He said it seems unlikely that an experienced pilot flew around the Valley, lost his way so badly and nearly spun a U-turn in the mountains to strike Mount Mendel.The more logical explanation would be a course through the Owens Valley, to the east, on a direct and tragic path to Mendel.He said his scenario makes more sense than the military's explanation."I think it's a better theory than just saying the pilot and crew were lost," Stekel said.Gamber had more than 700 hours of flying, and more than 500 hours in the AT-7, according to the military accident report. Experts say those totals are more than adequate to qualify Gamber as a well-trained pilot. Many pilots were sent into World War II with far fewer hours.Stekel said the better military pilots often were not sent into battle during World War II. Instead, they were kept as instructors. He said Gamber probably was among them."Gamber knew where he was on Nov. 18," Stekel said. "He knew what he was doing."Retired Lt. Col. Donald Satterthwait, 85, a Clovis resident who navigated combat missions in World War II, said he does not believe Gamber's flight could have been off course so far from its Corning destination."They had three navigational cadets aboard, and all of them were navigating with their own set of instruments," he said. "I don't think they all would get it wrong."Another explanation is that sometimes after missions, pilots would go on joy rides. But I'm not sure this was a joy ride if there was a big storm."If Gamber were trying to cross the Sierra from east to west, Mammoth Pass would be a logical place, because it is a low spot in the range, experts say. But the storm would be an impenetrable wall at that location, Johnson said.Gamber would have had to skirt the bad weather. He would have had to turn south toward Bishop.Storm of the centuryMeteorologist Johnson, who manages a Fresno cloud-seeding business called Atmospherics Inc., didn't use the words "perfect storm." But the five-day event in California during mid-November 1942 was pretty close.The storm combined moisture from subtropical Pacific Ocean typhoons and a frigid weather system from Alaska -- a volatile one-two punch that often sets precipitation records and causes flooding. Such storms usually occur in January.The day before the AT-7 crashed, the storm dumped 3.5 inches of rain at the south entrance to Yosemite National Park. The next day, the rainfall total at the gate was more than 7 inches, the all-time record for Nov. 18 at that location. It's a record that still stands."With that kind of rainfall, you know there were at least 8 feet or more of snowfall up above 10,000 feet," Johnson said.November records were set all the way to Canada, where Edmonton recorded nearly 16 inches of snow.During the storm siege from Nov. 14 to Nov. 19, moisture pumped into California from several typhoons, which are known as hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean.It was a record year for typhoons in the subtropics of the Pacific, said Johnson. There were 37 such storms during 1942 -- well beyond the average of 21.The typhoon moisture was caught in the Earth's jet stream and taken thousands of miles east into California. That moisture and the cold front met with frightening results in the Sierra on Nov. 17 and 18.The combination created what Johnson called "cyclogenesis" -- the birth of a new storm in the Sierra. It probably spawned much-feared winds, called mountain waves, and sideways mini-tornadoes, called rotors, which appear on the east side of the Sierra.The extreme turbulence at the 13,000-foot elevation on Nov. 18 would be hard to describe, Johnson said.The turbulence could easily rip apart a plane flying where the storm was born. The AT-7 was in that vicinity, traveling east to west right into the teeth of wind that might have been blowing 150 miles per hour.Said Johnson: "They picked the wrong day to cross the Sierra."Back at MendelIn September 1947, when the plane's wreckage was first discovered and inspected, recovery crews found both engines buried in the ice. Only the nose section of one engine was visible in the upper third of the glacier.Conditions at Mendel were considered so dangerous that the ground party spent only three hours at the crash site. There was far more ice on the glacier in the 1940s, making it more slippery than it is today.Now, both engines sit mostly on top of the ice between rocks. Other parts of the plane have submerged in the glacier, which is shrinking but still estimated at more than 200 feet in depth.Since 2007, more ice has melted at the glacier after a dry winter. In addition, the glacier's movement has broken one of the engines into two parts, which are about 50 yards from each other.Last week, in an icy September breeze, Peter Stekel hustled around Mendel Glacier, searching for more clues to the crash in Kings Canyon National Park.He found what looked like a section of a wing, as well as various other pieces of aluminum scrap. But he did not find the bodies of pilot Gamber or cadet Mortenson, the last two missing airmen.Stekel said he isn't sure he will ever find their remains.Later in camp at Darwin Canyon, Stekel said he could imagine the scene on that day when Gamber's plane cleared the spine of the Sierra, perhaps near Lamarck Col at 12,880 feet elevation.Mount Mendel, which peaks at 13,710 feet, is about a mile west of the crest. In Darwin Canyon -- wedged between the crest and Mendel -- it is clear that Gamber would have had little time to react."I think he came right over the crest somewhere along in here, and that big wind hit them head on," he said. "It stalled his plane so he could not climb or maneuver around Mendel. He didn't have a chance." Gene Ebell saw treetops and knew he was in trouble.Ebell, an insurance agent in Fresno, was a passenger on a flight to Elko, Nev. He was headed to pick up the body of his uncle, who had recently died.But over the stormy Sierra, Ebell watched ice build on the wings of the single-engine plane.The Cessna lost altitude, clipped several trees and crashed almost upside down.The pilot was dead. But Ebell, 34, and 17-year-old high school student Robert Starr lived through the accident.It was Jan. 11, 1970. Over the next 15 days, Ebell and Starr survived an incredible ordeal. And those close to them demonstrated the power of friends, family and faith.Searching for lost friendsBack in Fresno, Bob Thomas heard chatter about a missing plane carrying his friend, Ebell.Thomas, then a circulation district manager for The Fresno Bee, met Ebell when both worked at the newspaper in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Ebell bought Thomas his first beer; they were poker buddies.Now Thomas was worried. He and a few other friends decided to help look for their friend.Glenn Noble walked away from a job at a box factory. John Norton's boss at a local grocery store told him to take as much time as he needed.Said Norton: "There's not many people in your lifetime that you would do that for. ... But it was something that you thought you had to do."Ebell's friends headed to Jackson, east of Sacramento in the northern Sierra. Authorities believed the plane crashed 40 or 50 miles from the small town based on its flight path and last radio transmission.Naively, Thomas thought they'd find Ebell and be back to work the next day.Poor weather hampered both ground and air searches. Days dragged on with no success. Some local officials were pessimistic."We'll find them when the snow melts," Thomas was told.For friends and relatives of all three missing men, that wasn't good enough. Some had no confidence in the official search; Thomas simply didn't believe local authorities were looking at all.The volunteers from Fresno crafted their own plans.Crash in the SierraStarr, a student pilot, was just along for the ride that day. The McLane High School senior dressed in slacks, shirt and tie to look professional as he rode alongside the pilot, Donald Shaver.Starr watched as the plane became little more than "a flying ice cube" over the Sierra. The Cessna was at an altitude of 12,000 feet -- about 1,000 feet below the minimum federal safety standard for the area. The plane dropped another 4,000 feet as the pilot turned back.Like Ebell, Starr could see treetops. Then, a ridge materialized from a cloudbank.The plane hit four trees as it crashed into the ground. Starr smashed into the instrument panel, gouging his face and left eye. He crawled out the broken windshield.In the back, Ebell hung upside down from his passenger seat. He released his seatbelt and dropped to the bottom of the plane.Ebell coughed up blood; his chest and abdomen ached. He crawled out of the plane, but Starr helped him back in.Neither was dressed for snow. There was no food on the flight.All they had were their wits.Hampered by weatherFrom Jackson, authorities outlined a search area. News accounts said the pilot radioed an alarm near Echo Summit in El Dorado County; officials focused on territory roughly around the El Dorado/Amador County line.But Thomas and others developed a slightly different plan based on radar reports showing the plane might have disappeared close to Highway 88. The group pinned a map to a motel room wall and concentrated on 20 or 30 miles along the highway.With local volunteers, they set out in snowmobiles and four-wheel-drive vehicles. They tore maps into pieces and handed the bits to searchers.But weather was a constant enemy. An Air Force search-and-rescue effort was suspended Jan. 18. Some volunteers from Fresno had to go home.After about 10 days, the group was short of cash and worried about chances for survival. They decided they needed a helicopter to conduct a closer search.Friends and family of the three men set up a trust fund and raised nearly $1,000. It wasn't the $1,500 needed for two hours of airtime, but Thomas rented the helicopter anyway.Stranded for two weeksIt snowed for 11 days after the crash. The cold and lack of food might have killed some. But Starr had the gift of youth; Ebell was a runner and in good shape.In those days, Ebell said, people who saw someone running on the street expected to find a police officer chasing them. So he ran laps in the backyard.The conditioning helped, Ebell figured, as did a bit of gluttony the night before the flight. He'd eaten four bowls of a friend's bean casserole.In the Cessna, Ebell and Starr huddled together for warmth. They stuffed their clothing with the plane's insulation and foam padding from the seats.They tried to eat toothpaste and captured rainwater in air sickness bags.The hunger wasn't as bad as the cold, or the thirst, Ebell said. He gave up -- but only briefly. He thought about his wife and two young sons.Ebell prayed, but not for rescue. He wasn't extremely religious and thought that would be selfish. So he prayed for guidance on how to help himself.On the 11th day, after the sky cleared, Ebell and Starr tried to walk out. The snow was knee-deep, and they turned back.Exhausted, they took a few days to recover. On the 14th day, Starr hiked out -- taking the plane's compass with him."It was either stay there and die, or walk out," he said.Starr walked in a circle. Just before stopping for the night, he saw smoke billowing from a stand of trees in the distance. He couldn't reach it or see the source.Helicopter rescueIt was Jan. 26, and the Fresno volunteers bet all the cash they had -- and some they didn't -- on the helicopter. They sent it toward an area where smoke had been spotted by search teams.Within a few hours, the helicopter crew saw Starr and radioed word of survivors. Said Thomas: "We jumped for joy -- it was like hitting the lotto."To his friends at the airport, Ebell didn't look too bad. Padding masked his weight loss, and he could walk gingerly."I remember grabbing him and giving him a big hug," Noble said. "Then someone said: 'Don't squeeze him too much, he's got some broken ribs.' "There was never any explanation for the smoke that brought the helicopter to Starr. But the area was within the volunteers' search grid.Both Ebell and Starr were hospitalized. Starr's black feet worried the medical staff until they discovered that the dye from his socks was responsible.Both had frostbite. Ebell lost the tips of several toes and suffered nerve damage in his feet.On Jan. 30, four days after their rescue, Ebell and Starr returned to a joyous welcome in Fresno. Hundreds of people, including the McLane High School band, packed the airport as Starr and Ebell were wheeled into ambulances that took them to Saint Agnes Medical Center.Recognition of sacrificeIn the weeks after the crash, Ebell wrote dozens of thank-you letters. He felt changed -- able to see the world more clearly and appreciate the simplicity of nature's beauty.Two or three years after the crash, Ebell and his friends went back to the site. The plane had been removed in 1970, but bits of plastic and metal still remained.On the 20th anniversary of the crash, Starr called Ebell and the two spoke briefly.Starr, now 56 and living in San Ramon, worked a few years as a mortician. He then joined a manufacturing company and moved around the country. He even became a flight instructor -- using his own crash experience to convey the dangers of icing.Ebell, who owns an insurance office in Clovis, never thought too much about the crash. But a few years ago, he woke one night with an inspiration.He wrote a letter to five friends who helped save him and invited them to lunch. There, he handed each $3,000 and refused to take it back.The dollar amount held no special significance, said Ebell, now 73. It was just what he could afford -- a recognition of their sacrifice and an invaluable bond.Said Ebell: "I really didn't realize I had so many friends." Every so often, the water in Huntington Lake drops low enough to reveal a legend.Resting in the deep is a World War II bomber -- at least what's left of it.On Dec. 6, 1943, the B-24 Liberator and its crew of eight left Hammer Field in Fresno to search for another missing bomber. Less than 40 minutes into flight, it crashed -- sinking into Huntington Lake.Six men died that day. Two parachuted to safety.For nearly 65 years, people have been fascinated by the facts as much as the legend. Was the pilot trying to land on a frozen lake? Why did only two of eight men bail out? How much of the bomber remains in the lake?Some questions can't be fully answered -- such as why six men rode the plane into an icy grave. But mystery may explain its enduring appeal.Over the years, many have tried to learn more. A fourth-grade class delved into the accident as a research project. Salvage crews have brought up engines and other pieces. An aviation buff hoping to launch an air museum sent in divers as recently as this past weekend.Some, however, say the B-24 rests just where it should. That's an opinion shared by George Barulic, the last living survivor of the crash. "I think it should be left alone," he said.The flightOn Dec. 5, 1943, a B-24 flying out of Hammer Field vanished on a training flight somewhere in the Sierra. Officials mounted a search-and-rescue effort the next day, sending out close to a dozen planes just after 9 a.m.The B-24 piloted by Capt. William Darden was next-to-last in formation, according to a military accident report. He began to run into mechanical trouble as the plane peeled away from the group.The bomber began losing altitude near Huntington Lake, which sits at 7,000 feet about 65 miles northeast of Fresno.Darden ordered his men to bail out. But only Barulic and the co-pilot, 2nd Lt. Marion C. Settle, were able to scramble out the open bomb bay doors."When I jumped out, I hit the back underneath the plane," said Barulic, 86, now retired in Florida. "I pulled the rip cord, and I couldn't have been more than a few hundred feet from the ground."Barulic landed at the edge of the lake and soon spotted Settle. Both were uninjured. But the plane was gone."I looked out, and I could see an oxygen tank floating" on the lake, Barulic said.Legend has it that Darden tried to land on an ice-covered Huntington Lake, mistaking it for a snowy meadow.That is disputed by the accident report and Barulic, who said in a recent interview: "It was not frozen over at all."Military officials searched the lake for weeks, finding oxygen cylinders, an engineer's jacket and other debris. Broken in three big pieces, the plane had sunk to depths of 120 to 150 feet.Crews returned in May 1944 to drag the bottom of the lake. But they encountered an unusual obstacle -- trees.The nearly 90,000 acre-foot lake was formed in 1913 by construction of three dams. But workers didn't clear all the topped trees from the reservoir before it was filled."The plane is in a pincushion," said Fred Ilchert, who belongs to a Huntington Lake historical group.In 1955, Southern California Edison dropped the lake level for dam maintenance -- revealing pieces of the old bomber embedded on tree trunks. An Army team was dispatched to recover the bodies of the six crew members, well-preserved in the icy water.Raising the bomberIn 1980, Fresno promoter Gene Forte sparked renewed interest in the old bomber with a well-publicized salvage attempt.Forte told reporters then that he hoped to recoup a $100,000 investment by setting up a "Liberator Historical Faire" in Prather and charging $1.50 admission.But the enterprise collapsed in a contract dispute between Forte and the salvage crew. Still, some pieces of the bomber -- such as engines and a wing -- made it to shore.One small piece is part of a restored B-24 at the Castle Air Museum in Atwater.Today, Forte lives in Los Banos. He was among the more than 100 candidates for California governor in the 2003 recall election -- finishing toward the bottom. He wasn't the only one who tried to raise the bomber. Nine years later, a Navy dive salvage unit inspected the wreckage to determine whether anything could be raised.Another private salvage attempt followed in the early 1990s but was abandoned after a few days.This past weekend, Matt Finnegan continued his quest to raise the bomber. He and a volunteer crew of divers went down to find and film the old wreck in the lake surrounded by pine forests and granite peaks. Sunday, Finnegan said they were unable to locate any pieces of the wreck. He plans to try again. Finnegan, 38, has a longtime interest in the B-24 that began when he was a student at Sierra High School in Tollhouse in the late 1980s. Finnegan, who has served in the Army and National Guard, set up a nonprofit organization to launch the Fresno Air Museum. He believes that Fresno needs its own place to preserve and relate its military history.For now, he tells people that the museum exists "wherever I'm standing," but is working to lock down up to 5 acres for a site.He wants to restore the B-24 and create a memorial to the 461st Bomber Group that was stationed at Hammer Field during World War II. With so few B-24s remaining, Finnegan said the old bomber shouldn't be left to rot away.Not everyone agrees. Some Huntington Lake residents say the bomber is covered by a new law that protects sunken military vessels and aircraft.Ilchert, a board member for the Huntington Lake Big Creek Historical Conservancy, is among those who prefer that the bomber remain undisturbed. "We have tried to see that everything stays there," he said. Ilchert and other locals consider the plane a military burial spot.Don Jordan, co-author of "Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts of California," questions any salvage attempt. He said the tail section, cockpit, gun turrets and engines have already been pulled out."There is some of it down there and I've heard people talk about raising it," Jordan said. "But there isn't enough to be raised."A class legacyIn 1989, a fourth-grade class at Big Creek Elementary School took on the B-24's story as a research project. Students wrote letters seeking information about survivors and the crash.Two years later, the class displayed its research and helped unveil a memorial plaque at the Eastwood Center near the lake. Barulic, the last survivor, praised the students' work and said the memorial might not exist without their dedication.He has been to the lake several times to pray, remember his fallen crew members and drop blessed religious medals into the water.Today, the story of the 1943 crash is part of the Billy Creek Museum at Huntington Lake. Ilchert said the "bomber room" also includes donated artifacts from the B-24, photos and a painting of the plane.The display is one of the most popular in the museum. The old bomber, Ilchert said, "is one of the mysteries of Huntington Lake." The creeping shadow of World War II ignited a national push to churn out planes and pilots in the early 1940s.Lured partly by cheap and vacant land, the military planted dozens of bases and auxiliary fields across California. Thousands of would-be aviators flooded the state -- and the Central Valley -- to learn how to handle fighters, bombers and transport planes.With vast stretches of flat ground and mainly calm weather, California was considered an optimal place to train pilots.But many young men never made it overseas; they were lost instead to training missions across the rugged Sierra Nevada.Some confronted bad weather. Some were careless. And some were victims of both the elements and their own inexperience.No one knows exactly how many World War II aviators crashed and died in the Sierra's 400-mile expanse. Anthony J. Mireles, author of "Fatal Army Air Forces Aviation Accidents in the United States, 1941-1945," counts more 2,200 fatalities throughout California.In "Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts of California," authors G. Pat Macha and Don Jordan describe more than 100 World War II fatalities in the Sierra.Neither list is exhaustive. Jordan figures that hundreds of military planes crashed in the Sierra during World War II. He pointed to tricky weather, inexperienced pilots and complex planes with limited navigation and safety systems."They were putting 19-, 20-year-old kids behind the wheel of some powerful airplanes and putting 10 men in there with them," Jordan said.Some Sierra crashes are legendary, including two B-24 bomber accidents that happened on back-to-back days in 1943.On Dec. 5, a crew of six vanished on a training mission that left Fresno's Hammer Field for Bakersfield, Tucson, Ariz., and then back to Fresno. Other pilots reported turbulence and clouds in the Sierra that day.The B-24 wreckage wasn't discovered until 1960. All six men were killed; the plane still rests in Hester Lake, a 12,000-foot-high icy pool near LeConte Canyon in eastern Fresno County.Nearly a dozen planes took off the next day to search for the missing plane. One B-24 crashed into Huntington Lake, killing six of eight crew members aboard. The two survivors blamed mechanical problems, but one also reported gusty wind.Radio operator George Barulic, the last living survivor of the crash, doesn't remember any wind that day."Things happen," said Barulic, 86, now retired in Florida. "It's the nature of life, especially in wartime."In the 1940s, aviation was relatively new. Daniel Sebby, director and curator of the California State Military Museum in Sacramento, said many Americans could remember the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.Flying "was still a thrill, still a dangerous thing to do," he said.To feed the war effort, military plane production mushroomed from about 20,000 in 1941 to roughly 96,000 in 1944, Mireles said. Some were being fine-tuned even as they rolled out of production.Would-be aviators were college students or graduates -- mainly athletes and overachievers, Mireles said. But as the war continued, and the need for aviation cadets grew, authorities loosened entrance requirements."They needed a lot of pilots and they needed them quickly," said Joe Pruzzo, executive director of the Castle Air Museum Foundation in Atwater.At each of three levels of training -- primary, basic and advanced -- about a third of the cadet class would wash out, Mireles said.Also at each level, planes became more powerful and complicated, and the aviation problems more complex. They also could be less forgiving of mistakes.Charlie Sill, who piloted a B-24 in 47 missions over England, said most training planes weren't tough to fly.An exception was the AT-9. Sill described its reputation with a bit of humor: "If one [engine] failed you, the other one would fly you to the scene of the crash."Sill, 84, completed pilot training in Texas; he now works on the restoration crew at Castle Air Museum in Atwater. He said flying the B-24 was like driving a truck because of the strength it took to control and maneuver.World War II training planes were hardly high-tech marvels, Sebby said."At the primary and basic level training, they [aviators] were lucky to have a radio," he said.Dozens of Army Air Forces and other bases opened in California during the war years, including Hammer Field in Fresno, the Merced Army Air Field (later renamed Castle) and the Lemoore Army Air Field.Harold Horg, now a volunteer at the Legion of Valor Museum in Fresno, took basic training for the Army Air Corps in a BT-13 in Lemoore. Horg, 85, said his training flights soared over the Valley."Back then it was all farm land," he said. "It wasn't difficult if you had to go down" in a forced landing.B.A. Hansen, 85, took the cadet exam and entered the service in 1942. He flew fighter planes at the end of the war and ultimately retired as a lieutenant colonel.During basic training in Merced, Hansen flew a BT-13 over Half Dome just to take a look."Maybe I wasn't aware that it's not a good thing for young pilots to do" because of the tricky weather, said Hansen, who lives near Winton in Merced County. "I don't think they knew about all the problems that they've had over the years."In the Sierra, storms appear out of nowhere. Fierce winds can drop a plane hundreds of feet. Mountain passes mask dead-end canyons."You've got to get higher than the mountains, and flying in clouds you can pick up a lot of ice" and lose lift on the wings, Mireles said.Weather likely factored into the November 1942 crash of an AT-7 that smashed into Mendel Glacier. Four aviators died in the crash; the wreckage wasn't discovered until 1947.Even then, the bodies couldn't be located in the rugged terrain. Two airmen, Leo Mustonen and Ernest "Glenn" Munn, were found on the glacier over the past three years.Retired Lt. Col. Don Satterthwait, 85, of Clovis, learned to navigate in an AT-7, similar to the one that crashed on Mendel. He flew 25 missions in World War II and remembers the AT-7 as a sturdy plane."It could fly on one engine if it had to," said Satterthwait, who completed his pilot training in Texas.The Sierra continued to claim military lives even after the war. In March 1946, 26 men died when their C-47 transport crashed near Truckee -- described then as one of the worst peacetime plane disasters in history.The plane carried high-ranking Army and Navy officers and many enlisted men headed for separation centers for discharge. Eyewitnesses said the plane "exploded like a puff of fire" and spun into a pine-covered Sierra mountainside.Jordan believes the plane was caught in a thundercloud and then a downdraft that ripped off a wing. He calls it "a famous Sierra scenario ... It can tear an airplane apart." It is already autumn in the land of granite and glaciers.The sky is cobalt and the cold landscape seems lifeless, more than two miles above sea level. But sparse life does exist -- elegantly adapted to this alpine wilderness.And it already is hunkering down for a long winter.Killing frosts become frequent in September above 12,000 feet in the Sierra. The wind blows more consistently. Blizzards are only weeks away.The Sierra crest in September is as far as you get from California's profile of surf, sun and sand. It is a place most tourists will never see. In fact, most Californians will never see this up close.When the alpine winter arrives -- sometimes as early as October -- no deep snow drifts accumulate on the very peak of Mount Mendel, which rises to 13,710 feet.Why? The wind averages 50 to 75 miles per hour in winter storms, scouring snow from such tall peaks."It's one of the harshest environments in California," says William Tweed, author, naturalist and retired staff member at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.Mendel's neighborhood is in the highest of the High Sierra -- there are more than 100 peaks taller than 13,000 feet. For comparison, Half Dome in Yosemite National Park is 8,836 feet above sea level. That's almost a mile lower than Mendel.The range's alpine region is considered arid. The daytime temperatures climb high enough in July and August to melt away most of the snow, except in protected bowls, or cirques, where glaciers reside.The melting snow runs away quickly down steep canyons and sheer rock faces. Soils are generally thin and don't hold water well.But there are glacially carved basins and benches -- low spots -- where soil can collect. They provide the best opportunities for plant growth in summer.For six to eight weeks from July to late August, herbs, shrubs and other vegetation peek out from between the rocks. Some of the hardiest plants include alpine fescue, a bunchgrass. Many grow close to the ground, taking advantage of the warmth in the rocks.In boulder fields, you can see the blue wildflower known as sky pilot. It has a skunklike scent.Trees and large mammals generally are not found in the highest of the High Sierra. The air gets too thin and temperatures too low for trees, and there just isn't much food or protection for large animals.The critters are small, such as the alpine chipmunk and the yellow-bellied marmot. You might also see birds such as the gray-crowned rosy finch, which forages on ridgetops above 9,000 feet.In sheltered granite bowls that face northeast, the sun does not shine more than a few hours a day. That is true at Mendel Glacier, say some who have hiked them.Author Peter Stekel visited the glacier in August 2007 to search for the site of a 1942 military crash, and he found the mummified body of one airman.Stekel described the scene on his Web site:"Not a tree, not a shrub, not an herb or a blade of grass or a tuft of sedge. There are no mosses or lichens. I kick at a rock but it doesn't move. It's still embedded in ice." As a boy, Donnie Priest always seemed hot. He often kicked off his shoes on trips -- even a flight over the snowy Sierra.So on Jan. 3, 1982, Donnie only wore socks on his feet as he dozed in the single-engine Grumman AA-5B piloted by his stepfather, Ron Vaughan. Also aboard was his mother, Lee.He didn't feel the impact when the small plane smashed into a snowy slope near the northeastern edge of Yosemite National Park.His mother and stepfather died. But Donnie, 10, was rescued after five freezing days."The odds were between zero and next-to-zero," said Priest, now 37. Both frostbitten feet had to be amputated above the ankles.It's tough to survive both a violent plane crash and the rugged Sierra in winter. Storms can keep rescue aircraft grounded for days. From the air, it's not easy to spot a downed plane amid trees, rocks and snow.Survivors make news. Pilot Peter DeLeo wrote a book about his 12-day odyssey to safety in 1994. Air Force 1st Lt. David Steeves raised headlines in 1957 with his harrowing 54-day tale of survival. And Oakland artist Lauren Elder said she still gets occasional e-mail and calls from people fascinated by her 32-year-old story.In April 1976, Elder was sightseeing over the Sierra with friends when their single-engine plane hit turbulence and smashed into Mount Bradley, roughly 75 miles east of Fresno. Her two companions died within hours, leaving Elder alone on a freezing, rocky slope blanketed with icy snow. Her left arm was broken.Elder, who had rock-climbing experience, kicked off her high-heeled boots and managed a 10-mile, barefoot descent from about 13,000 feet. She spotted planes far overhead, but realized: "I'm this little ant in the desert. ... I can see them but they can't see me."Elder hiked another 10 miles into the small town of Independence, unsettling residents with her grimy, bloodstained appearance. She later became a symbol of female grit -- her book, "And I Alone Survived," was transformed into a television movie.Stuck in the planeA few years later, Donnie Priest was the story. In 1982, he and his family were headed home to Orinda after a holiday visit to Oklahoma.When the family stopped at the Mammoth Lakes airport to refuel, Ron Vaughan asked for -- and was refused by flight controllers -- a direct route over the stormy Sierra Nevada.In the air, Vaughan insisted on flying over the Sierra, according to a federal accident report. But the plane began losing altitude in fierce wind; it vanished from radar.The plane crashed short of the roughly 12,000-foot peak of White Mountain. Snow barreled through the windshield and smashed into both Ron and Lee Vaughan.Donnie, sitting behind his stepfather, wasn't badly injured. The snow that struck his mother and stepfather passed over his head because he was so small.Soon, Donnie was cold, hungry and thirsty. He was dressed to fly over a winter landscape, not survive in one.Donnie slipped on a jacket but couldn't put on his shoes. He also couldn't pry loose his frozen sleeping bag or luggage. He could barely move.He sucked on snow and tried to operate the radio. He lost track of day and night; snow often shrouded the plane in darkness.Not expecting survivorsToday, Priest doesn't remember much -- just bits and pieces "more like a still photograph than a moving picture."The snow that buried the plane created a kind of ice cave, keeping the temperature higher inside than outside. But a raging snowstorm prevented air searches for two days.Teams started the hunt on the third day, but they had little to go on. The plane's emergency locater transmitter, which should have been activated by the crash, wasn't working.That meant rescuers had only their eyes and a calculated guess about the plane's location. Said Jim Sano, a former Yosemite ranger involved in the search: "Things that may seem to be relatively large on the ground are just like the head of a pin from the air."The search team included Yosemite rangers and a Lemoore Naval Air Station rescue helicopter and crew. In the park, acclaimed search-and-rescue technician John Dill pored over radar reports, transponder readings, air traffic recordings and more to refine the search area. He worked day and night.By the fifth day, "we were not expecting survivors," Dill said.Navy pilot Dan Ellison also was pessimistic: "It had snowed so hard and for so long it did not seem likely to any of us ... that we would find that aircraft."Yet that fifth day, someone in the helicopter spotted something in a vast snowfield. Sano first thought it was a white bark pine. But it was the tip of the plane's tail.There were no signs of life. Hovering in intense wind, Ellison dropped off two rangers on an avalanche-prone slope.One dug into the snow and tapped the side of the plane with a shovel. He heard a muffled cry. Both rangers quickly dug to reach the boy.Donnie's body temperature hovered around 80 degrees. His pants were frozen in icy blocks around his ankles.Chief Petty Officer Jerry Balderson battled wind gusts to descend on a steel cable. The wind caused a buildup of static electricity; Balderson was repeatedly shocked because he couldn't ground the cable.He stripped off Donnie's frozen pants to fit the boy into a harness. Balderson, Ellison and others later were awarded medals for the rescue.Donnie was taken to then-Valley Medical Center in Fresno and Stanford University Medical Center after that. Bay Area sports figures -- including quarterback Joe Montana and baseball great Rickey Henderson -- made hospital visits.Reporters trailed Donnie as he began walking with new legs.A few months after the crash, Donnie threw out the first pitch for the Oakland Athletics on opening day in 1982. He returned to Yosemite to thank his rescuers.Boy's faded pantsAs the media glare faded, Donnie adjusted to a new life. Today, he says simply: "You just do the best you can."He moved in with his father and stepmother and changed schools. He learned to ski with new legs. He made the Menlo-Atherton High School wrestling team -- confounding opponents by removing his prosthetic legs just before matches.Priest bounced between colleges -- and fields of study -- before a broken prosthetic leg led to inspiration. He now owns a prosthetics/orthotics business in Vacaville, helping others with new limbs and braces.Settling into a career gave Priest more time to think about his 1982 accident and rescue.For the past few years, he's worked to deconstruct it and reconnect with those who saved him. One motivation, Priest said, was to show rescuers that "they didn't save somebody to go out and rob a bank."Last year, he tried to climb White Mountain to the crash site. His prosthetic legs only took him within view of the spot. It was some closure.Sano was on that trip. Last month, out of curiosity, he again headed for the spot.He reached the bench where the plane crashed not far from the crest.Sano poked around for evidence of the wreck. He found only a pair of faded boy's pants wedged between two rocks.Sano took pictures and e-mailed them to Priest. Are these your pants? he asked.Priest thinks they are. Two bodies found in a Sierra Nevada glacier are the first ice mummies recovered in the lower 48 states. But people around the world have been finding frozen bodies for decades.These discoveries inspire both scientific interest and morbid curiosity: Who were these mummies? How did they die? How tall were they? What were they wearing? How did they wind up in the ice that preserved them for ages?As the climate warms, and glaciers melt, there probably will be more of these creepy but fascinating stories, experts say."I'm sure more bodies are going to be found," said forensic anthropologist Paul Emanovsky, who examines remains for the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii.Since the early 1990s, frozen bodies have been found in Europe, South America and Asia -- including, in 1999, that of George Mallory on Mount Everest. Mallory is the English explorer who died climbing Everest in the 1920s.Such ice mummies usually are created by accident: Someone dies in a place where extreme cold prevents bacteria and fungi from destroying the corpse -- often a glacier or an ice sheet. The body is slowly engulfed in ice. In the process, it dries out quickly in the thin, arid air at high elevations. Bacteria and fungi, which cause decay, can't grow where there is no water. And the tiny organisms do not survive at subfreezing temperatures.As the body dries out, internal organs shrink. The weight of the corpse drops, sometimes by more than half. Skin tissue darkens and toughens.The body eventually becomes covered in ice and freezes solid, preserving it from decomposition, as well as animal scavengers, for decades -- or centuries.In the examination of ice mummies, DNA testing, radiocarbon dating and other techniques allow scientists to estimate when death occurred. Scientists also can often determine the cause of death and even the person's diet.Emanovsky and fellow military anthropologist Robert Mann examined the bodies and personal effects of both frozen airmen who were found on Mendel Glacier in Kings Canyon National Park in 2005 and 2007.The skin of the airmen had turned leathery, yet remained fairly pliable, Mann said."There was beard stubble," he said. Having been partly exposed, "the body was moist and cold. If you saw it, you would recognize it as a human."Icy time capsulesThese and other bodies are compelling artifacts of another time. The most famous ice mummy is, by far, the oldest.Called Ötzi -- after the Ötztal Alps, just inside the border between Italy and Austria, where he was found -- the 5,300-year-old body came out of a melting glacier. A couple on vacation in 1991 found it in a gully.The discovery set off a binge of scientific study and theorizing. New ideas or reports were followed with headlines every few years throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.In 2007, the so-called "Iceman" was still making news. The British Broadcasting Corp. headline said: "Iceman bled to death on glacier."European scientists had established that the man was shot with an arrow, which apparently tore an artery.But scientists later changed their minds and said that he died from a blow to the head. More questions followed: Did he die in a fall? Was he ambushed? Was he fleeing?Ice mummies also are becoming part of popular culture.In a new children's book, author James M. Deem writes about many mummies, including the discovery of the body of a 14-year-old girl who had died 500 years earlier in the South American Andes.Deem's book, called "Bodies from the Ice: Melting glaciers and the recovery of the past," will be published in October.The body of the frozen girl, called Juanita, was found in 1995 -- the first female Incan mummy ever found.Deem said there have been other discoveries of bodies in ice on the North American continent. One was Kwaday Dän Ts'inchi -- "Long ago person found" in the Southern Tutchone language in Canada.Canadian wild sheep hunters discovered the body at a British Columbia glacier in 1999. Researchers used carbon dating to determine Kwaday died sometime between 1670 and 1850.Kwaday is an important discovery because he gives researchers clues about life at that time, Deem said.As with the Iceman in Europe, there was a media field day over Kwaday. News reports told readers that his body was found in two parts -- a headless torso with a missing right arm and the lower body missing the right leg below the knee.Researchers believe Kwaday was about 20 years old and died from exposure in a blizzard.They studied his intestines to learn about his diet. They also examined his clothing for pollen that might indicate the existence of different tree species in that part of Canada.Crash preservedThere is no similar flurry of study on the two mummified U.S. airmen, cadets Leo Mustonen and Ernest "Glenn" Munn. The military knows that they, along with two other men, died in a 1942 plane crash on Mendel Glacier, about 70 miles east of Fresno.Their bodies and personal effects were examined for identification purposes, and the remains given to the families for burial.The frozen airmen had little to tell science compared to the Iceman. The oldest coins found in their clothing were from 1942. The parachutes were the same as those found in museums.Anthropologists, who focus primarily on the personal effects of the victims, noted that one airman had a Schaeffer fountain pen and a partial limerick or poem on a piece of paper in a pocket.There are other little-known details in reports from the military and the Fresno County Coroner's Office, where chief forensic pathologist Venu C. Gopal first examined the two bodies.Both were completely dried out and largely intact. They were much smaller in death than in life. The first body, for instance, measured 62 inches long and weighed 61 pounds, meaning he had shrunk 10 inches and lost more than half his body weight.Both mummies had broken bones throughout their bodies, and teeth were missing -- quite understandable, considering the trauma of a plane striking mountain granite at more than 100 miles per hour.Military forensic summaries report both airmen had injuries that suggest they may have attempted to open their parachutes before they died. Officials declined to describe the injuries. Mendel Glacier is a dirty little chunk of melting ice in an alpine wilderness, yet it became a media star three years ago when a long-dead human body surfaced.The body belonged to one of four U.S. airmen who died on Mendel in a 1942 plane crash. A second body was found on the glacier in 2007.In news accounts of the startling discoveries, people around the world may have learned something they did not know about sunny California -- it has glaciers.Mendel is one among hundreds of small glaciers strewn along the Sierra Nevada crest from Yosemite National Park to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. They form the southernmost group of glaciers in the United States.A frigid, alpine wilderness may seem like a freak of nature only 70 miles east of Fresno, where summer temperatures commonly hit triple digits. But Mendel and other glaciers exist because the Sierra soars more than 2 1/2 miles above sea level.When Pacific storms drop a gentle rain on Fresno, there's often a blizzard at Mendel, with 75 mph winds.Winter seems forever at 13,000 feet in the Sierra. It is not unusual for nighttime temperatures in May to dip into the teens. In June, snowstorms batter the high Sierra.Summer season lasts six to eight weeks, and snow on northeast-facing peaks can remain for centuries. Glaciers are an accumulation of such unmelted snowfall, which slowly compresses into ice and begins to move slowly downhill.The glaciers in the Sierra are tiny and unimpressive compared with glaciers in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming and even Northern California.The ice in Antarctica, Greenland, Canada and Alaska is downright imposing.If Greenland's ice melted, the world's oceans would rise 20 feet. Antarctica's ice is more than two miles thick in places. Mendel Glacier is maybe 250 feet thick.At the same time, there is evidence that the Sierra had its share of big glaciers in the past. In the last 30,000 years, scientists say, there was a 60-mile-long glacier that filled the Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne in Yosemite National Park. Tons of moving ice sculpted breathtaking granite landscapes such as Hetch Hetchy Valley.Glaciers are slow-motion rivers of ice, battering and crushing whatever is in front of them. Over thousands of years, V-shaped river valleys become U-shaped, with dramatic waterfalls flowing from the vertical walls left behind.Crevasses, or big trenches, open up as the glacier pulls apart in places. And, as they move, glaciers push up big piles of rock and earth out front and to the sides. They are called moraines.Mendel is a rock glacier, meaning granite has fallen onto the ice and become part of the flow. The granite gives Mendel advantages that so-called clean glaciers do not have."The rock helps to insulate the ice from melting," said glacial geologist Douglas H. Clark of Western Washington University.Mendel's core of ice could be up to 2,000 years old, he said. Meanwhile, next-door neighbor Mount Darwin has a clean glacier. Clark, who has hiked Mendel and Darwin, said Darwin's ice probably is no more than a few centuries old because it is not as well protected.Even with its protection, small glaciers like Mendel will disappear in the next several decades because of climate warming, most experts say.Melting is occurring on top of the glacier, so it grows more shallow each year -- which is perhaps one reason the bodies of the 1942 airmen are emerging from the ice. But even as it melts, Mendel Glacier continues to inch forward.No one knows how far Mendel Glacier is moving down the mountainside each year, Clark said, but a similar rock glacier nearby is moving about 3 feet annually.Larger glaciers in places such as Alaska are remnants of the Ice Age that ended 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. That's not true in the Sierra.Scientists believe Sierra glaciers melted after the last Ice Age and formed again during cooler times. The Sierra's ice returned about 3,200 years ago, said Clark and fellow glacial geologist Niki Bowerman.They examined sediment cores taken from lake bottoms where glaciers have drained for thousands of years.
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On Nov. 18, 1942, a twin-engine AT-7 Beechcraft carrying four airmen vanished over the Sierra while on a navigation training flight. Military officials searched for a month before abandoning any hope of finding 2nd Lt. William Gamber and cadets John Mortenson, Leo Mustonen and Ernest "Glenn" Munn.
In 1947, two mountaineers spotted wreckage on Mendel Glacier in Kings Canyon National Park. No bodies were recovered. In 2005, ice climbers found mummified remains later identified as Mustonen by military forensic anthropologists. The body of Munn was discovered in 2007.
Here are stories from The Bee's coverage as the crash recovery unfolded (original publication date noted).
Oct. 20, 2005: Remains from WWII crash in Sierra recovered
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