Gillam Crash Site Survey, Field Work

Gillam Survey

Field Work

TIGHAR/USFS survey team on wreck site. TIGHAR photo by Bill Carter.

Field research on site at 49-KET-00910 was executed on August 3-4, 2004. TIGHAR’s team consisted of four members:

Project Director: Walt Holm

Project Field Manager: Bill Carter

Deputy Project Archaeologist: Gary Quigg

Field Technician: John Clauss

(TIGHAR’s Project Archaeologist Thomas F. King, Ph.D., was unavailable to be on site.)

We were accompanied and assisted by the following personnel from the Ketchikan/Misty Fjords Ranger District, Tongass National Forest:

Archaeologist: Martin Stanford

Forestry Technician: Chris Prew

Wildlife Technician: Jeff Garnette

On August 2, two floatplanes from Taquan Air shuttled all personnel and gear from Ketchikan to Badger Bay where the team began a backpacking trek to a base campsite pre-selected by air reconnaissance. Reaching the base campsite in the late morning of the second day, all personnel except Mr. Garnette (who was suffering from a sprained back) proceeded to the wreck site after pitching camp.

Following a heading toward the GPS coordinates established by a fly-over the previous week, the wreckage was located late in the afternoon of August 3. Due to the late hour of arrival at the crash site the team performed an initial inspection of the area, which revealed the wreckage remained tightly concentrated along a steep drainage. All major aircraft components appeared present except for the engines, propellers, control wheels and rudders. Site management duties for the following day were then discussed before the group hiked back to base camp for the evening.

On the morning of August 4, all participants except Mr. Stanford (who was suffering from a sprained knee) returned to the wreckage site and commenced survey, documentation and sampling duties. Walt Holm and Gary Quigg laid out a measured baseline, identifying significant features within the wreckage, taking reference photographs, and recording GPS coordinates and elevations.¹² Bill Carter and John Clauss identified, measured, photographed and then carefully removed 16 artifacts from the wreckage after they had been reconciled to the baseline for location. Gary Quigg prepared a measured sketch-map (Appendix 1) of the wreckage site while Walt Holm, Chris Prew and Jeff Garnette scoured the outlying areas of the drainage for any additional artifacts, marking them with flagging tape. Work was completed by about 4pm, whereupon the group packed all gear and retired from the site. No permanent markers were left on or around the site.

All measurements are approximations, although linear measurements along the drainage were referenced to a metric baseline established using a 50-meter tape. Latitude, longitude and other location references from 49-KET-00910 are not included in this document in the interest of protecting the site from unauthorized visitation.

Introduction	Purpose	Background Research	Fieldwork	Site Description	Aircraft Parts Recovered	Interpretation	Research Results
Eligibility for National Register	Acknowledgements	Bibliography	Appendix 1: Site Map	Appendix 2: Lockheed Electra	Appendix 3: Putative Heat Shield	Appendix 4: Putative Heat Shield/Lockheed 10B	Appendix 5: NC-14915 & WSC-146

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