An overview of the crash site. TIGHAR photo.

On January 5, 1943 noted bush pilot Harold Gillam crash landed a Lockheed Electra 10B twin engine aircraft on a mountainside approximately thirty miles southeast of Ketchikan, Alaska. The plane, built in 1934 as serial number 1021,¹ was registered as NC14915 and owned by Morrison-Knudsen, a construction company building airports throughout Alaska.² Five passengers were aboard the flight enroute from Seattle, Washington to Anchorage, Alaska via a fuel stop at Annette Island.³ The disregard of a strong storm warning, icing conditions, an outdated aeronautical chart, misinterpreted radio navigation signals and ultimately the failure of the left engine resulted in the accident.⁴

All aboard the aircraft survived the initial crash, but a young woman died of injuries two days later. Six days after the accident Gillam left the passengers in an attempt to find help. His body was found almost a month later. The remaining survivors set up camps first at the wreckage and later down close to the base of the mountain where chances of being seen from the air were improved. Thirty-three days after the accident, all were rescued by U.S. Coast Guard personnel and members of the Alaskan Territorial Guard arriving on scene aboard the cutter McLane.⁵

On August 2 – 5, 2004, a seven person team composed of members of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) and personnel from the Ketchikan/Misty Fjords Ranger District of the Tongass National Forest relocated the wreck site and briefly documented its character by surface survey. Several artifacts were recovered from the site for study purposes with the permission of the United States Forest Service (USFS). This is the report of TIGHAR’s archaeological fieldwork.⁶