Saturday, October 5 through Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Aviation Archæology Course: Marriot Courtyard Hotel, Palmdale, CA
Field School: YB-49 crash site, Boron, CA
Richard Gillespie, Executive Director, TIGHAR
Roger Kelley, Senior Field Researcher
Special Guest Lecturer, Garry Pape, author of Northrop Flying Wings
(Schiffer Publishing, 1995).
Everyone
who completed the Course and Field School received the “C”
and “E” certifications to their TIGHAR member number.
These certifications are prerequisites for any TIGHAR member wishing
to be considered for the Niku V expedition team. Participants
were:
Amanda Dunham, 2418CE |
Jerry Kobbeman, 0474CE |
Don Mayborn, 1372CE |
Jon Overholt, 2457 CE |
Valerie Salven, 2543 CE |
Karin Sinniger, 2485CE |
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Michael Zuschlag, 2386CE |
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We
worked and camped for two days and two nights in the high desert.
It was very hot during the day and quite chilly at night. Meals
were delicious MREs (military Meal, Ready to Eat). There was no
need to hike to the camp site but the survey work involved considerable
exploration for scattered aircraft components (the aircraft broke
up in flight). We shared the desert with its customary residents,
including rattlesnakes and scorpions, but everyone worked well and
safely and a good time was had by all.
Unlike
previous TIGHAR field schools, the YB-49 crash site does not feature
big recognizable chunks of airplane. Most of the wreckage was cleaned
up right after the crash. What remains is a rather large depression
littered with hunks of melted aluminum marking the main impact point,
and a still-unknown number of outlying sites where various major components
came to earth. Preliminary metal detector investigations suggest an
abundance of buried components. Surprisingly, given the importance of
the crash, the entire site was apparently never mapped nor were all
of the remains of the five men aboard accounted for. After 54 years
many questions remain about this historic crash. Perhaps we'll be able
to answer some of them. (At right: Glen Edwards, who lost his life in
the crash.)
Today’s
B-2 marks the resurgence of a visionary design concept that might
have dictated the shape of all large aircraft had things gone a
little differently in the late 1940s. The jet-powered YB-49 was
the culmination of that first abortive generation of tailless aircraft
and, just as the loss of the Hindenburg signaled the end
of the rigid airship, so the crash that we investigated heralded
the disappearance, for many years, of the “flying wing.”
What we did in October was an archæological examination of
the grave of the B-2’s Granddaddy.
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