Prospecting in the Desert

Odometer  64542
Trip meter  0

We heard a story...
Some friends in the RV park told me that they saw some aluminum and parts near the road out on one of their trips last year.  My ears perked up and I got one of them to point to an area on the map where they thought they had seen it.  My friend Mark and I hunt WWII air crash sites and this was a solid lead.

Our Route for today

The yellow trace shows the route we took in from the highway to the yellow circle at the top right.  The green trace show the alternate route we took back, going down to Ryans Wash (arroyo).  The red hatched area is closed most of the time because it is a buffer zone between the active tactical range and the less active Area B.  Area B is called a "maneuvering zone", used to line up on targets in other areas.  As such, the public is usually allowed to hunt, camp, and hike in this area.

Quite often it was easier for the road builders to use the arroyo as the travel route

The road was rough. It took us 4 hours to get there and 3 hours to get back!  All totaled it was about 55 miles, and we had about 1 hour of exploration at the site- but boy was it worth it!  Doing the math we moved at an average rate of 8 mph.

Elevator from a F84G fighter jet

Once we arrived at the location we were given, we found the site fairly easily.  The debris field was better than we could ever have expected.  Within 30 minutes we had found an elevator assembly, and lots of aluminum skin, some tubing, electrical wire, fragments of titanium turbine blade, etc.  The site had been cleaned up after the crash, the fuselage and engine were gone, but there was plenty to let us know we were at a crash site.

Jeff looks at an inspection door from F-84G

Mark and I were searching for a serial number or a data plate that would allow us to identify the aircraft.  We finally found a part which identified this aircraft as an F84. 

F-84 photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Using this information Mark found the crash report that told us more about the incident.  The jet crashed in 1954 while training in the East Tactical Range.  Thankfully the pilot ejected and suffered only slight injuries.
The F84 first flew in 1946, and this G model was introduced in 1951.  The Thunderjet as it was called, was the primary strike aircraft of the Korean war.  Interestingly this aircraft was manufactured as a swept wing also.  Our find is a straight wing.

Jeff stands at the edge of the Tactical Range   Interestingly the sign is in camouflage colors... Hmm

This was pretty exciting because it is as close as you can get to the active part of the range.  (behind me in this photo).  The Hazard area we were in is the buffer between the bullets and bombs and us civilian explorers.  We can only go here by permission, and only on days the Air Force won't be flying.

A stock watering system and a cattle loading chute, remnants from decades ago

Less than a quarter mile from the tactical zone we saw the first of several corrals that dot the Hazard Area out here a torturous 3 hour drive from the highway.   Don't be fooled by the road in the picture above- this is a superhighway compared to the deep washes and boulders that made up most of the trip.  I couldn't imagine getting a cattle truck up here- maybe the roads were improved back 60 years ago.  At first we could not figure out where the water would come from to fill this substantial concrete and stone tank.  Mark and I marveled at the fact that the next 5- 6 miles of "road" had remnants of a 1" poly pipe line buried alongside it.  Holy Cow!   The early ranchers pumped water to stock tanks about 2 miles apart, for the next 6 miles!   The cattle were supposed to have been removed from this area when it was appropriated by the Department of Defense in 1941.  Much of this acreage was already under the Bureau of Land Management- so very few private landowners were affected by the appropriation.  Still, It's amazing to see these structures that have to be more than 75 years old, looking as if it were yesterday.
A good day for this explorer!

Your Traveling Friends

Jeff and Joan