Friday, May 31, 2013

Pair of 'geeks' sifts through history for aviation ruins

Peter Merlin and Tony Moore, self-confessed aviation geeks, find and sort through military crash sites in the Mojave as a hobby. They call these weekend expeditions 'aerospace archaeology.'
Tourists scour the Mojave Desert landscape on the lookout for debris from a 1967 X-15 crash near Johannesburg. (Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times)

By W.J. HENNIGAN
Photography by BRIAN VAN DER BRUG
Video by DON KELSEN
Los Angeles Times


REPORTING FROM MOJAVE - Peter Merlin trudges through the desert, side-stepping sage brush and creosote until he reaches a spot barren of vegetation. He points out a faint crescent-shaped scar in the earth 100 feet long.

Merlin kneels and scoops up a handful of sand and lets it sift through his fingers, leaving behind three gray pebbles, each no bigger than a quarter.

"See these rocks?" he asks. "They're actually fragments of melted aluminum. This is the impact point where the flying wing crashed, and the crew lost their lives. Right here. This is the incident that gave Edwards Air Force Base its name."

The pebbles were remnants of the YB-49, an experimental bomber that crashed in 1948 carrying Capt. Glen Edwards and a crew of four. His untimely death prompted the military to rename Muroc Air Force Base in his honor.

Finding and sorting through military crash sites in the Mojave is Merlin's hobby and pastime. He and Tony Moore, his partner on these weekend expeditions, call it "aerospace archaeology."

"Living this close to Edwards is like an Egyptologist living in Egypt," Merlin said. "It has been called the 'valley of the kings.'"

The skies above the Mojave Desert are legendary. The first American jet plane flew here. The sound barrier was broken here. Space shuttles returned to Earth here. But less heralded are the failures and crashes, tragic footnotes to these remarkable accomplishments.

Merlin and Moore refer to themselves as "The X-Hunters," a nod to the Air Force's use of "X" in naming experimental planes. Their findings have broadened the military's understanding of Southern California's aerospace history.

"Their value to the office is a great one," said Richard Hallion, a retired official who worked 20 years as an Air Force historian. "In many cases, there was only rough approximation of where the crashes took place."

Despite the vastness of the Mojave, there are few crash sites that Merlin and Moore have yet to find. They have compiled a list of more than 600 locations amid the sun-scorched sand and rock, and so far they have examined more than 100.

Merlin and Moore are unlikely confederates. Merlin, 49, the introvert, is prone to extended pauses when talking. He has a thin Errol Flynn-esque mustache and is known to wear a safari hat and leather jacket with "The X-Hunters" emblazoned on the back.

Moore, 55, is a large, affable man who walks with a metal trekking pole because of bad hips. He grew up in Northridge and has long been fascinated with Edwards, and seems to have a story about any aircraft that was ever built.

They both work at Edwards, but in 1991 the self-confessed aviation geeks were employed at the Burbank airport when they had a conversation about the region's aerospace history. Moore told Merlin he had found the wreckage site of the XB-70, an experimental bomber that collided with an F-104 in 1966.

Merlin was intrigued. But aviation buffs are secretive about the information they have — like fishermen who won't tell where the big ones are — so Moore gave Merlin vague directions to the site: about 12 miles north of Barstow.

The following Monday, Merlin came to work, smiling. He had found the site.

"I was shocked," Moore said. "I must have given him a two-mile area to search through. But he found it, to his credit."

After recognizing their shared infatuation, they decided to team up. When the two men started researching airplane wrecks, they mostly relied on files from the Edwards History museum and a 1993 environmental impact study of the base that listed only 15 sites.

On their first expedition, Moore and Merlin turned to a book written by a former test pilot that documented the crash of Maj. Michael Adams, who was killed in 1967 when the North American Aviation X-15 rocket plane he was piloting broke up at 62,000 feet while traveling at 4,000 mph.

According to the book, the wreckage was located several miles northeast of Johannesburg. But once they arrived at the spot, the terrain didn't resemble what was depicted in the book's grainy black and white photographs.

After several hours of fruitless searching, they decided to head home. As they drove toward U.S. 395, Moore noticed a mountain in the distance that looked like one pictured in the book.

They pulled onto a dirt road and rumbled toward the mountain. More landmarks began to line up. There was a ridge with an outcropping of white rocks near its crest.

They got out of their Jeep and began walking toward the mountain, stopping at intervals to consult the book. Merlin then looked at the ground and saw a piece of weather-beaten metal tubing.

"We're here," he shouted, noticing the ground was littered with more metal fragments.

For two years, they combed over the debris field and recovered 125 pounds of parts, including a warning light that likely glowed in the cockpit while Adams fought to save himself and the aircraft. These items are at the flight test museum at Edwards.

Aircraft crash sites interactive grahic

A memorial now marks the site. It was erected in 2004. More than 60 people, including Merlin, Moore and members of Adams' family, attended the dedication.

"We often approach these sites from a historical perspective," Merlin said. "But there's a human element that lives on. To see the emotional reaction from the family really showed me how much the sites can mean to people."

Among their other finds was the crash site for another flying wing, an experimental bomber constructed of wood, dubbed the N-9M. The plane went down 12 miles west of Edwards in 1943.

The men also located pieces of the Bell X-2, which in 1956 tumbled out of control, killing test pilot Capt. Milburn Apt on impact in the Kramer Hills off the eastern edge of the base.

Seven miles west of California City, they found the location of the NF-104A crash that would have killed Chuck Yeager in 1963 had he not ejected in time. A more recent non-fatal wreck was the X-31 that crashed less than a half-mile from California 58 in 1995.

When a plane goes down in the desert, the military tries to recover as much of the wreckage as possible. Retrieving hefty, hulking pieces is a priority.

Most of the time, Merlin and Moore are searching for smaller parts such as twisted stainless-steel skin, rusted fasteners and fittings, or crushed cowl flaps.

They scan the horizon for glinting metal when they think they're in the right spot. Once they uncovered a part of a tail fin. But finding such items is rare, and often what they think is an aircraft part shimmering in the distance ends up being a Mylar balloon.

"I've seen enough deflated Mickey Mouse balloons to last me a lifetime," Merlin said.

When they do find something that they think they can identify, they take it home and weigh and measure it. They verify the part's authenticity by chasing down serial numbers, inspection stamps or examining a manufacturer's book on the aircraft. After documenting it, they'll donate it to the flight test museum or other institutions. They have written a book about their exploits titled "X-Plane Crashes."

Critics believe that the significance of the men's findings is slightly exaggerated. Raymond Puffer, retired Edwards historian, said their work is more of a hobby than anything else.

Other explorers, like G. Pat Macha, prefer to leave the crash sites intact.

"That's a big issue in this field: To simply take a picture or take the stuff home with you," said Macha, 67, who has identified and documented crash sites in Southern California for 50 years.

Macha, however, appreciates that rather than holding onto what they have recovered, the two men have given their findings back to the base.

Merlin and Moore take pride helping families who have lost a son or a father in one of these fatal crashes.

While standing at the YB-49 crash site that killed Edwards, Moore saw something glimmering in the dirt. He picked it up: It was a star sapphire, perfect except for a slight chip on one side.

The small stone was a mystery until Moore was talking to an engineer who had been on the base the day the YB-49 crashed.

The engineer mentioned that a member of the crew, Maj. Daniel H. Forbes, had been married just a few weeks before the accident. His wife had given him a sapphire ring. The military had found the setting but not the stone.

Moore was stunned: "We found the stone," he said. "We found it five years ago right in the middle of the site.'"

He mailed a photograph of the sapphire to Air Force personnel, who went to visit Forbes' widow.

A half-century had passed since the tragedy. The widow had remarried and at first didn't seem to remember the ring. Then they showed her the pictures.

Without saying a word, she walked to her bedroom and returned with a matching star-sapphire ring in her hand. The stone was eventually returned to her in a ceremony at the Kansas air base that bears Daniel Forbes' name.

"It's unbelievable how many things needed to happen in order for that ring to be reunited with her," Moore said. "It validated all our work."

Aviation buffs sift through history in the desert (Watch the video)

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Mysterious rocks stolen from Death Valley National Park

A roaming rock at Death Valley National Park's Racetrack Playa. (Ben Greenburg / National Park Service / May 30, 2013)

By Louis Sahagun
Los Angeles Times


Death Valley National Park officials are investigating the theft of several of the rocks that mysteriously roam across a remote ancient lake bed known as the Racetrack Playa.

Rocks of various sizes -- from baseball to basketball -- scoot across the 2.5-mile-long, oval-shaped mudflat on the north end of the park, leaving tracks that are straight, curved and even looped. Some tracks extend up to 600 feet.

Geologists theorize that the rocks slide after rain moistens the top few centimeters of the lake bed and a high wind pushes them around.

"We've had more instances of folks taking the rocks," Death Valley spokesman Terry Baldino said. "They don't seem to understand that outside of the Racetrack, these marvelous rocks have no value."

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Victorville museum recreates era of Route 66

Crystal Yulujia checks her cowboy hat as she visits the California Route 66 Museum.

By Sam McManis
Sacramento Bee


VICTORVILLE – They were in their early 20s, hip in that effortless European way. He wore cool shades and a three-day stubble; she bore piercings in all the right places – lip, eyebrow, helix of the ear lobe. They said they were from Pamplona, Spain, but rolled their eyes at mention of the running of the bulls.

Too touristy, the gesture meant.

Yet Borja Marcos and Oihane Almagro were standing in front of one of the West's monuments to touristic diversions – the curio-besotted California Route 66 museum – snapping photos of each other before a giant mural.

All of which perhaps proves the theory that sneering locals just fail to appreciate what visitors embrace as noteworthy, exotic even.

"Route 66 is known well in Spain," Marcos says. "We were in Los Angeles, and we're going to Las Vegas. We wanted to stop."

Well, of course they did.

As Sharon Foster, the marketing director of the California Route 66 Museum in this low-rise San Bernardino County town, happily points out, more than 10,000 visitors a year grace the two-room shrine to a more quaint era of pre-freeway transportation.

"That's a lot of people for little old Victorville," she says.

Foster leads you over to a map of the world, where museumgoers are encouraged to plant a pin in their country of origin. The map is peppered with pins, giant clumps from Great Britain and Eastern Europe. And who knew a two-lane road that reached peak popularity in the 1950s could draw such a contingent from Tanzania and Kenya?

Two tourists from Curidiba, Brazil, Rui Caramori and Palo Rodriguez, are taking smartphone photos of a big blue Pepsi vending machine (10 cents), circa 1940, and ogling roadside billboards from back in the day. They, too, are on their way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. They, too, just had to stop.

"It's famous," Caramori says. "Much (Route 66) merchandizing in Brazil."

Much merchandizing is on display in the museum, too. You can buy T-shirts, mugs and reproduced road signs – the usual stuff – and even a cool neon wall clock. But it's what's not for sale, the memorabilia, that makes this a must-stop.

Schmaltzy as it may sound, Route 66 once was the heartland of America – or at least one of its major arteries – running through eight states and opening the world of the great Southwest to East Coast city slickers. John Steinbeck, in "The Grapes of Wrath," called it the "Mother Road," leading Dust Bowl refugees from Oklahoma to California.

The road's charms were burnished by Hollywood in the early 1960s with a TV show, "Route 66," in which Martin Milner and George Maharis cruised in their Corvette convertible.

By the late 1960s, however, the interstate highway system was such that Route 66 became something of a sad frontage road, dotted by water towers and motels with missing letters.

People still travel on it. Some make it an annual pilgrimage. Others, like most of the tourists haunting the museum on one recent afternoon, simply take a detour off Interstate 15 and have a look-see.

To Victorvilleans, the museum is a point of pride. Volunteer docents acknowledge there is another museum up the road, the Barstow Route 66 "Mother Road" Museum, but they boast that the Victorville shrine was there first.

"Even as broken as the road is, as bad as the road is, I think it's the mystery of the road that draws people," Foster says. "To visit 2,248 miles, you see it all. (People) go through the plain states, the mountains, the desert to the beach. It's more than a road; you get to see the people element as you go through.

"I've found most of our (international tourists) actually want to travel the road. But we've made it so that everyone can see the kind of stuff exactly as you would've found (it) as you traveled along the road."

Stuff like old gas pumps, a re-created soda fountain diner, a tricked out, hippie/ flower power VW bus, a 1949 five-cup milkshake machine from Sparky's Drive-In in Victorville, old telegraph machines, phonographs, an eight-track tape player with Barry White's "Greatest Hits" cued up, and remnants from what once was a major roadside attraction, Mahan's Half Acre, in Hesperia.

Mahan's was something you won't find off a freeway exit these days. It was a folk-art space doubling as the home of the eccentric Miles Mahan. It featured everything from painted signs of hula girls to bottle trees and a miniature golf course, but closed after Mahan's death in 1997. The Hula Girl and Giant Cowboy wooden cutouts now grace the back walls of the Victorville museum.

Newer items make the biggest splash with the under 4-foot demographic: a bevy of bigger-than-life-size models from the movie "Cars."

The popularity of the 2006 Disney-Pixar computer-animated blockbuster jump-started interest in Route 66, Foster says. In the film, the road is home to "Radiator Springs," which was sadly neglected after construction of Interstate 40.

"Thank goodness, 'Cars' was regarding 66, because that did bring the younger group into us," Foster says. "But I'm the last generation that really traveled the road when it was the primary route getting to California.

"We've lost a generation, some of the late baby boomers, but hopefully, we'll make up for it when the kids want to bring Dad and Mom in here."


CALIFORNIA ROUTE 66 MUSEUM
Location: 16825 D St., Victorville
Phone: (760) 951-0436
Web: califrt66museum.org
Hours: 10 AM-4 PM Monday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday; 11 AM-3 PM
Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday by appointment.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Rededication of Stoddard-Waite Monument planned

One of the monuments in the Cajon Pass that visitors will view during a program to rededicate the Stoddard-Waite Monument. (City of San Bernardino)

CONTRIBUTED CONTENT
Riverside Press-Enterprise


The San Bernardino Historical and Pioneer Society will sponsor an event celebrating the 100th anniversary Re-dedication of the Stoddard-Waite Monument in the Cajon Pass on Saturday, May 18.

The monument was dedicated May 18, 1913, to honor early pioneers who came through the pass on horseback and wagon. Sheldon Stoddard and Sidney P. Waite, who traveled through the Pass in 1849, were among those who attended.

The monument sits along the Santa Fe/Salt Lake Trail, near the truck scales along southbound Interstate 15 south of Highway 138, on property owned by the San Bernardino County Museum.

Saturday’s activities will begin at 9 a.m. at the society’s Heritage House at Eighth and D streets in San Bernardino, when President Steve Shaw will welcome the group and present a slide show on the history of the Pioneer Society.

At 9:30 a.m. there will be a presentation to descendants of Stoddard and Waite.

At 10 a.m. the group will begin a convoy to a 1917 monument on Wagon Wheel Road in the Cajon Pass, from which they will walk 300 yards to the site of the 1913 monument.

At 11 a.m., San Bernardino County Museum caretaker Mike Hartless will talk about the Indian village and burial ground, followed by San Bernardino historian Nick Cataldo, who will talk about the history of the site, including the Inman Ranch. Stoddard and Waite family members also will speak.

At 12:30 a.m., after a no-host lunch break, the group will hear from historian Richard Thompson about the 1917 monument and the Brown Toll Road. Historian John Hockaday will talk at 1 p.m. about Camp Cajon.

Afterward, the group will walk up the toll road to see the bridge piers for Crowder Canyon, and drive to the Upper Toll House site.

Email Yankeenut@excite.com or call 909-709-3792 for more information.