B-29 crash site remains a Hatcher Pass intrigue

HATCHER PASS -- It was dark, and the weather was bad -- zero visibility and zero ceiling with a light snowfall in the middle of November, 1957. They were on a routine training mission, checking the operation of several radar stations: A 10-hour, 1,800-mile round-trip from Elmendorf Air Force Base. But seven hours after takeoff they began to stray off course. Although they were flying parallel to their flight plan, they wound up 27 miles off course, somewhere over the Talkeetna mountains.

The pilot thought he was arriving into the Anchorage area from the north, following non-directional radio beacons, and began a descent from 21,000 feet. Five minutes later the ground radar station in Anchorage lost contact. As the B-29 Superfortress descended, it slammed into a glacier at 5,600 feet, shearing the nose gear. Up the glacier 150 feet, the tail, center section, both wings and all four engines came to a stop. The nose section continued up the glacier for another 200 feet.

All of the pilots died, along with the radio operator and navigator, a total of six. Four crewmen survived, in part because the aircraft hit the glacier at near-level flight latitude and the fuselage remained largely intact.

The four surviving airmen climbed out of the wreckage through an escape hatch and onto the glacier, stunned and severely injured. They dug in and waited through the night. The next morning they were rescued.

That's how Bomber Pass and Bomber Glacier got their names. The wreckage of the old B-29 still lies strewn across the glacier up in Hatcher Pass, above Reed Lakes. The fuselage is still largely intact after nearly 50 years.

Kymberly Miller, a state park ranger for the Hatcher Pass management area, recently returned from a back-country patrol that included a stop at the crash site. Miller said there is more wreckage exposed than ever before, due to hot weather this summer and the gradual movement of the glacier.

The route to the crash site is difficult, Miller said. It is not an easy hike, and only trained mountaineers with proper equipment should attempt it. There is also a large crevasse underneath the wreckage that can't be seen.

"The difficulty of the route has preserved the wreckage," Miller said.

But the effort is worth it. Bomber glacier is somewhat breathtaking, encircled by jagged peaks and overlooked by Lynx Peak, one of the largest in Hatcher Pass. Since mountain terrain tends to skew one's estimation of actual distance and size, the old B-29 at first almost looks like a discarded toy or a broken model plane sitting atop the white expanse of the glacier. The scene is majestic; the bomber makes it otherworldly.

Dennis Heikes, Mat-Su Area Superintendent for Alaska State Parks, said some artifacts have been taken from the crash site over the years, but for the most part it has not been vandalized. Next year park rangers will rivet a plaque onto the wing of the bomber that tells its story.

"There's still a lot of stuff up there and it should be left alone," Heikes said. "It's a memorial to the servicemen who died in the crash, and it should be treated that way."