The Cincinnati Enquirer from Cincinnati, Ohio • Page 14

NATION TllKClNClNNATjENQmREg A14 Friday, November 27, 1998 6X- Meters' filling im aviatiom history. "It's amazing how much more interesting an airplane becomes when you can look at it, even if it is just a piece of wreckage. In a very real sense, the X-Hunters are helping to preserve history. Doug Nelson, Air Force Flight Test Center Museum curator the spot where his body landed he ejected," Mr. Merlin said.

"She put flowers there. I still get chills thinking about it." The search for the Zell, however, is beginning to wear on the troupe. They have been in the desert for five hours and have zig-zagged about 10, miles as Mr. Merlin and Mr. Moore try to get the hills in the distance to line up.

"When I get the hills to line the lakebed is in the wrong Mr. Moore said, peering through transparency. "And that fireman standing on a slight rise where the dirt is gray, but there aren't any rises like that." The men are ready to go home do more research when they hit pay dirt. A shard of thin aluminum no larger than a quarter is discovered in the shadow of a sagebrush. It still has the telltale green of aviation zinc chromate paint on one side.

Mr. Merlin said. When they went looking for the crash site of a secret SR-71 Blackbird, the fastest and highest-flying airplane in the world, they were told that the Air Force "cleaned that one up for Mr. Moore said. "We knew when we found the site," he said.

"We were literally standing in a field of SR-71 parts." On their first expedition, in July 1992, they found the crash site of the number three X-15 rocket plane that tumbled to earth from the edge of space in 1967. In addition to finding large pieces of black metal and pieces of the cockpit, they found a shard from the space helmet worn by Maj. Michael J. Adams. But perhaps nothing brought home to the X-Hunters more about the price that exploration can exact until Patricia McConnell wanted to visit her father's crash site.

Capt. Joseph McConnell Jr. was a Korean War ace and test pilot who was killed in 1954 after bailing out of a F-86H at low altitude. His daughter was nine. Mr.

Merlin took her out the first time to the general area, but he had given up on finding the exact site when Mr. Moore received a copy of the crash report in the mail from someone who had access to the original report. "Using that, we took her right to NASA's Dryden History Center on Edwards, are joined in their search by Curtis Peebles, an aviation author, and Tom Tschida, a photographer who has helped research the accident. "Spread out and look for metal," Mr. Merlin said.

This expedition is the latest in their unorthodox crusade to resurrect bits of U.S. flight test history that plummeted from as high as space to the desert floor. Since 1992, when the self-described aviation nuts formed the Aerospace Archeology Field Research Team as an extension of their hobby, they have earned the respect of historians for locating crash sites that nobody else could find. In doing so, airplanes that had existed only in photographs in history books and archives have been made real again. "It's amazing how much more interesting an airplane becomes when you can look at it, even if it is just a piece of wreckage," said Doug Nelson, curator of the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards, where many of their artifacts are displayed.

"In a very real sense, the X-Hunters are helping to preserve history." The team specializes in experimental airplanes that flew from about 1940 to 1970 during what is known as the Golden Age of Flight Test. Their interest and success in find- Crash-site explorers find bits, pieces BY J. LYNN LUNSFORD The Dallas Morning News MOJAVE DESERT, Calif. -From here, the search will be on foot. Somewhere in this expanse of sagebrush and creosote scrub of Southern California's Antelope Valley are the remains of an experimental jet that crashed in 1958.

"This has to be close," says expedition leader Peter Merlin. "Yeah, that's what we thought the other five times we came out here," his partner, Tony Moore, reminds him. After an hour's drive into the desert outside Edwards Air Force Base, a dusty white Jeep Cherokee and a rattletrap red Ford pickup have gone as far as they can. Now it's time for the "X-Hunters" to live up to their reputation as two of the best military crash detectives in the nation. The men know today that if they are to find the crash site, they will have to walk within 30 feet of it.

Mr. Moore and Mr. Merlin, who both earn their living as archivists at age shot during efforts to extinguish the burning wreckage. They hope to find the site by lining up the silhouettes of the jagged mountains in the distance until they resemble those in the background of the film footage. "There have been times where we got out of the Jeep and walked straight to a crash site," Mr.

Merlin said. But after two hours, it is evident that the ZELL would be elusive. Besides finding dozens of spent machine gun casings, the group stumbles across a testy sidewinder rattlesnake, a flattened Winnie-the-Pooh balloon and two broken plastic radio units that once went aloft beneath weather balloons. But not a single piece of aluminum. As with most sites, the bulk of the airplane was hauled away and scrapped after the crash.

But Mr. Merlin, 34, and Mr. Moore, 39, are certain that clean-up crews left historically important pieces behind. "They always leave something," ing the sites of some legendary crashes earned them their nickname. This time, they are looking for what remains of the Zero Length Launch F-100D, a sleek rocket-launched fighter that crashed on its second flight.

If Mr. Merlin and Mr. Moore did their research right, their vehicles are parked within a mile, of the crash site. The airplane, more commonly known as the ZELL, launched successfully from its specially made trailer, but the pilot, Capt. Al Blackburn, was unable to jettison the enormous solid-fuel rocket attached to its belly.

After flying for about an hour he ejected safely, and the airplane slammed into the desert, sending up a column of black smoke that could be seen for 50 miles. Today, there is no black smoke or even a crash report to help. The X-Hunters have only the vague description that the plane augured in nearby Harper Dry Lake and some transparencies taken from film foot Three feet either direction, and it would have been missed. Fivp minntps later. Mr.

Moore begins waving his arms. When the.L others arrive, they find him standing in a flat patch of gray dirt that is littered with jagged shards of alumi- num and yellowing plastic from a(. cockpit canopy. "This is it. This is the ZELL," Moore says.

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