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Anthony J. Mireles on a military aircraft crash near Bishop in the eastern Sierra in 1941 Anthony J. Mireles on some of the causes for military air crashes Anthony J. Mireles on who was chosen for aviator training Anthony J. Mireles on why there were so many World War II-era crashes in California Lost Flights main page

Lured partly by cheap and vacant land, the military planted dozens of bases and auxiliary fields across California. Thousands of would-be aviators flooded the state -- and the Central Valley -- to learn how to handle fighters, bombers and transport planes.

With vast stretches of flat ground and mainly calm weather, California was considered an optimal place to train pilots.

But many young men never made it overseas; they were lost instead to training missions across the rugged Sierra Nevada.

Some confronted bad weather. Some were careless. And some were victims of both the elements and their own inexperience.

No one knows exactly how many World War II aviators crashed and died in the Sierra's 400-mile expanse. Anthony J. Mireles, author of "Fatal Army Air Forces Aviation Accidents in the United States, 1941-1945," counts more 2,200 fatalities throughout California.

In "Aircraft Wrecks in the Mountains and Deserts of California," authors G. Pat Macha and Don Jordan describe more than 100 World War II fatalities in the Sierra.

Neither list is exhaustive. Jordan figures that hundreds of military planes crashed in the Sierra during World War II. He pointed to tricky weather, inexperienced pilots and complex planes with limited navigation and safety systems.

"They were putting 19-, 20-year-old kids behind the wheel of some powerful airplanes and putting 10 men in there with them," Jordan said.

Some Sierra crashes are legendary, including two B-24 bomber accidents that happened on back-to-back days in 1943.

On Dec. 5, a crew of six vanished on a training mission that left Fresno's Hammer Field for Bakersfield, Tucson, Ariz., and then back to Fresno. Other pilots reported turbulence and clouds in the Sierra that day.

The B-24 wreckage wasn't discovered until 1960. All six men were killed; the plane still rests in Hester Lake, a 12,000-foot-high icy pool near LeConte Canyon in eastern Fresno County.

Nearly a dozen planes took off the next day to search for the missing plane. One B-24 crashed into Huntington Lake, killing six of eight crew members aboard. The two survivors blamed mechanical problems, but one also reported gusty wind.

Radio operator George Barulic, the last living survivor of the crash, doesn't remember any wind that day.

"Things happen," said Barulic, 86, now retired in Florida. "It's the nature of life, especially in wartime."

In the 1940s, aviation was relatively new. Daniel Sebby, director and curator of the California State Military Museum in Sacramento, said many Americans could remember the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.

Flying "was still a thrill, still a dangerous thing to do," he said.

To feed the war effort, military plane production mushroomed from about 20,000 in 1941 to roughly 96,000 in 1944, Mireles said. Some were being fine-tuned even as they rolled out of production.

Would-be aviators were college students or graduates -- mainly athletes and overachievers, Mireles said. But as the war continued, and the need for aviation cadets grew, authorities loosened entrance requirements.

"They needed a lot of pilots and they needed them quickly," said Joe Pruzzo, executive director of the Castle Air Museum Foundation in Atwater.

At each of three levels of training -- primary, basic and advanced -- about a third of the cadet class would wash out, Mireles said.

Also at each level, planes became more powerful and complicated, and the aviation problems more complex. They also could be less forgiving of mistakes.

Charlie Sill, who piloted a B-24 in 47 missions over England, said most training planes weren't tough to fly.

An exception was the AT-9. Sill described its reputation with a bit of humor: "If one [engine] failed you, the other one would fly you to the scene of the crash."

Sill, 84, completed pilot training in Texas; he now works on the restoration crew at Castle Air Museum in Atwater. He said flying the B-24 was like driving a truck because of the strength it took to control and maneuver.

World War II training planes were hardly high-tech marvels, Sebby said.

"At the primary and basic level training, they [aviators] were lucky to have a radio," he said.

Dozens of Army Air Forces and other bases opened in California during the war years, including Hammer Field in Fresno, the Merced Army Air Field (later renamed Castle) and the Lemoore Army Air Field.

Harold Horg, now a volunteer at the Legion of Valor Museum in Fresno, took basic training for the Army Air Corps in a BT-13 in Lemoore. Horg, 85, said his training flights soared over the Valley.

"Back then it was all farm land," he said. "It wasn't difficult if you had to go down" in a forced landing.

B.A. Hansen, 85, took the cadet exam and entered the service in 1942. He flew fighter planes at the end of the war and ultimately retired as a lieutenant colonel.

During basic training in Merced, Hansen flew a BT-13 over Half Dome just to take a look.

"Maybe I wasn't aware that it's not a good thing for young pilots to do" because of the tricky weather, said Hansen, who lives near Winton in Merced County. "I don't think they knew about all the problems that they've had over the years."

In the Sierra, storms appear out of nowhere. Fierce winds can drop a plane hundreds of feet. Mountain passes mask dead-end canyons.

"You've got to get higher than the mountains, and flying in clouds you can pick up a lot of ice" and lose lift on the wings, Mireles said.

Weather likely factored into the November 1942 crash of an AT-7 that smashed into Mendel Glacier. Four aviators died in the crash; the wreckage wasn't discovered until 1947.

Even then, the bodies couldn't be located in the rugged terrain. Two airmen, Leo Mustonen and Ernest "Glenn" Munn, were found on the glacier over the past three years.

Retired Lt. Col. Don Satterthwait, 85, of Clovis, learned to navigate in an AT-7, similar to the one that crashed on Mendel. He flew 25 missions in World War II and remembers the AT-7 as a sturdy plane.

"It could fly on one engine if it had to," said Satterthwait, who completed his pilot training in Texas.

The Sierra continued to claim military lives even after the war. In March 1946, 26 men died when their C-47 transport crashed near Truckee -- described then as one of the worst peacetime plane disasters in history.

The plane carried high-ranking Army and Navy officers and many enlisted men headed for separation centers for discharge. Eyewitnesses said the plane "exploded like a puff of fire" and spun into a pine-covered Sierra mountainside.

Jordan believes the plane was caught in a thundercloud and then a downdraft that ripped off a wing. He calls it "a famous Sierra scenario ... It can tear an airplane apart."