Aero Vintage Books

Back in the last months of 1971, I was part of a group that was retrieving three Martin B-26s out of the bush of Northern British Columbia. While we were there, we heard a lot of different stories about these particular aircraft.

One story I remember, was that the aircraft we were after were part of a group of five. Now, this group of five left Fort Nelson, B. C., and of the group, only one made it to their next stop of Watson Lake, Yukon.

The three crashed in a valley, later to be known as Million Dollar Valley, and the fifth was never seen again.

We also heard that the one that made it to Watson Lake crashed on landing. Some say on purpose.

Anyway, I hadn't given the story much thought until, one day, I ran across some photos on ebay. There, before my eyes were three photos of a Martin B-26 landing on a snow covered runway and then crashing.

The thing I found amazing was that the aircraft was a sister ship of the ones we recovered. The pictured aircraft was s/n 40-1465 and the recovered aircraft were s/n 40-1459, 40-1464, and 40-1501.

It's interesting what can happen if the landing retract switch, or handle (or whatever) is hit during landing.

Hey Dik, question for you.Did tallichet leave you guys out there for awile during the recovery? I worked on that bird for some time back in the late 80s and early 90s.The story i got was the bird with the crunched up nose (landed gear down) was the one that is flying today.By unbolting the nose from one of the bellied in birds. What do you remember?

40-1464 was the one with the busted nose and was the furthest south in the valley. And, yes, it did land gear down, that's why the main gear was never removed like on the other two. That airframe, minus the nose, is what Weeks has now.

The nose section of the middle aircraft, 40-1459, was removed to be used on 1464, thus Tallichet would have two basically complete airframes. But, for some reason, the nose section off of the first airframe, 40-1501, the one furthest north, was used instead.

Tallichet and his friends walked out of the valley, with their guide, and flew back in later by helicopter when he brought in some supplies. The helicopter that was scheduled to fly us out never came, but as far as I know that wasn't Dave's fault. We did declare a MAYDAY to an overflying CP-AIR flight, our only source of communication to the outside, and they got an OK Bell 206 to come in after us. Which I'm sure Tallichet paid for.

Speaking of the Devil, I was just going through the PC-WIX site and someone was asking about the B-26s. Actually they were talking about a C-47 that participated in the locating of the downed aircraft during the war.

Some other individual offered up some links and, guess what, some of MY pictures were on the linked site. Trouble is their credit was given to some other guy.

So, I've shot them off an email telling them to credit me or remove the pictures.

Here's the link.

http://www.explorenorth.com/library/avi ... alley.html