Calling All Bonneville Raceway Experts ...

[TwinTurbo]

I'm a newbie here, and in addition to turning wrenches and raising hell with cars, I belong to Project Remembrance/Aircraftwrecks.com

Over ten years ago some people on this forum who were at Bonneville Raceway found wreckage of a North American F-86 jet fighter near the frontage road north of I-80 by the Bonneville Raceway exit. The dog tags of Capt. Vanley Johnson were found and returned to his family. This last January I found wreckage from ANOTHER F-86, flown by Col. Henry Norman, on the south side of I-80 near Wendover, UT.

Question for all the Bonneville Raceway experts out there: Does anyone know anything about additional aircraft wreckage west of Bend in the Road near the raceway? I've heard rumors about this, and after an internet search found there was an F-16 from Hill AFB in Utah that crashed in that area in the 1990s.

Thanks,

Mac

[studemax]

I searched for pieces at that spot when I was at Speedweek in 1998. The site had been cleaned up, but was still visible. The only parts I could find were less than an inch square, mostly broken fasteners and pieces of partially melted sheetmetal. It was just beyond the point where an irrigation ditch on the north side was gushing with ice cold water from the mountains. Who knows what the site would look like 25 years later?

[TwinTurbo]

Studemax, so the pieces you found were up at the base of the hills? There are two canals that I could see, one that runs roughly west to east and one that comes off it and runs roughly north to south.

[studemax]

It was NOT a canal. It was a ditch - maybe two feet deep and a foot wide, running parallel to the road. A pipe came out of the ground pretty close to the crash site and cold water flowed from it, back towards the Bend in the Road. It may have joined a canal farther along, but I didn't check. For all I know, the pipe might have been plumbed to run towards the Bend in the Road in the intervening years and would be hidden now. The ditch appeared to have been recently dug when I was there.