A PLANE IN THE WOODS
by Karl Gustafson
Copyright 2007 by Karl Gustafson. All Rights Reserved.
Originally written 1999; Revised 2007
(* Out of respect for privacy, the pilot’s name and hometown, and the identifying information of others, have been changed. If you have a need to know the pilot’s name or other details , please e-mail the author.)
April 3, 1955. The Winter had been dry, and Spring was looking no better. Forest fire warnings were up, and at fire lookout towers rangers had recently been keeping watch for telltale drifts of smoke. Not today, though. A Nor'easter was pounding western and central New England with up to 30 inches of snow. The Berkshires were especially hard hit with a heavy, wet snow that left late season skiers stranded. In Pittsfield hotel hallways were lined with cots as out of town visitors were forced to stay put. The Mohawk Trail was closed as were most roads in the area. Telegraph and power lines were down in the hills of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont. Off Cape Ann and Cape Cod fishing vessels called out "maydays" as the storm tossed them about. In the Connecticut River valley and along the Massachusetts coast the storm raged overhead, but only an inch or two of snow touched the ground, leaving behind the familiar scene of daffodils and snow. Tomorrow the sun would be out.
Above the storm Air National Guard Lt. Barry B. Burnett was flying in his F-94B Starfire jet. Burnett had left Barnes Field in Westfield, Massachusetts, for a "round-robin" flight to the Niagara Falls area and back. Head winds were stiff and the Cold War fighter-interceptor was burning its fuel quickly, forcing a shorter flight. Burnett turned the plane around over Syracuse and headed home. As he neared Massachusetts, Burnett's navigational radio system malfunctioned, leaving him with only his voice radio and a compass as he descended into the clouds of the storm to prepare for a landing. Burnett called in to request radar assistance in finding his way home, but the radar was off and the operator was at home. Meanwhile Burnett's plane was burning eight gallons of fuel per minute.
Modern radar relies on transponders to identify planes. Radar waves reflect off the plane to locate it, and also trigger a radio signal from the plane that identifies the plane. The F94-B's of 1955 had no transponder, so identification was done by a coordinated dance between pilot and radar operator. Radar operators would instruct the pilot to fly on a certain compass bearing for a designated time, then turn to another distinct bearing . The behavior of the blip on the radar screen would tell the radar operator which plane was the one that concerned him. Burnett flew his "ID turns" in the clouds at 1000 feet while in the back of his mind he knew he was somewhere near the Quabbin Reservoir where the hills rise nearly 1300 feet.
It was about 3 p.m.. Burnett was down to 20 gallons of fuel--about 2 minutes of flying time--and radar had not identified him (an investigation later showed that radar operators identified the wrong plane). He put his landing gear down to slow his airspeed, and put down his flaps to slow the plane even more. At one point he tried to pull up but felt the plane shudder, a sign that the plane was losing lift. He ejected the canopy, pulled the handle for the ejection seat, and soon was parachuting through the clouds, expecting any second to hit the frigid Quabbin waters where winter ice was just breaking up. Off in the distance he heard his plane crash and envisioned it diving into the Quabbin.
September 1998. It all started as a passing comment. I was starting my fourth year as a Cub Scout leader in north central Massachusetts. Pack 17, Den 1, "The Eagle Patrol" includes several pilots-to-be and future engineers. At home their dinner conversations tended towards "Dad, can a P-51 Mustang land on an unimproved runway?" Bedroom doors were armed with elaborately thought out electronic intruder alarms intended to thwart little sisters. Planes were quickly identified as to make and model as they fly overhead at 35,000 feet. "Which way do the cargo doors open on a C5A Galaxy?" was not a unique question overheard at den meetings. My son and seven friends had big ideas about becoming Eagle Scouts. We were discussing what ideas we had for the upcoming year. "I know there's some kind of old crashed plane at the Quabbin Reservoir," I said. "Maybe we could go find it." Their enthusiasm was instantaneous. But little did I know where my comment would take us. We made semaphore flags, Morse code kits, sat in a stock car, climbed Mt. Monadnock and eventually tried on real spacesuits, but the wreckage of an F-94B Starfire in the woods of the Quabbin Reservoir, about an hour away, seemed to capture the imaginations of eight Webelos (We'll Be Loyal Scouts) Cub Scouts.
The next Spring my son and I scouted the area on our own with no luck. I spoke with several people who had seen the wreck, but none had a clear memory of how to get there. I contacted the author of numerous books about the Quabbin and its creation and folklore. He wrote back that one of his books made brief comment about the wreck and its location, and he made notes on a map that I had supplied. We would be far from the first to visit the site, but it seemed like a good adventure. Now, armed with directions and the ambition of eight excited 10-year olds, the Scouts mounted an expedition that held a chance of success.
One early Saturday morning in May we made the first mile and a half of the trip by bike, remarkably with no collisions or casualties. After a quick lunch restless with anticipation we chained our bikes together around a tree and hiked the final two miles. Our persistence paid off two hours later as we found the remains of the plane at the end of a footpath in quiet section of Quabbin's eastern shore. Sections of fuselage were compressed and "accordioned" into stove-size chunks They laid among countless torn and bent fragments of aluminum skin and stainless steel. Pumps, axles, wing flaps and electronic components were scattered within and outside a 25 foot long, 4 foot deep crater that held the bulk of the wreckage. An empty wheel rim still attached to an extended landing gear strut protruded from the deepest part of the crater not far from engine components. Switches and wires that were once part of the instrument panel rested among engine parts. Here and there we could make out a faded "ANG" (for Air National Guard) on wing pieces, or a stenciled "Fluid Fill Line" on a crumpled container. The silent woods began to rattle with the sounds of eight Cub Scouts banging around various parts as they started their version of a crash investigation.
The crash seemed to stir the Scouts' imaginations. "I wonder what happened to the pilot?" "What if we find a skull?" "Why did it crash?" "Maybe it was carrying bombs!" The subject frequently came up at Cub Scout den meetings for months after the trip. A few months later when my wife and I offered our son a party or a day-trip for his birthday he immediately chose a return trip to the crash with a Scout who was ill the day of the original trip.
The story had taken on a life of its own. Now all the scouts wanted to return to the crash. Parents were ordering F-94 model kits for their sons for Christmas. One Scout chose a new computer screenname--QuabbinF94. I decided it was time to gather some facts. A search of Internet airplane crash web sites yielded nothing. I needed to think low-tech. I figured that a newspaper close to the crash had reported on it, so I called a librarian at a nearby public library and told her the story and asked for her help in locating reports about the crash. I gave her some approximate dates and waited. She called upon former reporter and the unofficial town historian to narrow the search. Ten days later I had a large manila envelope that contained more than what I hoped for. The crash had barely received passing mention in a story about the storm, but unexpectedly it named the pilot. Barry B. Burnett of Birmingham, West Virginia. Immediately I searched for Burnett via my computer and was surprised to find him still in Birmingham. I wrote him a note about the Scouts' adventure and their curiosity, and I waited.
Each year the Cub Scouts have a cake exchange. Scouts bake and decorate an original cake in whatever way they see fit. Over the years we've seen cakes in the shape of military vehicles such as a Humvee, sheet cakes decorated as football fields or airports, and every other shape imaginable. Now I heard that one of our Scouts was making a sheet cake that was a diorama of the F94B Starfire crash site complete with cinnamon sticks for tree trunks, green sugar for grass, and crumpled up bits of foil for the plane. The day of the cake exchange I received a letter from Burnett with his story, and best of all, he wanted to meet our Scouts. He was only an hour away in his second home, in New Hampshire. I hadn't told anybody yet because I wanted to keep it a surprise for a while longer, but Burnett was on his way. I took a picture of the cake for Burnett. My phone call to him later that weekend to set up a date didn't foretell what he had in store for us.
After their initial "how'd you do that?" response, parents and Scouts prepared another crash site cake, a plaque for Burnett, and planned to skip the sports games that usually rival scout meetings. On a drizzly December day the Scouts of the Eagle Patrol were about to meet Barry Burnett.
Clad in a denim jacket with "Barry" on the front and customized with a painting of his Cessna airplane on the back, we recognized Burnett right away as we greeted him at the city airport. And for the first time in 45 years, he had attached a small silver caterpillar pin to his jacket, a pilot's symbol of a bail-out. We were being honored.
For over two hours we listened as Burnett, military flat-top haircut intact, talked in a gentle, slow West Virginia accent, telling us not only about the crash but about his career as a pilot and his exploits and interests. "I was a hillbilly, and I didn't know until I came to New England in the '50s that "damn Yankee" was two words. Now I'm a Yankee; I have dual citizenship." He had many stories to tell.
Burnett's future as a pilot began in the seat Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis. At the age of 4 months Burnett's mother took him by train from his boyhood home near Birmingham, West Virginia, to visit her sister in New York City. The Spirit of St. Louis was on display in a department store, and Mrs. Burnett placed infant Barry in the cockpit. "Maybe he'll grow up to be a pilot," she said. In the 1950s with the Korean War on the horizon, Burnett decided to spend his military service in the air, first in the Air Force, then in the Air National Guard. He was in graduate school for business at UMass Amherst at the time of the crash. After bailing out he had the good fortune of a soft landing on a small spit of land off Prescott Peninsula, a restricted area of the Quabbin where after a snowy walk of just a couple of miles he encountered a wildlife researcher who drove him to a nearby police station. An intense search for the plane turned up nothing, and Burnett had always assumed that his plane had hit water and disappeared. A logger found it two years later, and Burnett once heard a rumor that his plane had been found. My letter had taken him totally by surprise.
Burnett had gone on to fly for Delta Airlines, and now owned and operated a private airport and farm in West Virginia where he was born. Two of his sons had been Scouts; his oldest is an Eagle Scout. The boys listened intently as we heard about how he owns the largest barn in West Virginia, all the better to house the 89 big game trophy animals from all over the world that help to fill its space. We looked at photos of each and every one. In 1994 he designed and created a huge granite "bench marker" on his West Virginia property, which, like a modern Stonehenge, marks the direction of the autumnal and vernal equinox as well as other data. For a while he had experimented with commercial radio frequency drying of wood. We had invited Barry Burnett the pilot but also met Barry the author of a book on marketing fruits and vegetables, architect, farmer, businessman, inventor, benefactor, and father of an Eagle Scout. Everyone needed his photo take with Burnett, as well as his autograph. After a piece of "Quabbin F-94 crash site cake" and presenting him with a photo collage and a plaque honoring his visit we parted ways. Assistant leader John and I looked at each other. "Who was that man?!" we said. Burnett had left us with one request--to take him to his plane in the Spring.
Almost 45 years to the day of his crash, Burnett was on the phone to schedule a trip to his plane. On a gloomy, cool spring day in May that threatened rain and seemed fit only for ticks and mosquitos, Burnett joined us for the three and a half mile hike to his plane. Along the way we were stopped by a Quabbin watershed ranger who asked what we were up to. "We're going to that plane crash site....and this is the pilot." His polite manner suddenly also turned very helpful and pleasant, as we clearly stirred up some excitement. Later he caught up with us again in his four wheel drive truck to take our photo for the Quabbin's records. He told how the crash site had spawned a 3 hour search just a few weeks prior when naive hikers notified officials of a plane crash in the woods. An older supervisor soon realized what had been found and called off the search.
As we made our final approach to the crash we intentionally lagged behind as Burnett saw his plane for the first time in 45 years. After a few moments of silence Burnett said, "I suppose I should go over and touch it." Our time at the crash site turned into crash reconstruction, part identification, and reminiscing. The Scouts were busy comparing wreckage parts to a photo of an F-94B that had skidded off a runway when the ranger showed up again. He had radioed his supervisor who told the story of finding a pilot's helmet and parachute on a Quabbin island in the 1960's. If they were Burnett's he wanted to return them. They weren't--Burnett had hiked out with his helmet, but for a few moments it seemed that forces beyond us were bringing closure to Burnett's crash.
With the crash behind us as we hiked out, the question of "what next" seemed obvious. "How do we top this?" my assistant leader John and I had asked each other a few times. We had heard rumors about other crash sites at the Quabbin, but the authorities clearly weren't talking and weren't about to give directions. "I'm not sure that the boys are old enough to understand just how neat this really is," said John. "Maybe they'll understand it more when they're older." The answer to "what's next" came easily--a 50th anniversary reunion at the site on the date of the crash. By then we expect to have a few Eagle Scouts of our own.
Epilogue--That was 1999, and now it’s 2007. I’m told that Burnett has died (unconfirmed), and we never went back for that 50th anniversary trip. Kids grow up quickly. The adventure lives on in stories though, and has prompted other Scout troops to visit the site. Several of our Scouts did become Eagles. The story inspired one Eagle Scout from our troop to become a pilot. He will enter aviation college this Fall, and hopes to become a commercial pilot or Coast Guard helicopter pilot.
