Hi all, I just thought I'd post this here, since I figure most of you would have at least some interest:

in 1952, SB-17G 44-85746 crashed in the Olympic Mountains in Washington. The crash site is only 10 miles as the crow (or B-17) flies from the house I grew up in, so I feel an extra personal connection to the crash. I have visited the site three times (in 2005, 2007, and 2012).

The site is well known to hikers in the area, but most of them don't have any idea what they're looking at. As such, after my last visit, i decided to create a website dedicated to examining what's left of the bomber, so that interested parties could learn more about the wreck. It's also geared toward providing a detailed examination of the wreckage for modelers and other aviation enthusiasts.

It's still very much a WIP, but I'm making steady progress, and hope to have it mostly finished by this summer (just in time to make another trip up there!). I'm mostly sharing this for fun, but if you guys have any feedback regarding the design and layout (unfortunately, I'm a bit limited, since I'm using the standard wordpress platform), feel free to let me know!

http://746project.wordpress.com

(And yes, I will be making a skin or two for old 746!)

It's definitely a good idea to document such crash sites. I don't know the situation in the USA, but here in Europe it would have been already completely looted, because of the high prices collectors are willing to pay for parts of ww2 aircraft. So maybe it's better not to give detailed information about the exact loaction of the site.

Yeah, I've thought about that aspect- I had originally planned on having a detailed map of the site showing the entire area, partly because it's such a well-known site. In the end I decided to include the small map of the debris field, but that's all, since the information's already available in so many other places.

And regarding the wreck being picked over, that's definitely been the case- sadly, just about anything that's small and light enough to be carried out, has been! This summer, I'm planning on returning to the site, and trying to find the upper debris field/impact area, which I hear has fared better, due to the fact that it's so far removed from the main site.

Another interesting side note- at the forest service station in my hometown where I worked for two summers, they have a P-38 main landing gear leg- apparently someone packed the whole thing out from a wreck, thinking they could sell it. as the story goes, they took it to a scrapper, who informed them that such activity is a federal offense. Shortly thereafter, the forest service got an anonymous donation... So far, I haven't been able to find any more information on that crash site, but I'm still looking!

People who are looting such sites often make it impossible to clarify the fate of missing air crews.
A few years ago I had helped in an official archaeological excavation of a P-38 crash site. After the local newspapers had reported it, the site was "visited" at night by looters who stole the remains of the engines. This would have almost made identifying the aircraft impossible, but luckily a small engine part with a serial number was left behind, that allowed the experts to determine the aircrafts serial number and to find out what happened to the pilot (he had bailed out and survived).