A North Idaho aviation catastrophy
- Pat Hart
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
Bob Graham was the Ranger of the Bonner’s Ferry Ranger District from 1972 into the early 1980s. He began his career as a smoke jumper in 1952 and 1953. In 1953 the plane he was in crashed.
This is the story of that crash.
It was good to be in the tri-motor because you got two more engines … when these planes lost all three (undecipherable, but not good). When the second one went out, I went to the door. We were all suited up, ready to jump, and I went to the door, looked at the ground, and the ground was coming up fairly fast. So I looked up at the pilot, and at the spotter, and they were both looking at me shaking her head and saying, “no, too close.”
So I went back and sat down and they figured the three split, and I was on the outside with the cargo and they figured the plane side split open and my legs went out the opening.
By then it was dark and we were seeing … we were alert to the fact that we had just crashed.
Bob Johnson, who owned Johnson’s Flying Service, was in with Fred Brauer, who was the head of the parachute project, who spotted the air ambulance plane.
And by then, the rescue team and to carry us both out to spot it there. But it was dark, pitch black, no lights, of course, a dirt field. And they loaded us up in a twin Beech. Wow.
And the pilot started cruising, down the ground, back and forth, down the strip.
And Johnson was holding … there weren’t any seats. And we were both on stretchers. So the stretchers were sliding on the floor.
So Johnson, we had to hold the pilot by the legs and Fred Brauer held my legs.
While this was going on, Johnson finally hollered up to the pilot, “what the hell are you doing?”
And the pilot said he was chasing the elk off the field!
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