West White Pine Mtn C-46

Name	West White Pine Mtn C-46
CAP data	4037N 10528W 16NOV58,C46,N1310N,N SD W WHT PINE MT/MSTLY RMVD,12.5
GPS coords	40 36 53 105 28 42 by GPS
GPS decimal	40.61463  105.47839
UTM	459528, 4495881
Datum used	NAD 27
County	Larimer County, CO.

Nov. 16, 1958

N1301N

Curtiss build # 22480

"Photo by John Sepp. Courtesy of the Pima Air and Space Museum

(Click on picture to get enlarged image)

Site has 1 gear leg	"scar on the mountain" view from air	Site looking north

The wreck cause:  Unknown.  IFR from Denver to Hill AFB.   Nov. 16, 1958

Accident report here says they lost an engine in icing conditions.

Casualties:   Pilot  Frank L. Courtell, Capitol Airways  (Corrected name)

                      Co-Pilot Calvin Cloud, Capitol Airways

Email note received from the son of the pilot during Feb. 2003:

I have a correction - the name of the pilot was 'Frank LaVern Courtell'. The newspapers, at the time of the crash, printed the wrong name - his wife's nickname was 'Birdy' - they were avid golfers.

It crashed during a snow storm while trying to turn back to denver - or so we were told. But we were also told that the plane was mostly in one piece - they took 4 days just to get to it.

I was only 13 years old when my father died - they probably held back some of the details from me and my younger sister.

I wish I could tell you more - but it was a long time ago.

Thanks - Frank Courtell

Site Description:. Opening in the forest with aspens growing thru. Melted aluminum, a landing gear leg, perhaps a fuselage door, piping, tubing, misc bits. (It's entirely possible the plane was in one piece after the crash. I simply have no info about that. - Ron)

Best route Easiest way to get there is to take the Pingree Park road from Colo. Hwy 14 (Poudre Canyon). Head south on the PP road to across from the Jack’s Gulch Recreation area. Turn onto the Flowers road headed east. (4WD required from here) Go approximately 2 .6miles. There are two ridges that the road climbs. After the road descends from the second ridge there is a bermed off road leading to the right just as the main road makes a left. (Coords are : 40 37 24.2 N 105 29 05.4 W .) Follow this bermed road first west, then east, then UP to the wrecksite You should be able to find a few scraps of aluminum here and there in the road which probably fell off the trucks as the wreckage was being hauled away.

Trips to find the C-46 (no pictures)

Thoughts 7/19/2009- After another trip to the site to survey it for the Colorado Aviation Historical Society I got a LOT more interested in the history of the C-46 type airplane. The C-46 was extensively used to fly cargo over The Hump in China. But the plane had some bad behaviors and features such as Curtiss Electric props which had very bad failure modes. And there were some issues with inflight explosions. And of course there was the weather over The Hump itself and the wartime losses were enormous.

Check the loss history of the C-46 for the war years- It appears that the first 650 losses were incurred by the US Army Air Corps (pages 1 thru 6). There were 2500 planes built and the losses were staggering during the war. And the place names they were lost in -exotic.

Then the airplanes were surplussed to cargo carriers and non-US airlines. And the crashes continued to occur in faraway exotic places until over 1000 of the planes are crash reported losses. (pages 1 thru 11)

John Deakin who flew the Confederate/Commerative Air Force's  CHINA  DOLL C-46 to airshows loved the airplane and wrote about it here.

Others wrote about it here as well.

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Last Modified: 7/19/2009